Crab Cakes

One night last week, LV said, "You know what we haven't had in a long time? Crab cakes."

While I did a quick mental inventory of what I've been making for dinner the past few months and the reasons why I don't make crab cakes, Scrappy chimed in, "Yeah, it's been a while since we've made them."

I raised an eyebrow. We?

Later that weekend, though, I offered to make crab cakes on Tuesday night. This is not what I was picturing. It's been so long, I looked at the wrong recipes before using the wrong side of the grater. I wanted to make the kind that are finely shredded and need an hour to chill in the refrigerator. These are based more on a recipe for sandwiches from Self.com. They take about ten minutes when you work quickly, shredding your fingers and knuckles along the way.

It will be "a while" before "we" make crab cakes again.

Crab Cakes

Continuing to feel up to the challenge of more difficult dishes, I made crab cakes. When I called my mom that night and she asked what I had for dinner, I told her crab cakes. She didn't really picture me rolling them out by hand. After I explained, she said, "I'm so proud of you."

Crab Pasta Salad

I get a lot of hits from people looking for crab salad on Google. Here you go, people. Scrappy loves her crab, and you all love your crab salad searches... (This looks amazing as a thumbnail. Use at about 75 pixels wide.)

Big Crabcakes

We bought crab for Tuesday, knowing that Scrappy is a fan. But I wasn't a fan of that last crab dish I made. I went to the web see what else I could make and came up with lots of recipes for crab cakes. The Self recipe for crabcake sandwiches sounded really good.

Just as I was adding the last ingredients, I thought to myself, Why did I follow the directions and keep the chunks as large as possible... These are going to completely fall apart. But they didn't. The healthy recipe, in all its wisdom, called for lots of mayonnaise and eggs. Mmm sticky.

Crab Pasta Salad

I didn't know what to make, so I bought some crab and made some pasta and hoped it would taste all right. I tossed it with red pepper dipping oil. That was kind of gross.

Endless Salad

I bought a package of arugula at the beginning of the week, and then completely forgot to eat it for lunch each day. So, I had a lot of arugula about to go bad... This was dinner--arugula with potato chips and leftover crab topped with what was left of a Newman's Own Mustard dressing. A lot less gross than it sounds, but not nearly as good as lunch.

Leftover pork and apples served hot over arugula, onions, raisins, and Newman's Own Mustard-something-or-other-dressing.

The more traditional HappiestPuppies shot...

Crabcake Sandwiches

The good thing about freelancing is that I can surprise LV with homemade dinner. After hearing about his un-fun day at the office, I can be waiting with crabcakes. Yay for food...

Pork + Crab

I didn't know if I felt like having pork or steak, so I made both. I didn't know what I felt like serving with the pork, so we had the leftover pasta salad. It was an indecisive day...

Leftover Salad, the sequel

So, I thought making another pasta salad with crab would be good. We had a lot of I-don't-know-when-anyone's-going-to-actually-eat-this items in our refrigerator that got tossed in. A red apple, half an onion, the last of the frozen peas, peanuts... It all actually tasted good together.

I find it really odd that apples never brown when I put them into a recipe...

Cookies, Muffins, Pasta Salad

On the Fourth of July, I felt like making nun's puffins again, but then thought I should make something to bring along to the BBQ later. Nun's puffs or muffins or biscuits didn't really feel appropriate. There were chocolate chips in the cabinet. The Tollhouse recipe seemed like more of a crowd-pleaser than the Better Homes & Gardens biscotti.

I forgot to take a picture... That's all that was left of my cookies after the fireworks. I'm still amazed.

Saturday morning I didn't feel like eating anything we had on hand for breakfast, so I made corn muffins. LV had long ago decided that corn muffins toasted with butter were the best breakfast, so we had two boxes of the super-cheap, super-easy Jiffy mix. I decided to make mini muffins to complicate the process.

After the muffins had cooled, they went into the container that the cookies had been in. This container had been filled to the top with cookies on the way to the BBQ.

Pizza has been the usual weekend dinner for a few too many weeks in a row. I thought we could do something healthier that didn't require the oven. Sure, the pasta still required a flame, but when all was said and done (and rinsed under lots of cold water), we had a good alternative to pizza in about the time it would have taken to prepare a pizza. Penne, peas, grape tomatoes (because we still have plenty of those around), cashews and crab (because the store didn't have frozen fully cooked shrimp) tossed with worcesterhire sauce, Italian seasoning and lots of olive oil.

"Crab Mush" and Steak

LV was on his own for making dinner again. This time, though, he didn't venture into anything too precarious. White rice, frozen carrots, frozen broccoli. For the little one, he mixed in the leftover crab. For himself, he made steak. The steak was good. The crab wasn't so agreeable...

LV Cooks

The full adventure in crab cakes is available here on LV's blog. For now, this is the picture he took...

Wings and Crab Cakes

Wings for the second half became a staple of Bears games. At this point, winning was still a staple for Bears games, too.

I was completely in love with the shredder after making these little guys. The difference might have also been better crab, but using a shredder to flake the meat made for a much better consistency in the paste. Or dough. Whatever you want to call. They were so much better.

The Little One loves crab. Trying it prepared in some other way than sushi-quality sticks seemed like it might be a problem, though. "Cake" conjured a picture of frosting and candles. She was not prepared for a dumpling with finely shredded crab. But she was a good sport and actually finished one.

The Birthday Party

Who knew 6-year-olds could have such fun finger food at their birthday parties? I'm sure no one was expecting this menu when I decided to cook.



Crab dip served in phyllo shells





Buffalo Wings (well done by the third batch because of all the grease on fire in the broiler)



Shrimp and limes on skewers (which really functioned as more of centerpiece) all dried out at the end of the party