What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Does it mean getting away from the everyday traffic of life and getting down to the core basics of American tradition? Does it mean spending time with family, and enjoying the company of your loved ones? Or does it mean stuffing your face sadistically with various items of edible happiness and joy? To me, it’s the latter of the three.

he only reason why I enjoy Thanksgiving and celebrate it, is because I get to literally devour and demolish a once living animal bathed in butter and vegetables, while stuffing handfuls of stuffing into my already stuffed mouth. Then after the barbaric stuffing fest I saunter my way down to a freshly made bed only to pass out from the copious amounts of mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey, sweet potatoes, and all the other various side dishes bestowed upon the table that other relatives have brought. This year however, my family and I decided to take another direction for Thanksgiving. Instead of having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner we decided to kick that Turkey out the window like a celestial softball, and have a good ol’ New England seafood boil.

You’re probably asking yourself “Zach, why would you and your family break American tradition and take another route down the road of Thanksgiving? Are you communists?”

First, I am not a communist, nor do I think any of my family members are communists. Second, don’t you loathe the same food every year? Why conform and do what everyone else does every year? It’s not every day you hear of some middle class, white collar family from the suburbs of Chicago ditching the OG Turkey for even more OG King Crab Legs and Lobster. Also, King Crab Legs are daintier than Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco (see previous story). No one can resist cracking open one of them legs and primitively digging into the meat, akin to a savage Viking that has been far away from the motherland pillaging with little to no food in his tummy.

To prepare myself for this exhibition of pure savagery and gluttony, I fasted the following morning, skipping the most important meal of the day. Except this day, the most important meal was to be in the late afternoon/early evening. I was physically and mentally prepared, as the aroma of seafood filled the air. Sweat was steadily and stealthily streaming through the crevices of my face, as I pondered upon the meal that was yet bestowed upon me. Sitting on my throne as the Prince of Bel-Air, I started to flashback to my first encounter with the mighty King Crab Legs. But as I was transitioning to the flashback, it came time for the meal of a lifetime. Fresh from the pot, a smorgasbord of seafood was unloaded upon my eyes, consisting of mussels, baked clams, King Crab Legs/Claws, Lobster Tails, and shrimp.

I situated myself with a King Crab Claw, A King Crab Leg, A Lobster Tail, mussels, a side of Pasta Salad with crab in it, and most importantly, butter. I won’t go into detail about every item I had in my seafood smorgasbord, but I will tell you that the only word I can find to describe everything in the smorgasbord, is dainty. But the two items in particular I will put emphasis on, is the King Crab Claw and Leg.

In case you haven’t guessed it, the King Crab Claw and Leg were the knees of the bee. The way it just sat in your mouth was akin to getting your taste buds getting massaged by the hands of Jesus himself. It melted in my mouth, like a pound of butter being melted on a rock laying in the scorching sun. King Crab meat is what other seafoods strive to taste like. When you see a fish getting fished by a fisherman, that fish thinks “Wow, I hope I taste like King Crab meat.” But unfortunately, based on first hand experience, it doesn’t work out that way. As I run out of analogies and adjectives, the only other words I can use to describe my King Crab Leg and Claw, is that it was dainty.

To conclude, Thanksgiving was an honorable event. It felt modern and contemporary, not like a redundant custom I’ve been accustomed to my entire life. But my Thanksgiving wasn’t a boring and mandatory get together with the family, it was a lot more than that. To me, my Thanksgiving was about not caring what others think, and doing what goes against the norm of society. It meant having originality, and being an individual. It was about breaking old traditions and starting a new one. Most importantly though, it was about the legion of seafood that I inhaled and ingested that gnarly evening…

Sponsor’s Note:
We at Clarion are aware that Zach incorrectly capitalized various food item names, but – heck – it just seemed appropriate for the story.  Long live the King Crab Leg. -D. Mancoff