Crab

Dungeness crab [ CANCER MAGISTER ] Despite their clunky armor and spiky claws, Dungeness crabs of the Pacific coast walk with the light-footed grace of dancers. Though they move in slow, precise steps, they can also sprint to capture small fish or escape predators. In quieter moments they fold each leg into a perfect contour against their bodies and settle invisibly down into the sand with only their stalked eyes protruding.

Have you ever been frightened by a dumpling? Truly, genuinely scared? Because the juicy crab and pork buns at Wang Xing Ji - smoking-hot dumplings the size of water balloons, sneakily full of boiling juice - could probably be weaponized. You could deploy them as grenades, I'm pretty sure, lobbing the heavy spheroids over battlements. Or you could employ them as sub-lethal projectiles, splatting them into the enemy at will, although the sticky broth is undoubtedly prohibited in an obscure codicil of the Geneva Conventions.

Have you ever been frightened by a dumpling? Truly, genuinely scared? Because the juicy crab and pork buns at Wang Xing Ji - smoking-hot dumplings the size of water balloons, sneakily full of boiling juice - could probably be weaponized. You could deploy them as grenades, I'm pretty sure, lobbing the heavy spheroids over battlements. Or you could employ them as sub-lethal projectiles, splatting them into the enemy at will, although the sticky broth is undoubtedly prohibited in an obscure codicil of the Geneva Conventions.

After the Oscars, dessert will be served in 3-D at the Governors Ball this year. Spago pastry chef Sherry Yard has created an Austrian chocolate cake that resembles a staircase leading to a giant edible Oscar statuette that is iced in a way that makes it pop into relief when viewed through the 3-D glasses presented with the dessert. "It's the first time we're going to eat in 3-D," says the ball's master chef, Wolfgang Puck, over coffee before lunch service at Spago in Beverly Hills.

It was a bad time to hold a seafood festival, Day 39 of the United States' worst oil spill. But this is a place that worships seafood, and on Saturday, the Plaquemines Parish Seafood Festival went on as scheduled. People danced and ate and tried to divert their minds from the impending ecological disaster at their shores. They came to dig into fried catfish, savor broiled oysters and munch shrimp on a stick. By midday, about 1,000 people had already gathered at a grassy field at the parish's fairgrounds, about 30 minutes outside New Orleans.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer proposed restrictions on crabbing Friday that would apply to everyone from commercial watermen to children catching crabs for a family picnic. Most of the regulations, designed to reduce overfishing, would require legislative approval. They would limit the number of wire-mesh cages used by crab fishermen and the length of trot lines. Anyone over 16 would have to buy a license to catch even one crab.

The governors of Virginia and Maryland announced in Colonial Beach that they would order the female blue crab harvest cut by a third this year to protect the hallmark seafood of the Chesapeake Bay. Scientists fear that the crab population is reaching numbers too low to survive. "We do not want to wake up in five or 10 years and realize we have lost this important part of who we are," said Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine.

The annual crab molt that litters the city's beaches with mounds of shells and crab bodies is larger than usual this year. "This is the largest molt I have seen in any recent time," said Jim Waldvogel of the UC cooperative extension. During molting, the crab's shell separates, and the crab crawls out of it and grows larger. The crab then digs into the sand with its soft new shell and stays there until it hardens.

Disheartened anglers predict that a depleted supply of crabs may drive the price up. "It's a sad scene this year," said Steve Anello, owner of a fishing boat named Tarantino Jr. "It's going to be a real dismal start." Bad weather is making the situation worse, Anello said Friday, the season's opening day, after returning from a blustery outing where rough seas stopped him from putting out 150 of his 500 crab pots.

If the Earth's climate continues to warm up as predicted, some crab species along the Pacific coast may face extinction. A study in the journal Science shows that small crabs living just off the beach in warmer waters have little tolerance for rising temperatures. Marine biologist Jonathon H. Stillman of Stanford University tested four species found in the shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Wind storms, below-70-degree days and chilly, chilly nights - it's enough to drive one to soup. We're talking big pots of steamy, spicy crab stew. Or the kind of soup you lean over and dip your own ingredients into. Soups with springy noodles and chicken meatballs, or house-made dumplings, or shrimp and galangal - all of it enough to share with friends (the more friends to huddle with, the better). Here are a few places from recent Find columns for just that. Linda Burum, Miles Clements, Betty Hallock and Thi Nguyen Oumi Sasaya: The udon- suki here is noodle soup at its bubbling best, a communal hot pot of seafood, meat, vegetables and udon all cooked in a bowl of boiling broth.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar Stories of Food During Wartime by the World's Leading Correspondents Edited by Matt McAllester University of California Press: 214 pp., $27.50

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proclaimed Aug. 7 to 13 to be National Farmers Market Week . In Southern California, unlike most of the rest of the country, we enjoy exciting offerings of local produce year-round. But even here, high summer gives us the greatest abundance and diversity. Stone fruit and heirloom tomatoes, our markets' summer glory, are at their peak, while grapes and apples are coming on. The busier markets are often so crowded that it can be difficult to make one's way through them.

John Mosca, proprietor of a two-room roadhouse near New Orleans famed for its Italian-style garlicky shrimp, oysters, chicken and marinated crab dishes, has died. He was 86. Mosca died Wednesday at his home in suburban Harahan, said his daughter, Lisa Mosca. He had prostate cancer. His parents, Provino and Lisa Mosca, founded Mosca's restaurant in 1946 in the community of Avondale, about half an hour from downtown New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

Mount Eden Vineyards Estate Chardonnay is consistently one of the finest from California. But this one from the winery's Saratoga line — designed to showcase the Santa Cruz Mountain terroir — is a real find at this price. The fruit is right there in the first sip. Light on the oak, the 2007 Saratoga Chardonnay carries a gentle lilt of citrus and a touch of anise. Like its big brother, it is Burgundian in style, grace in a glass. Bring it to a dinner party as a ringer: It could be mistaken for a very expensive bottle.

  Dear SOS: Last February I ate dinner at the Oceanaire Seafood Room in Washington, D.C. The food was fab. Can you get the recipe for the crab cakes? They are served as an appetizer and as an entrée. There is nothing like them. The cake is more like a scoop of chicken salad than a formed, consolidated cake. Ellen Eubanks Monrovia Dear Ellen: Oceanaire Seafood Room was happy to share its recipe for these tender, soft crab cakes. The cakes are baked, not fried, and can be assembled a few hours ahead of time and refrigerated, then baked before serving.

In the midst of a spreading oil spill from a wrecked freighter, hundreds of crab fishermen ventured into the Bering Sea this weekend, undaunted by concerns that their catches could be contaminated. About 200 crab-fishing boats dropped their pots into the frigid waters off the Aleutian Islands despite reports in recent days that oil globs as big as two feet in diameter had reached Dutch Harbor, home port for the region's crab fleet.

Health officials Thursday again warned consumers against eating raw or undercooked freshwater crabs as two Orange County restaurants were found to have served raw or live crabs and two more diners came down with a rare lung fluke infection.

Thousands of people have tried, in their own quixotic ways, to help BP protect wildlife and clean up crude in the Gulf of Mexico after the worst oil disaster in the country's history. There were those who shaved their dogs and sent the hair south for the company to use to soak up the oil. And there were inventors who flew to Louisiana hoping that their cleanup gadgets would catch BP's eye. A Taiwanese billionaire retrofitted a giant tanker to skim oil from the ocean. And then there's Jack Rudloe, who's determined to protect vulnerable and important sea life — and his business — all on his own. Rudloe, 67, wants to save the gulf's mollusks, shrimp, crabs, seahorses and other invertebrates from what he sees as potential extinction.