Crunchy
Years ago while living in MerkinLand (Baltimore), my wife at the time and I would regularly go to a great pub/restaurant called John Steven's. They did really good but affordable seafood and had a great range of beers (big bonus for a Brit).
We almost always shared a starter consisting of a big plate of fresh steamed mussels (still in their shells of course) with a bowl of melted garlic butter to dip the forked out mussels into.
Having eaten their delicious mussels many times before, I dug in heartily, ignoring the odd little bit of "grit" (that you invariably come across if you eat alot of shellfish) and happily munching through.
I should've inspected the first large piece of gritty substance more carefully (after having dicreetly removed it from my mouth) because the next one was much bigger and crunchier...it tasted foul and I had to spit it out.
Upon inspection of what I'd spat out and further exploration of the remaining mussels I soon found the answer. There had been baby crabs living inside some of these mussels at the time they were fished/farmed and since they'd now been cooked they looked like curled up fat black spiders with pincers.
The one I spat out was as big around as a drawing pin / thumbtack and since I'd already crunched up and swallowed at least two smaller ones I totally lost my appetite.
Although the price of the mussels was taken from the bill there was no real room for complaint, we'd already ordered a basket of steamed crabs for the main course (the full sized ones are a local delicacy there).
I just couldn't get the taste of that bug-like little beasty out of my mouth, so I just sat and enjoyed the beer (got pissed), while the ex Mrs. Twizla tucked into the parents of the evil looking things I'd just been retching on.
( Twizla ...a shrew living on the edge of a bog, extinct on, Fri 28 Apr 2006, 23:43, Reply)