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This Thanksgiving and holiday season--it's time to give the poor turkey a breather.  It has been the culinary icon of holidays since we were all young enough to maneuver a crayon around all five fingers on construction paper and call it art.

I live in a state where the one culinary icon that symbolizes prosperity--the Maine lobster--is the one export we rely on to get entire communities through our economically stagnant winters.  Like everyone else, Mainers are going on Year Three of The Great Recession.  In a rural state as ours, where jobs are increasingly scare, it's scary. The boat price of lobsters historically used to be high enough to allow a lobsterman to work hard six or seven months of the year--and sustain him over the course of the winter 'til it was time to start again in the spring.

Not in the last couple of years has this boat price per lobster been all that viable.  I'm told, however, that this past season was "very good" and that "no one had a reason to complain." But does that mean even a good lobstering season will carry a fisherman financially through the

That means the guy who busted his butt all summer and fall to catch lobsters is now prospecting ways to plow driveways for the winter or work part-time in factories or do any kind of odd job he can to pay the bills to get through the winter.

It's not an easy or comfortable way to make a living--never was--but lobstering for so many is like farming--it's generationally taught and generationally ingrained. Once you're brought up in this lifestyle, you stick it out--through thick and thin.

The Maine lobster is one of the most coveted, succulent products that Maine has to offer, from an industry that was conservation-minded before the concept of a "sustainable food movement" even existed. Even Red Lobster,  is rolling out a new marketing angle to let their customers feel as though they are smack dab in the middle of Bar Harbor eating real Maine lobster--and not some rock lobster tails farmed in Malaysia.  Though there is not one Red Lobster restaurant located in Maine, they do buy and serve Maine lobster, along with other farmed varieties. Still, if you've tasted the real thing, culled from the coldest, cleanest ocean waters in the U.S., you will know why Maine lobster has earned its incontestable reputation.

So this holiday season, I'm making the case for Maine lobster and butter over turkey and giblets. (Go for the Maine crab and Maine shrimp while you're at it.) Some of my picks for the best places to buy lobster locally as well as to export to friends and family as gifts are as follows.


Feel free to comment on The Ghost Trap's Facebook page for places you recommend as well (I'm mostly listing Midcoast Maine). Let's keep this momentum going.

Next post? Best original lobster recipes to use this holiday season.




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This month's guest lobster blogger (loblogger?) is Monique Coombs, an author and  blogger for Lobsters On The Fly. Often the image of the lobsterman as a single, solitary guy hard at work doesn't take into account that many women are either lobster fishermen themselves (never lobsterwomen--never!), as well as sternmen. Often the wives, sisters, and mommas do their part to keep the industry going--kind of like  Rosie The Riveters...with varnish and knitting needles.  
By Monique Coombs

This time of year, in a corner of our living room, there is a stack of heads (not human) and a bucket of string. We're all thankful that the weather is warming up here in Maine but cursing the mud and rain.  I am also cursing the heads and string that are strewn about my living room.  Every spring, lobstermen go through their traps and replace their trap heads, sell some and repair others. My husband puts together everything that he can himself because it is cheaper. It  is cheaper because I do some of the work and I am free labor.

He cuts the heads into the sizes he needs and then cuts out holes for the hoops.  Then, we work together to insert the hoop into the head, which will later be what the lobster travels through in order to get into the trap... and not get out!  The strings are laced around the outside of the head with a large knitting needle. 

It's tedious work, but a very important part of the trap.  By helping him do this, I give him more time to bend traps, move more traps around and continue fishing (even though it sucks right now). Every year, my husband says we'll just do as many heads as he needs at a time and we won't have to sit and do them all.  But, our "done" pile is empty and our "to do" pile is growing.  I have to wonder if the folks at Discovery Channel run their Deadliest Catch marathon at this time of year, knowing that it coincides with everyone's head-knitting and hooping marathon.
     
Fishermens' wives have been helping their husbands in this way forever and will continue to do so until fishermen make enough money to hire someone, which they probably won't anyway because they all like things done their own way.  Or, traps are suddenly made differently, which probably won't happen either because... did I mention, fishermen like things done their own way?

Right now, we have a little 10-month-old boy crawling around.  He has only gotten stuck a couple of times. It would piss us off if he wasn't so damn cute and looked so freakin' funny stuck in a pile of heads.

Next time I drop in on this stitch and bitch, girls, let's have a discussion on the best ways to mask the stench of fish. If it weren't for me would my husband ever not smell like bait???
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