Overcome by the needs and wants of the modern working human, one can’t help but be overwhelm by our most base desires. Food. Food was what our nomadic ancestors chased after as sustenance and was a driving factor in the evolution of our social structure as we know it. We may all not agree on what to eat but we can damn well be sure that we need to eat.
Okay, so this post isn’t exactly about hunting and killing to survive. It actually is about… well it COULD possibly be about chasing after food with freshness and locally sourced goodness with the occasional sprinkling of imported foodstuffs to go along with it. Along for the ride is the Olympus TG1-iHS with the FCON-T01 and TCON-T01 adapter lenses. As usual, the photos can be expanded by clicking on them. They will open in a new window where you can view them in detail.
Where to begin. Maybe the three plus hour drive from Manhattan to Annapolis made longer because of the inevitable traffic of the Memorial Day weekend. Which was, in my part, a horrible idea considering I couldn’t (didn’t) get my brakes set for the long journey making the stop and go nearly unbearable. 
Maybe the impossibly long lines at the tried and true institutions that I had planned on going to. Or how about bitching at how narrow the streets in Annapolis can get. Nah, lets get started on the good stuff. The real good stuff. Maybe after a bit of exposition.
The city of Annapolis has a proud history of being a port city connecting the developing Americas to the rest of the world. The town has gone through a series of name changes including several nicknames such as the Athens of America. Why had Annapolis gained such a prestigious nickname? Simply because of education. The city of Annapolis was home to a plethora of literature from the old world and beyond and where there is literature, there is learning and enlightenment. The city has been settled in quite well with the population density being fairly high enough to make owning a vehicle difficult for residences. Instead of maintaining the old name, it is now home to something more impressive. Annapolis is home to the United States Naval academy teaching the young and brightest the finer points of Naval warfare in fancy Porsche reproductions, meanwhile I try to figure out how to play chess without getting completely and utterly annihilated. I’ll leave it to the young and upcoming in uniform to manage tactics, I’ll take over cooking and eating instead.
The city sits on the Chesapeake Bay with Baltimore being due north, and Washington DC, the capitol of the United States, a short drive west. Now okay, what’s so special about the city of Annapolis that constituted a drive for more than four hours on crappy brakes, and what does anything I just wrote about have any relevance whatsoever to food? The seafood, more specifically, the local seafood.
Indigenous to this region are many types of shellfish including the ever so abundant bay seasoning, shrimp, bay seasoning, oysters, bay seasoning, and the ubiquitous blue crab. Lets start with the bay seasoning. This salty and slightly spicy conglomeration of ingredients goes back to when the crab populations were so abundant that bars quite literally had crabs coated in the stuff instead of peanuts as a snack to encourage patrons to purchase more drinks. You could literally put this stuff on everything, and everyone in the region does. From popcorn, tots, chips, shrimp, and Bloody Mary’s this stuff is unfortunately as versatile as that crappy grated crap that passes as parmesan in a bottle.
So what the hell am I doing driving down to Maryland just to have crabs coated in this spice powder nonsense when I can do it at home? Simply put, the experience of it all. Sitting by the bay with a mallet in one hand holding a crab claw in another and yelling and cursing at myself for inevitably hitting my thumb as I poorly attempt to crack open a crab shell. Just like all of my trips I always try to do some research before I head out and hoping for the best. This trip I wasn’t so fortunate. Three of my original intended destinations were inundated with people like me, out of town tourists. One location had a line of cars having no choice but to have people wait in their cars effectively locking the residents in their homes as clueless tourists unintentionally block their driveways. So I improvised and improvised I did. Through the power of technology I used several apps to find and satiate my fix. It was a gamble to do so on such limited time but I was down in Maryland for crabs and I was sure as hell going to get my fix.
Protip: I did get my fix.
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