Scrub Your Mussels

While at my mother-in-law's house on the bay in Massachusetts, I told my son to go look for stuff down at the water. After I made the fridge a little lighter, and wandered back into the yard, my son reappeared with a bucket & a big grin, and announced he "found" dinner. He held the bucket out to me with both hands. I considered running away with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed doing that "La la la la, I can't hear you..." thing. If you knew how good he was at catching live animals and enslaving them, you would not fault me on this. Instead of running, though, I stared at the bucket for signs of unnatural movement. Eventually, someone else must have decided I had gone comatose, and looked in the bucket. "Mussels!" came the happy response.

Sure enough, he had brought us dinner in the form of a bucket full of live mussels. When he asked if we could eat them, and he received the thumbs up, you would have thought he had just found a Nintendo DS Super Mario Brothers Super Kart with Rumble Pack. I don't know what that is, but I'm pretty sure it's good.

Everybody bailed out for the swimming pool (they waited for my son to bake in the sun, then broke off the mud layer like a boiled egg). And alas, I was left with a bucket of disoriented mussels to clean.
First, I tried cleaning the algae off with my mother-in-law's kitchen "scrubbie", which looked like it had been accidentally ingested, digested, and regurgitated by the last bucket of mussels (now I know what to get her for Christmas).

Next, I rummaged in mom-in-law's shed and found a stiff brush. The brush worked great in removing algae, muck, and human skin. I wondered if the mussels had any idea why I was spiffing them up and dropping them into a bucket of fresh water. Perhaps they thought they were all going to a nice aquarium with plenty of detritus to filter feed on into their old age.

With my beautifully exfoliated hands, I dumped the critters into a boiling pot with garlic and butter, just in time for appetizers (when I dropped them in, I plugged my ears and did the "La la la la, I can't hear you...." thing just in case mussels scream when you boil them alive... don't tell me if they do).

I must report that they tasted wonderful and my boy had more than his share.
Now it's off to the scrubbie store. It's never too early for Christmas shopping.