Soon, restaurants and markets will start to advertise, "fresh live Maine lobster" for New Years Eve. Baloney's more like it ! Almost no one's lobstering in Maine after Thanksgiving. The water's too rough.

Most of what will be served in local restaurants and sold in markets will be Maine lobster that's between caught before Thanksgiving, stored in lobster "pounds", where they'll be stacked like cordwood, and fed a mixture of chopped herring and powdered antibiotics. Then the lobsters will be shipped down here where they'll flounder around the bottom of murky tanks. Believe it or not, they can live for up to three months in those tanks but they can't be fed. Each day they get tougher and tougher. That's why lobsters down here taste so dry and flavorless.Ugh!

So unlike our Spring and Fall Lobster Days, when we get our lobsters directly from the Maine lobstermen the day before you eat them, for Finestkind's Lobster Day on the morning of New Years Eve, we're going to get our lobsters directly from the lobstermen on the protected west coast of Nova Scotia, where the lobster season doesn't even open until after Thanksgiving!

Does this freshness really make a difference? If you know the difference between a store- bought and home-grown tomato, you know what I'm talking about. 'Course you could look it up in the many articles written by food critics and others in the Post, the Times and the Journal. Better yet, check out Our Guarantee.

But like we say down-east, "the proof's in the puddin'". So find your cooler and prepare to come to our easily accesible pick-up site on the morning of New Years Eve to pick up your goodies:

• Regular Size - 1 ¼ pound Lobsters:
  • Gourmands agree that pound and a quarter lobsters are the sweetest size. The minimum order will be five pounds - each five pound order will consist of four beautiful live Gulf of Maine lobsters. You can, of course, order any number of Regular size lobsters beyond the minimum (a 12 1/2 pound order would consist of ten live Gulf of Maine lobsters- perfect for a party of six with a a couple left over for a "mouth waterin" lobster salad (go to our ordering guide).
• Large Size - 1 ¾ - 2 ¼ pound Lobsters:
  • For those of you who think that bigger is better, good news, we've got some big ones: However, LARGE LOBSTERS WILL RANGE IN WEIGHT FROM 1 ¾ to 2 ¼ POUNDS. That's Finestkind's trade-off; absolute unmatched freshness for uniformity in size. There simply aren't enough large lobsters caught on any given day to pull out a sufficient quantity of lobsters eighing exactly two-pounds. The minimum order will be two large lobsters, weighing a total of four ponds. You'll be getting the absolutely freshest highest quality live lobster available in this area (go to our ordering guide) .

Whichever SiZe lobsters you prefer, be sure to oil up your nutcrackers!