Once the book arrived from amazon, I spent a couple of months contemplating the amounts of lobster required to feed even a modest number of people, debating all the while whether to re-mortgage the house.  Christina asked whether I couldn’t just use frozen lobster tail, or perhaps shrimp.  These were good, sensible suggestions, and obviously entirely missing the point.

I dithered endlessly, until, as the global financial markets went into meltdown all around me, I decided to act.  Heroically undertaking to rescue mid-Missouri’s retail economy single-handedly, I went into Schnucks and bought three live lobsters.   I hopefully asked Walt, who was working behind the seafood counter that afternoon, whether two might not be enough, but he shook his head and told me I’d need at least three of the little fuckers.  (Not his precise words, I should add.  They’re very polite in Schnucks.)  I drove home fast, trying to outrun my guilt at the ridiculous amount I had paid for my salty, snapping booty in the back seat.

Back home, I explained to Hallam what was going to happen next, and with a morbid streak that I suspect not all seven year-olds possess, he watched silently as the water in the saucepan slowly reached boiling point.  When I picked up the first lobster, it began to flail about, eyes bulging, arching its tail upwards in a furious cortortion.  I felt like Jason (of Argonaut fame) fighting that fake scorpion.  I squealed and dropped the lobster back into its box.  Hallam did not look impressed.  Neither did the lobster.  Suitably abashed, a minute later I grabbed the thing again and dropped it into the water with a triumphant harrumph.  We watched as it turned red.  I turned and looked proudly at my son.  He stared at the creature as it continued to twitch, and soberly murmured, “I’m glad I’m not in there.”

Once I had murdered all three of the little critters, I spent the next hour redecorating the walls of the kitchen with shrapnel from splintering lobster carcass and the rather unpleasant brown stuff that spewed out of the lobsters when I cracked them in two.  This hideous effluent is called the tammale, but giving it a posh-sounding name doesn’t make it look any less like shit.  By the time I had finished with all three beasts I was left with enough lobster meat to fill, oh, a small matchbox.

The actual cooking of the pad thai was uneventful enough.  I’d discovered a new Asian supermarket the previous week and had been led through it by an inscrutable lady who gabbled away on the telephone in unintelligble dialect as I trailed her around the store, meekly holding up my basket as she threw items into it.  I’d chopped and diced and measured and poured everything in advance, and the stir-frying was all over rather quickly in the end.

But was it any good?  Well, it wasn’t bad.  It was quite pad thai-like, I suppose.  Everyone made suitably appreciative noises as they slurped on their noodles.  But all I could think of was how much I had spent on those tiny little bits of rubbery, over-cooked lobster meat that flecked the bowl.

Since this is a blog, I am contractually obliged to extrapolate some sort of neat moral aphorism from all this.  Nemesis follows hubris?  Don’t cook fresh seafood in Missouri?  Both valid points.  But I’m going with: listen to your wife.  Next time – if there is a next time – I’m going to use shrimp.