Crab

THE ROLAND PARK Second Presbyterian Church looked absolutely stunning last Saturday for the wedding of Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer and Richard Matthew Dohler. Thousands of wildflowers, miles of lace ribbons and tulle, and window sills decorated with Singapore orchids set the stage for the nuptials of the daughter of pop music star Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmut Sommer,and the son of Dick and Bonna Dohler, he's an Ellicott City builder.The church was filled with the music of German trumpeteer Langston Fitzgerald and selections of Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi, played by the church's music director Margaret Budd on the organ.

Joe's Crab Shack will open its fourth Maryland restaurant at Hunt Valley Towne Center, the mall's developer, Greenberg Gibbons, said Thursday. The seafood restaurant will open this fall, adding to locations in Abingdon, Greenbelt and Gaithersburg. The 325-seat restaurant will feature a playground under an enclosed patio and a menu of crab and other seafood dishes. Earlier this week, Hunt Valley's developer had announced that women's apparel boutique Eilieen Fisher will open its first Baltimore-area store at the mall in September.

The frail 68-year-old woman takes a puff on her cigarette, coughs painfully and tries again.She's not well, she says. It's been a difficult year for Irene Gabler.Her husband, Bud, died last May, and the exhausting world of the family's crab house in Aberdeen has taken its toll."It's been a bumpy road," says Ms. Gabler, a former West Virginian who arrived in the Harford County town 46 years ago, wondering, "What am I going to do out here?"The young nurse had come to the secluded spot on the Bush River because, "I married the man."

Some 20 area restaurants will trot out their best soft-shell crab recipes for the fourth annual Soft Shell Crab Celebration. The promotion is organized by Dine Downtown. The 12-day promotion starts on May 17 and runs through May 28. Here's whose participating, with what they're offering, when they've decided: Aldo's Ristorante Italiano -- Soft-shell crabs, stone-ground wheat crust, in brown butter and remoulade sauce, served with a sweet corn fritter Alewife Brewer's Art -- Cornmeal-crusted soft shells and fried Chesapeake oysters Charleston -- Cornmeal-fried soft-shell crab, lemon brown butter, upland cress, pickled green tomato Cinghiale -- Crispy soft-shell crabs, pickled sweet peppers, capers, baby arugula, lettuce sauce Diamond Tavern -- Beer-battered soft-shell crab sandwich with lemon caper sauce and arugula; cornmeal dusted soft-shell crab with spicy chili sauce and fried basil and spinach; sauteed soft-shell crab Provencal with wilted spinach and roasted tomatoes.

They're tucked away in residential neighborhoods, alongside marinas and on the Chesapeake Bay's tributaries. But for those who don't have a navigational system in their car or boat, Anne Arundel County's picturesque waterfront restaurants can be tricky to find. A trek to Deep Creek Restaurant in Arnold, Windows on the Bay or the Cheshire Crab in Pasadena - with a left turn here and a right turn there - takes a visitor through tree-lined neighborhoods, past rows of boats suspended on lifts and ends in laid-back culinary delights.

For more than 60 years, fanciers of the steamed Maryland blue crab trekked every summer to a secluded restaurant on the Bush River near Aberdeen and hammered and picked their way to gastronomical nirvana. They traveled to Gabler's Shore Restaurant from New York, Philadelphia and Washington in kind of a cultural homage to the model crab emporium not available in Queens or South Philly. And they traveled from the local crab capitals along Eastern Avenue and Belair Road. But these are sad days around Harford County.

Frances E. Kitching, the renowned Smith Island cook who began preparing food in her home for linemen installing electricity in the 1950s and ended up operating a world-famed boardinghouse where guests and islanders ate Maryland tidewater cuisine, died of heart failure Wednesday at Genesis Eldercare in Salisbury. She was 84. Mrs. Kitching spent all but three years of her life on her native Smith Island, 10 miles off Crisfield in the Chesapeake Bay, where she was born Frances Evans. What she didn't realize as an 8-year-old learning how to cook -- standing on a box "steering," as she said, bubbling pots on her grandmother's stove -- was that she would become the mental repository of nearly 200 years of family recipes.

There's nothing wrong with the Ladew Cafe's dinner menu that serving it in November wouldn't fix.Or here's an simpler solution: Offer the lunch menu at night.Imagine this scenario. It's 90 degrees in Baltimore, so you drive out to Monkton to have supper in the lush greenness of Ladew Topiary Gardens. You've heard that the respected Brass Elephant Caterers has taken over Ladew's cafe, so how can it miss?In spite of the heat, it's pleasant on the cafe's brick patio, what with the large, fragrant gardenia plant at its center, the perennials around the stone wall, the deep woods as backdrop.

I just read Stephen B. Awalt's reply to your article about "designer" crab feasts and laughed all the way through ("Simplicity is special," Aug. 21). I just can't imagine anyone having a crab feast with the items mentioned and in the way it was described. I worked my way through every action Mr. Awalt wrote about, and they were so real that every crab-eating Marylander probably has experienced them at one time or another. The most hilarious thing would be for someone to read the designer crab feast article to people in the middle of enjoying a crab feast, then tell them that's how they're going to do it next year.

Spike Gjerde, executive chef and co-owner of Woodberry Kitchen, shows America how to make a soft-shell crab sandwich. He also tells America that no one in Baltimore refers to it as a soft-shell crab sandwich. Apparently, we all say "soft-crab sandwich. " I don't know about that. But I do know that Woodberry Kitchen 's soft-shell crab sandwich uses white bread, so it's automatically great. Spike's recipe for soft-shell crabs appears in the May issue of Esquire magazine, as part of its "Eat Like a Man" series.

Karen Russell from Bryan, Texas, was looking for a recipe for cream of crab soup similar to the one she had at a restaurant in Chestertown when visiting the area a few years ago. Cream of crab is a popular menu item at restaurants all around the Chesapeake Bay region and is as ubiquitous here as clam chowder is along the coast of New England. Recipes for the soup are plentiful, but the best versions are the simple, straightforward ones that allow the sweet and succulent meat from local blue crabs to shine.

Faidley's storied crab cake will compete for the title of best sandwich in America on a new Travel Channel show debuting on June 6. In eleven episodes, "Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America" will introduce viewers to 30 iconic sandwiches in 27 cities. Faidley's crabcake will represent Baltimore in an episode in the Mid-Atlantic episode, which is tentatively schedule to air on June 27. Using his own BITE SCALE (B=Bread, I=Interior, T=Taste, E=Eating Experience), Richman samples and judges the three most mouthwatering masterpieces a region has to offer.

Spike Gjerde, executive chef and co-owner of Woodberry Kitchen, shows America how to make a soft-shell crab sandwich. He also tells America that no one in Baltimore refers to it as a soft-shell crab sandwich. Apparently, we all say "soft-crab sandwich. " I don't know about that. But I do know that Woodberry Kitchen 's soft-shell crab sandwich uses white bread, so it's automatically great. Spike's recipe for soft-shell crabs appears in the May issue of Esquire magazine, as part of its "Eat Like a Man" series.

With another spawning season about to begin, horseshoe crabs appear to be hanging on in Maryland's coastal bays, despite limited habitat for their annual reproductive reunion. Volunteers tallied 23,105 crabs last year, roughly the same number counted in 2010, the Maryland Coastal Bays Program reports. The annual horseshoe crab spawning congregation on the Delaware shore is closely watched, because the ancient sea animals' eggs provide food for shorebirds, particularly red knots , which stop over there to rest and refuel during an epic 9,000-mile migration north.

Ring Posts blogger and theScore TV personality Arda Ocal catches up with Rick Martel to talk about how much pro wrestling is involved in his life today, how he started using the Boston Crab, why his match vs, Shawn Michaels at Wembley Stadium at Summerslam 1992 isn't a career highlight and more.

Steamed crabs, cream of crab soup, crab cakes, crab imperial, soft shell crab, deviled crab, corn and crab chowder, crab bisque, crab dip, crab salad, crab fritters, crab ravioli, crab pie, crab quiche - but that's probably enough for the first day. Pardon us while we drool at the news that the Chesapeake Bay crab population has rebounded. The annual winter dredge survey has projected an estimated 764 million blue crabs bay-wide, the highest crab population estimate since 1993 and a stunning two-thirds more than last year's total.

Perhaps no other Maryland business is as dependent on seasonal guest workers as the crab processing industry. Hundreds of people come into the country each year, most from Mexico, to pick crabmeat from the shell at fewer than two dozen plants scattered around the Chesapeake Bay. This dependency on the H-2B visa program has always been controversial. And crab processors found themselves back in the spotlight last week after the release of a report alleging guest workers have been ill-treated with incidents of harassment, low wages, and substandard housing.

For millions of years, crabs have been scuttling about the bottom of the world's oceans and bays, but few regions have embraced the mean-spirited, omnivorous crustacean with as much vigor as we have here in Maryland. When I moved here from the Midwest and soon after attended my first crab feast, I remember thinking, "What is wrong with these people?" Sitting in the hot sun for hours at a clip, smashing steamed crustaceans with a mallet and then sorting through razor-sharp bits of shell and crab entrails for a thimbleful of meat seemed more like some sort of torture than a good time.

Don Backe and Karl Guerra share more than a love for sailing: After their lives were transformed by tragedy, both men used the sport and the organization they now run to regain their sense of purpose. Backe helped found Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating in 1991, four years after a horrific one-vehicle automobile accident in Crownsville left the former independent private school headmaster a paraplegic at age 51. Guerra is now executive director for the Annapolis-based nonprofit organization that helps those with physical, mental and emotional handicaps - along with others who can't afford financially to sail - gain entrance to a sport Guerra thought he had lost when he suffered a massive stroke in 2000 at age 52. But it could take the dream of a much younger man without any disabilities with the same love of being on the open waters to help keep CRAB afloat.

Rebounding from near-collapse four years ago, the Chesapeake Bay's blue crabs are more plentiful than they've been in nearly two decades, with a record crop of young, Maryland officials announced Thursday. The annual winter survey of Maryland and Virginia waters found an estimated 764 million crabs baywide — two-thirds more than last year and the highest since 1993, officials said. The number of juvenile crabs nearly tripled to 587 million, the most seen since the survey began 22 years ago. That should mean there'll be plenty of the crustaceans available this year, especially in late summer.