Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Crabby

Head over heels over crab cakes…that’s me. Not with the thrashed, smooshed meat of it though. I like it in lumps. Poor crab!

Due to a stroke of luck, I found a crab cake recipe in last month’s AARP. Such a surprise! Not that AARP’s publication is my Bible, but hubby was throwing it in the recycle-bin, and out of respect for anything published, I skimmed through it. Woweee! A crab cake recipe and made with lumpy crab meat, too.

But that wasn’t all. The recipe was sent by Cassandra King, one of my favorite authors who is also the wife of Pat Conroy, another favorite, with photos of them and the photo of the crab cake. I cut out the pages and I’m keeping them for eternity. Now, if I ever make those crab cakes, consuming them will consume me or maybe they will make me dream of eternal life.

Cassandra King says she has other recipes in the AARP’s site. This turned AARP into a sacristy for me. Anything with authors in it, and I am jelly.

Talking about crabs, at the Pacific coast, they eat a different type of crab from the Maryland crabs, the ones we have in the east. I heard, at the west coast in Mendocino, they have Crab and Wine festival. People catch the crabs alive and…

Oh, never mind! I couldn’t eat a thing if I saw it alive in the first place. Second, I can’t even look at the accusing eyes of a fish when they bring a whole cooked one to the table, let alone catch a crab.

As long as someone else does the dirty work for me, and the animal turns into a thing, then I am game. Ambrose Pierce said. “Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.”

Not eating, catching, killing live animals: my prejudice plus hypocrisy with a halo.

Oh well, what the heck! Temptation kills or sometimes eats.

Besides, I know a fresh fish store in Jensen Beach, and they would have good lumpy crab meat.