Day Ninety-One: Playing Catch-up

Since I missed a day a couple of days ago, I thought I would pull double duty today. It's triple duty, really, since the crab cakes I had for dinner also contained itty bitty shrimps. So that's two kinds of seafood. Plus, I had key lime cheesecake for dessert.

First, the crab cakes. These were some expensive puppies, but I decided that any frozen food that assumes its clientele will take the serving recommendation of, "Serve with jasmine rice, sweet chili-lime beurre blanc and chayote-jicama slaw" has to be pretty fancy. Plus, they are a product of a famous seafood place in Seattle.

Really, they were pretty good. I might have had a tiny bit of crab shell in one of them, but they were fancy enough to include the crab cakes and the panko bread crumbs separately, so the breading can be done at the last minute and your crab cakes can crisp. Nice work, fellas at Elliott's. (I'm sorry--that's terribly sexist. Fellas and ladies.) I messed them up, at least aesthetically speaking, because I do not have a spatula in my tiny Spokane kitchen (a problem I keep remembering in times of need and forgetting when I have the chance to remedy it). So they were mangled, but they were cooked. I ate two of them. The other two are in my fridge, possibly for lunch tomorrow.

The crab and shrimp flavors were only mildly off-putting. This, my friends, is what you call progress.

Now, for the cheesecake. There's a story behind this (of course). You see, when I was in elementary school, there were pie auctions. Fund-raising pie auctions. And cakes, and our neighbor's world-famous cream puffs (town-famous, at least... a town of 300). One year, my adventurous little self got her heart set on a key lime pie, and the folks agreed, so we bid on it. It was so pretty and green. We were all excited. And then... it stunk. It turned me off to key lime anything for years to come.

But this cheesecake, man. This cheesecake. It was everything I hoped for and did not receive in that pie so long ago. I think it was the baker, not the recipe. Either way, I have key lime back. Yum yum yum.