Alaska. Everything here is scarily large.

Alaska. Everything here is bigger than average. 139 pound cabbage, 97 pound salmon, 10 foot tall Kodiak bears and more coastline than the whole continental US combined. It must be the extended days and nights.

Some of the foods Alaska is known for include: salmon, reindeer sausage (like we could get our hands on that), Akutaq (an Alaskan ice cream), and king crab. Since that would be easier to get than reindeer and Akutaq, and it was the majority vote.

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Crab: the animal is mean and so is the taste.

My mom was a server at the restaurant Red Lobster in college. Since she was a waitress she got samples of everything in case a customer asked her what her favorite dish was. This was where she got her taste for crab.

On special occasions, like birthdays and such, we have snow crab because it's so delicious but expensive, and all four of us love it. Since we like snow crab so much, we decided to give king crab a try.

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Cooking crab is easy...

First, we soaked the crab in some water. This helps to get rid of the saltier flavor. We like to steam our crab legs in a steamer basket. 8-10 minutes and it was ready to serve up.

As a side to go with the crab, we surfed and turfed: green beans and steak. To make the green beans, we started with some bacon. I know, why start with meat when we're making a veggie? Because we use the bacon grease to fry up the onions and green beans. It gives the beans a salty, bacon-y deliciousness. After the beans are ready, sprinkle them with Parmesan cheese.

Father grilled the steak and we were ready to eat.

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...the only hard part of making crab is the check.

This was my first time having king crab but I've had snow crab many times. Some of the main differences between snow and king crab I noticed were the texture (the king crab was noticeably tougher), the flavor (snow is much sweeter), and of course the size (king is much larger). Yet both were delicious in their own way.

While eating the crab I noticed a few things.

1: The crab legs had cracks in the shell. I just assumed that it had cracked in the package but we realized it was intentionally done to make the shells easier to open. It was different because I'm used to cracking snow crab.

2: The legs had lots of spines on them, as self defense for the crab. But after taking the shell off, I noticed that meat had grown into the spines. I didn't expect the spines to be hollow. I figured they were solid shell.

To those of you who have never tried seafood, I would greatly encourage it since it is my favorite kind of meat.