Americans!

[Lipster]

Okay, I've always wondered what the advantage of cooking lobsters alive was over killing them first. Improve the flavour or something?

I mean it's just ****in nasty...

[daodejing]

You can't eat a lobster that's dead before it's cooked. The flesh RAPIDLY degenerates and decomposes after death. You can kill a lobster and stuff it, but you have to cook within at most 4 hours of when you killed it. And have a really cold refridgerator. The lobsters that die of natural causes (usually sickness and starvation) while in your kitchen decompose far more rapidly than those you murdered with a knife.

If you boil a dead lobster, the flesh is primarily liquefied. Once you crack the shell the cooked putrescense will just kind of spill out onto the plate. It is ****in nasty. And I think cooking dead bugs (with the baked stuffed exception above) violates health code in most states in new england.

Wow. I think this is the most off topic I've ever been. From warhungry americans to whacking big red bugs.

[doc]

They are not big red bugs.

They are crustaceans.

With families.

And they scream when placed in hot water.

[Fa Hui]

What I find interesting is our lack of respect to young and older people here in the states. In other countries/cultures the young are given much attention so that they can succeed in the future and the old are respected for their wisdom and experience. But here in the good ol' US of A we don't do it like that. We ignore the young, cast away the old and think that it's best to be in our 30's for the rest of our lives.

Of course this is not a complaint, it's observation. I've lived with other cultures, both eastern and western, and I really see how young American culture is. We've got a lot to learn. It almost seems like our great country is in it's teen years. However I do feel the rest of the world could benefit from our youthfulness, we could also benefit from some of the more ancient cultures around us.

just observing and taking notes.