Hey That’s A Nice Life

A lot of wedding blogs that I read when planning our wedding were somewhat anti-wedding favor.  I get that.  They can cost a lot of money and their usefulness is often questionable. 

However, we decided to include them.  I gave a lot of thought to the personal touches of our wedding.  From the salt water taffy in the gift bags (an Ocean City hometown favorite), to the post cards we used as table decor at the Welcome Picnic (vintage postcards from Miami, Don’s hometown, and Ocean City), to the sea glass that lined the wedding aisle (same stuff we use to make lamps for Nice Mirror).   The wedding favors were no different. 

Our wedding favors. We bought the glass containers from World Market and the Old Bay in big tubs from Costco. Don and my Dad filled each container and tied my recipe card on with raffia.

Growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland means learning to love Old Bay seafood seasoning at a very young age.  They practically put it right into the baby formula.  I am lucky enough to have married a man who enjoys Old Bay as much as any native.  We knew we would serve crab cakes at our wedding before we even knew we were getting married. 

I had originally planned to make starfish wine corks for the wedding favors, but I kept reading that the best wedding favors are edible.  That’s when I had the idea to give out Old Bay.  Within days I had purchased the containers we would use, and decided to include my recipe for crab cakes. 

I love to cook, and learned to do a pretty good job of it from my Dad, Larry.  There are a thousand places where you can get a good crab cake recipe, but if you give mine a shot, I think you’ll like as well as any you have tried (and maybe even more!). 

Susan’s Eastern Shore Crab Cakes

1 lb jumbo lump crab meat
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp Old Bay seasoning
1 tbsp dry mustard
1 tbsp chopped parsley
4 saltine crackers

Pick the crab meat over to remove excess shell.  Combine the mayo, Worcestershire, Old Bay, mustard and parsley until smooth.  Add the mayo mixture to the crab meat and mix, being careful not to break up the lumps of meat.  Break the saltines in very fine pieces and and add to the crab mixture. Form crab into 4 - 6 patties and broil under golden brown.

This is actually an adaptation from the way my Dad makes crab cakes.  His recipe is basically the same as this, only he uses one egg.  I find that the meat holds together well enough without the egg, but try it both ways and see what you think.  Keep in mind that my Dad doesn’t cook with recipes, and so I do not either.  Therefore, the ratios here are merely guidelines.  I usually use a lot more Old Bay than this … but that can make it too salty, so be careful. 

Here are the essentials according to both Larry and me:

• Saltines make this recipe.  Don’t use bread crumbs or panko or anything else you might read in other recipes.  A couple of saltines provide just the right filler - which is to say, barely any.
• Worcestershire sauce is also critical.  My mother claims not to like Worcestershire sauce and we worried that she would finally know we sneak it into her crab cakes when I decided to publish our recipe as part of the wedding favors. 
• Sprinkle some parsley on the top before serving.  This does not impact the flavor, but it looks pretty.

What's For Dinner? Crab cakes, cucs and onions, ratatouille and skillet fried potatoes.

I made a batch of these crab cakes tonight and served them with cucumber and onion salad (also a favorite that my Dad taught me - the secret is rice wine vinegar), fried potatoes (done in a skillet with a little oil and a lot of onion - a recipe from my Mom’s mother, my Oma) and my very own version of ratatouille (which features all the usual ingredients along with garlic scapes and sweet peppers).  It’s my favorite summer meal … but the crab cake is the star of the plate.

This is one of the tomatoes from our garden. In the background you can see some of the heirlooms from the farm - one is bright yellow and shaped liked a pumpkin, the other is almost purple.

It sounds gross, right? 

Last week, Don commented that there was no trash to take to the curb at the end of the week.  We concluded there are two reasons this happened. 

The first is that Arlington County recently modernized its recycling program and we can recycle so much more than we could before.  Plastics up to #7.  All paper.  All cardboard.  Tin foil!

The second reason is that everything is fresh in the summer and most of our ”trash” is compostable.

So because of those two earth friendly reasons we just didn’t manage to fill a trash can last week.  Yay us! 

Speaking of earth friendly, we’ve been pretty happy with our farm share this year.  The quality is excellent and each week brings a huge bag of produce.  The ONLY downside is that there is not a lot of variety.  We’ve pretty much had a bag of tomatoes (TONS of heirloom tomatoes), onions, corn, cucumbers and green beans every week for the last month.  I wouldn’t mind a squash, eggplant or pepper mixed in.

Another thing we’ve noticed is that all these fresh veggies - with leaves, a bits of dirt and corn silk - have a tendency to get all over place and we find ourselves sweeping the floor a lot more than in the winter when the veggies are often frozen or otherwise less fresh.

BUT - and this is where I am asking for some input - the other thing we’ve noticed that changes in the summer is the presence of fruit flies.  It’s directly attributable to the amount of tomatoes we have in the house.  Our farmer sends some every week and every day I am picking ripe tomatoes from our own garden. 

I just don’t know how to store them.  You’re not supposed to put them in the fridge, but how do you store them without attracting fruit flies?   How do you store an abundance of tomatoes?