Steamer

Baltimoreans reading The Sun at breakfast on the morning of March 7, 1913, learned that newly inaugurated President Woodrow Wilson had spent his first full day as the nation's chief executive and had convened his first Cabinet meeting."

My most vivid childhood memories involve crabs: checking the crab pots tied to my grandparents' pier in Annapolis, picking crabs for hours at a long table in my parents' backyard, listening carefully to my grandfather's instructions about how to capture every single bit of delicious meat out of a crab. And "helping" my father steam crabs at home, in our kitchen. Steamed crabs are readily available at many Baltimore restaurants and carryout seafood houses: You can buy them already cooked and seasoned, ready to toss on the table and pick.

In the shade of Baltimore's World Trade Center, a prominent plaque overlooks the Inner Harbor. Near this spot, the Baltimore steamer President Warfield began her epic voyage into history. If none of that immediately strikes a chord, the inscription soon solves the mystery by revealing that the Warfield, a converted Chesapeake Bay steamship, made that journey under another name: Exodus 1947. The Jewish Museum of Maryland will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Exodus' journey with presentations and discussions from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 25 at the Chizuk Amuno Congregation, 8100 Stevenson Road.

Several columns ago, I wrote about the 160th anniversary of the foundering of the HMS Birkenhead off the West African coast that established the maritime tradition of "women and children first" when it comes time to evacuate a stricken vessel. My good friend, Helen Delich Bentley, the former congresswoman and former federal maritime commissioner, wrote in a letter to the editor of The Baltimore Sun that I had overlooked one of the most dramatic Atlantic sea rescues of all time, when the Missouri, out of Baltimore, rescued all passengers and crew from the steamer Danmark in 1889.

Police LogPasadena: Someone pried open a door of the Bayside Steamer Seafood Market in the 8800 block of Fort Smallwood Road overnight Monday and stole $5,050.Pub Date: 10/24/96

100 Years Ago* Clerk A. K. Starlings, of the Anne Arundel County commissioner's board, is engaged in transcribing county property assessments into new books. The old records had become dilapidated and were not in condition to facilitate a hurried search. -- The Sun, Aug. 16, 1894.* Preparations are being made for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of St. James' parish on Sept. 4. This parish is the most southern one in Anne Arundel County, lying between the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay. -- The Sun, Aug. 18, 1894.

75 Years Ago* More than 300 athletes, representing six schools, will compete in Annapolis in the annual athletic meet for the public school athletes of Anne Arundel County. Schools entered are the Annapolis Grammar School, Annapolis High School, West Annapolis, Eastport, Glenburnie and Linthicum Heights. -- The Sun, May 1, 1919.* The German U-boat 117, captured during the world war and now engaged in a publicity campaign for the Victory Loan drive, is in port at Annapolis. The naval bark Cumberland will arrive tomorrow.

For years, Americans have heard about the health benefits of eating like the Chinese. Properly prepared Oriental food is generally lower in fat and higher in complex carbohydrates than typical Western fare.Steamed Shrimp Dumplings 8 ounces raw shrimp, peeled and deveined (about 16 large shrimp)8 ounces ground turkey2 green onions, finely minced1 large stalk celery, finely chopped (about 1 cup)1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce1 teaspoon sesame oil (available in Oriental markets)

From The Sun July 4-July 10, 1843July 4: The Mysterious Lady has taken rooms at No. 146 Baltimore Street, where with the performing birds and educateddog, entertainment will be found for visitors.July 10: Some malicious person on Saturday night, very much cut and injured the new awning before the cabinet-making establishment of Mr. Edward S. Tarr, North Gay Street. Comment on such a diabolical spirit of mischief is unnecessary.From The Sun July 4-July 10, 1893July 4: From present indications Baltimore's Independence Day crop of burnt fingers and singed eyebrows will be greater than ever before in the city's history.

From The Sun July 31-Aug. 6, 1844July 31: In taking down the old Theatre Tavern, adjoining the Holliday Street Theater, the corner stone, which was laid, with considerable ceremony, in 1830, was taken up and the precious contents examined.Aug. 3: Michael Murray was committed to jail, in default of payment of a fine, for persisting in the use of profane language in the office of Justice Tate.From The Sun July 31-Aug. 6, 1894July 31: Large crowds again visited the excursion resorts yesterday.

Only 15 years old, L.P. Steamers feels like it has been around much longer. In a relatively short time, it's become an institution where locals bring their out-of-town friends to sample Maryland seafood standards. The restaurant serves as crab house, cultural ambassador and local hangout, which is all the more impressive, considering it's squeezed into a rowhouse in Locust Point. Dark wooden timbers, dim lighting and a map covered in money from around the world makes the downstairs look like the inside of an old ship.

A recent column on the wreck of the steamer Clara Nevada, which went to the bottom in 1898 while returning from the Alaska gold fields with the loss of all hands and a cargo of gold dust worth $13.6 million today, brought interesting reader feedback. The story of the Clara Nevada was brought to life by Steven C. Levi, an Anchorage-based freelance and technical writer, in his recent book, "The Clara Nevada: Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska's Inside Passage. " The lust for riches set off gold fever, as thousands packed suitcases and whatever they could carry on their backs and headed West for Seattle and Portland, gateway to the Klondike.

The wreck of the Clara Nevada in Alaskan waters at the height of the Klondike gold rush in 1898 has a Baltimore connection and is the subject of a recently published book, "The Clara Nevada: Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska's Inside Passage. " "It's a fairly well-known story in southeast Alaska," said Steven C. Levi, an Anchorage freelance and technical writer. "They tell it on the ferries, and the first time I heard about the Clara Nevada, I didn't believe it and decided to look into it," "And the more research I did, the stranger the story became," he said in a telephone interview last week.

Charles B. Reeves Jr., a retired Baltimore attorney, called the other day to chat a bit about the President Warfield, an Old Bay Line steamer that I had mentioned in an obituary for Henry "Sonny" Schloss. Schloss and his father, Moses M. "Captain Mo" Schloss, a Baltimore Zionist and businessman, had joined the secret effort after World War II to purchase the old overnight packet boat that had sailed regularly between Baltimore and Norfolk, Va., before being requisitioned during the war and sent to England.

Everyone out there who wants to decorate a room by putting up some trendy wallpaper, please, reconsider. And by "reconsider," I mean come to my place and help me strip some 10-year-old wallpaper off the kitchen walls first. The thing about wallpaper is, it's glued to the wall. To my knowledge, the folks at 3M have not yet developed a Post-it wallpaper. Nor is there any Velcro wallpaper. What is wrong with America? Why is it that we can inhabit a space station for months on end doing important yet largely unintelligible research on the behavior of flames, fluids, metals and protein crystals in space, and yet we cannot come up with an easily removable wallpaper here on planet earth?

How do I clean a bamboo steamer - the Chinese kind with interlocking baskets? You don't have to clean a bamboo steamer; in fact, you shouldn't. Residue from any dish-washing liquid would be absorbed by the porous bamboo. From a food-safety perspective, you have little to worry about. When you use your steamer, you are exposing it to very hot water vapor. Your dishwasher gets no hotter than the inside of the steamer. That said, food odors can work their way into the bamboo, but there's an easy fix: Don't steam food directly on the lattice surface of the steamer basket.

My most vivid childhood memories involve crabs: checking the crab pots tied to my grandparents' pier in Annapolis, picking crabs for hours at a long table in my parents' backyard, listening carefully to my grandfather's instructions about how to capture every single bit of delicious meat out of a crab. And "helping" my father steam crabs at home, in our kitchen. Steamed crabs are readily available at many Baltimore restaurants and carryout seafood houses: You can buy them already cooked and seasoned, ready to toss on the table and pick.

Things must have been a little sad for Tom Brannan that day in 1914 when he reported for duty aboard the spanking new, steel-hulled freighter named the Washingtonian. Ten years earlier, when Tom was only 16, his older brother Howard had shipped out from Baltimore for Cuba aboard the schooner Lizzie Babcock. "Neither schooner nor any crew members were heard from again," newspapers reported.The months ahead in 1914-15 were to put this second Brannan son in danger in one of the oddest maritime wrecks of modern times.

In the shade of Baltimore's World Trade Center, a prominent plaque overlooks the Inner Harbor. Near this spot, the Baltimore steamer President Warfield began her epic voyage into history. If none of that immediately strikes a chord, the inscription soon solves the mystery by revealing that the Warfield, a converted Chesapeake Bay steamship, made that journey under another name: Exodus 1947. The Jewish Museum of Maryland will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Exodus' journey with presentations and discussions from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 25 at the Chizuk Amuno Congregation, 8100 Stevenson Road.

The commercial came on while I was driving up the JFX and trying not to get killed by the usual psychotic lane-weavers in BMWs. Have you ever noticed how seven out of 10 times when someone blows past you at 100 mph and then cuts across three lanes to get to the exit ramp, it turns out to be a prune-faced guy in aviator sunglasses driving a Beamer? They should really do a study on that. Oh, I don't think the BMW people would like the results. But it would confirm a long-standing suspicion held by many of us about Beamer owners and the raging sense of entitlement they bring to the highway.