Lobsters for sure but crabs not really. We have the rock crabs but they're not great. The huge industry is clams and calamari. Best in the world (supposedly) for that latter.
Yeah, but do you know a lot of people who make those dishes in their kitchens in 2017 and think of them as Mom's boring slop dinner? Lobster in the U.S. used to be fed to prisoners as garbage food back in the day, but it doesn't exactly apply to today's food scene.
Sadly, I do. 'Coq au Vin' is a chicken cooked in wine - casserole, midweek, the day after 'spaghetti bolognaisi' - and 'dauphinoise potatoes' - one of three desperate alternatives to rice, pasta, or mashed potato. Otherwise, they receive a slice of bread, risotto at Xmas. Look, I understand your dilemma - I have seen 'Masterchef Australia.' Round 3, the egg and chips with the Vietnamese chili side dip, the team round, was an inspiration to any home chef.
I had not looked at the 36 Stratagems in a long time, but I just looked at them for kicks after realizing that Amy has read Sun Tzu's Art of War, 36 Stratagems, Che Guevara's and Mao Zedong's books on guerrila warfare... Every novelist who wants to write about a conflict between a protagonist and an antagonist needs to look at the 36 Stratagems: I've already brainstormed a ton of plans that Amy and her friends could dream up for everything from gang wars to supervillain schemes.
I wrote a time travel story involving Jack the Ripper, so a lot of the plot was decided by research. The characters were following around possible suspects for the Ripper. And through research, I discovered one of the suspects was a female abortionist that had killed her lover's wife and child. Through a series of events, the antagonist pair (I call them the "Homicidal Honeymooners) make the abortionist believe that the female MC is there for a procedure (long story). And through quick thinking, the MC says that the main male antagonist was actually the father of her lover's wife's child. The abortionist had originally allowed for her lover to marry the other woman because she thought the baby was his. But using a bit of historical know-how, the MC convinces the abortionist to "kill" the female antagonist (she doesn't really die, but again it's a long story) and she goes off running after the male antagonist with one of her many scalpels in hand. Definitely one of my favorite moments.
Writing a scene with a bunch of people disco line dancing in the 70s and have been watching things like this and dancing alone in my office for most of the morning. Thankfully I'm a much better writer than a dancer.
I remember doing the 'staying alive" (oh oh oh staying alive) in a college disco in my early twenties, and thinking I looked the business (I'm not that old, this was a retro night) In reality it was probably more like