Fresh seafood at home

When my friend Lucy visited me over 4th of July weekend, we pretty much spent the entire weekend eating.
And that is not an exaggeration.

Over the weekend, we hit up must-have dishes such as ayce korean bbq, pho + com tam, chinese roasted duck and crispy pork, sushi, dim sum, and fresh seafood at home.
These might all sound pricey, but we actually found ways to make the entire weekend very affordable, since we picked affordable places (korean town for kbbq, westminster for vietnamese, monterey park for dim sum, grocery store for duck, pork, and fresh seafood).

I think the best bang for our buck was enjoying the fresh seafood at home.
We went to Ranch99 and purchased live Dungeness crabs, live rock crabs, salmon and tuna sashimi, and live oysters.  The entire bill comes out to no where near the price it would be at a restaurant.  (Lucy so generously paid for the entire bill).

Then we merrily drove home and prepared all our wonderful dishes.
We sent Jeff out to the backyard to shuck oysters while us girls busied ourselves in the kitchen.

Here is the fruits of our labor, and the fruits of the sea:

Jeff shucking oysters

A hammer and screwdriver are not your typical oyster-shucking instruments but it sure got the job done.

Salmon and tuna sashimi, oysters, on a bed of ice

I thinly sliced the sashimi myself and overworked my fridge to get the crushed ice!
I should run my own 5 star restaurant.

Steamed Crabs

 I steamed these bad boys in my incredibly fobby 3-tiered steamer

The entire spread

I blame jeff for constantly arranging the dining chairs as 3 seats per side,

rather than my preferred method of 2 seats per side and 1 on each end

Our lovely house guest

 Lucifer

I normally don't eat a lot of seafood and shellfish, because, not only is it pricey and makes terrible leftovers, but I also don't want to get mercury poisoning.

However, for this meal, if I got mercury poisoning, it would definitely be worth it.