First, let me start off by saying that, yes, I am still alive. Colleen has been on my case nonstop about her having more posts than me during Vegan MoFo. Part of it has been me being busier than I’m used to at school, part of it is me not having motivation to write (big surprise), and part of it is Colleen stealing my thunder on days that I do actually wanna post. Well, I plan on writing a post every day from now until the day I die so get ready. (OK, there is no way that’s gonna happen but let’s just pretend.)
Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post…
I’m not sure what it was but for some reason I got in the mood for some seafood. Granted, I was never a big seafood person back when I ate it but I couldn’t resist the urge to try something new and exciting. I’m signed up for the Meatless Monday newsletters—which are decent, outside of their occasional obsession with “healthy” dairy/egg recipes—and a while back they featured a recipe for mock crab cakes. I don’t ever remember eating crab cakes but they sounded pretty good and the recipe proclaimed them to be extremely easy (and quick) to make, so I went for it. Big mistake!
As you undoubtedly know (if you are a regular reader of our blog), I’ve had more than my fair share of recipe mishaps. Usually they revolve around me just not being able to follow a recipe correctly but occasionally it is not really my fault. Enter “Rick’s Mock Crab Cakes” recipe. I didn’t thoroughly read through the recipe before diving in and several times I was left scratching my head wondering what the hell was supposed to happen when. Steps were obviously left out in several places (e.g. dividing the bread crumbs and what temperature to preheat the oven to). Normally I can improvise enough when I screw things up or if the recipe screws me up but this time I was completely flabbergasted (yes, I did just used that word). Colleen picked up on my increasing level of anger and quickly searched the internet for the place where “Rick” stole the recipe from.
In the end, I had a semi-working recipe but the recipe was so crumbly that it should have been called “Rick’s Mock Crab Dust.” To add insult to injury, this “quick” recipe ended up taking me 1+ hour to make. The picture below shows the still in-tact patties after they emerged from the oven. Overall, it was not a pleasant night for me. Amazingly enough, the leftovers I had for lunch the next day were actually quite tasty. If only it wasn’t for the cooking-induced rage, they might have been worth it.
After a couple weeks passed, thoughts of seafood started dancing in my head again. Crab cakes were out of the picture but I did stumble upon a recipe for Tofu Fish Sticks from Shmooed Food. I’ve used recipes from this particular author before and the comments were glowing so I felt confident going in. Big mistake! Ha, just kidding! Making the tofu fish sticks was everything that the crab cake experience wasn’t: quick and easy! They were also quite delicious; so much so that they might make it into our regular meal rotation (when we aren’t feeling like tofu nuggets). I made some tartar sauce to go along with the fish sticks and all was well in our somewhat-near-the-sea abodes. Don’t you love fairy tale endings?
- Sat
