How to always have really fresh lobster

Posted by Jo
April 1, 2008

I love lobster and nothing is better than a really fresh lobster. While I was pregnant with my daughter, I was always craving lobster at every hour of the night. My husband and Chica both got sick of me sending them out to the 24 hour grocer to buy me yet another lobster so we came up with a fantastic solution to my fresh lobster needs…we raised our own right inside our whirlpool bathtub!

I can’t believe we never thought of this sooner. We headed to the local fish market and bought two lobsters, making sure one was a girl and one was a boy, for obvious reasons. We bought some small feeder fish and some brine shrimp as well to feed our breeding pair and headed home.

First, we filled the tub to above the line of the jets. Then, we waited for the water to settle to a temperature between 60 and 65 degrees, the ideal temperature for mating lobsters. Then, we added 6 cups of sea salt to the water and started the jets circulating to make sure the salt was thoroughly dissolved. You can also add fake plants and fish to the tub to make the lobsters feel more at home. A comfortable lobster is necessary for breeding activity. Once the habitat was ready, we released our lobster couple into their new home. Make sure you turn the jets on at least four times a day for 15 minutes each time to simulate the ocean tides. This allows the lobsters to exercise and aerates their water.

Within a couple of days, we had lobster eggs! By the time I am pregnant with my next child, we should have a tub full of lobsters! For more lobster trivia and history, we suggest reading, Illustrated Dictionary of Lobstering by Kendall Merriam.

Oh, and more thing… April Fool’s!

You didn’t think we would REALLY try to raise lobsters in a bathtub, did you? We couldn’t resist playing a little joke on you, our faithful readers, to celebrate one of our favorite holidays — April Fool’s Day.

We played a trick on you, and now we’d like to help you play tricks on your unsuspecting friends, family members, and co-workers. Here are some fun tricks and jokes we’ve got in our arsenal.

Empty the sugar bowl and fill it with salt. This is a classic old joke, but it’s great for young kids because it’s easy and pretty innocent. There’s nothing like watching a loved one’s face after he or she sips a mug full of salted coffee in the morning!
Rig the sink’s spray nozzle. Take a rubber band and wrap it around the spray of your kitchen sink’s sprayer, thus holding the spray button down. Put the sprayer back in the hole and leave the water turned off. The next person who comes to use the sink and turns the water on will unknowingly activate the spray nozzle and get a shower! This is one of Chica’s favorite gags (year round) and is another great one for kids to do.
Sabotage SOME of the cookies. Make a batch of regular cookies (any recipe you like) and bake 3/4 of the dough as usual. Into the remaining dough, add a large amount of salt — enough to make the cookies taste awful — and mix well, then bake the rest of the cookies. Pile all the cookies (good and bad) on one plate together and give them to your family. They’ll soon learn to taste each cookie carefully before gobbling it down, and they’ll have fun anticipating if the cookie they’re about to eat is going to be good or not.
DON’T sabotage the cookies. For an extra twist on that last joke… Chica once baked a batch of cookies for Jo’s family and presented them with a warning that “some of them are extra special April Fool’s Day cookies”. Chica wouldn’t say what was different about them, but Jo’s family members all fretted over every cookie they ate. So what was so special about them? Nothing! All the cookies were exactly the same, but everybody THOUGHT there were going to be some bad ones in the batch, so it was great fun for Chica to watch!
Replace the eggs in the egg carton. Take an empty egg carton and fill it with a surprise item, such as strawberries. When the cook in your house opens the carton, he or she will be surprised to see something besides eggs in there!

And here are some fun recipes that make April Fool’s Day dinner lots of fun, especially for the kids!

Sundaes for dinner. Pile scoops of mashed potatoes into an ice cream dish, drizzle with gravy, and top with a cherry tomato.
JELL-O drinks. Prepare JELLO-O as directed and pour into drinking glasses. Insert a straw and let chill in the refrigerator. Serve to thirsty kids and laugh as they try to drink through the straw!
Meatloaf cake. Prepare your favorite meatloaf recipe but instead of baking in loaf pans, bake in two 8″ cake pans. Treat cooked loafs like cake layers and frost with mashed potatoes (make them a little thinner than usual). Serve slices of cake on plates drizzled with ketchup and cherry tomato halves, which will look like cherries and sauce!
Kitty litter cake. Prepare a cake in a large sheet pan, according to directions. You may need two cakes, depending on the size of your pan. Purchase a NEW, CLEAN, plastic litter box and place the cake inside (trimming if necessary). Ice the cake. Crush vanilla sandwich cookies in a food processor. Place 1/4 of cookie crumbs into a bag with 1-2 drops of green food coloring and shake well. Mix white and green crumbs together and spread over top of cake. Place several small, unwrapped Tootsie Rolls on a plate in the microwave and heat just until pliable. Shape and curve the Tootsie Rolls and nestle them in the crumbs on top of the cake. Serve cake with a NEW, CLEAN, plastic litter scoop. Trust me, folks will go crazy over this one.
Dog food dip. Brown two pounds of ground beef with one chopped onion in a skillet. Drain off excess grease and add add one can of cream of mushroom soup, one pound of Velveeta, and chopped jalapeño peppers to taste. Cook and stir until all ingredients are well blended and heated through, about 10 minutes. Mound mixture into a NEW, CLEAN dog food dish and serve with chips.