Anger Burger

Things are very exciting for me lately, in some bad ways, but mostly good.

Primarily, through the Dad Bank of Washington, I got a loan to get a sorely needed new laptop.  Basically, I had a slightly mobile desktop.  I loved my giant big-boned Lenovo, but the battery stopped working after about 9 months (and I was too lazy to deal with a warranty replacement) and as each month passed a  new obsolescence cropped up, everything from being unable to use Quicktime, to more recently being unable to even read a text document from someone with a computer newer than 2007.  Lame.  And all things that can be fixed, ultimately, but things I was too terrified to do for fear of bricking my laptop.  That, combined with the fact that it almost literally weighed 10 pounds made it, as I said, not so much a laptop.

But! There are exciting things on the horizon for me (and you!), and I’ll get to them eventually.  In the meantime, awesome dinner!

My mom and I have made a tradition of “seafood dinner” at the end of my bi-yearly visits.  This time we tried a new seafood vendor because our usual folks just didn’t salt the crab enough when they boil them (which can be fixed by yes, boiling our own crab, but that kind of homesteader crap can stay with the people grinding their own flour).  Anyway, the new guy recommended boiling the crab again when we got home to warm it up, and it was lovely.  We got a pot of very salty water to a simmer and dropped them in for no more than 2 minutes, just long enough to season and get warmed through.  Perfect!

And oh my god, that was good crab.  Fresh and salty-sweet, I ate an entire one myself.  In addition to, ahem, about 4 giant oysters panfried by my lovely mother.

We were concerned that the oysters would be “milky” as my mom calls it, since we’re at the tail end of a bad oyster month.  “Milky” is when the tissue inside almost melts when disturbed — not tender, but an unpleasant mushiness — and I have no idea what causes it.

But they were pretty good.  One oyster in a batch from Shelton was milky, but the rest were tasty.  I was also a little weirded out that while we purchased both medium and small oysters, several were distinctly of the large grade.  When oysters are very large they need to be sliced open and lightly cleaned.  Certainly not good for eating raw, but still excellent for cooking with.

They were so good, in fact, I failed to photograph them cooked!  They were breaded in a simple crushed saltine cracker coating and then fried in oil on high heat until deep brown.  It was ambrosia.

Then my mom yanked out a heart-stopping Elberta peach pie just to show me who is still boss.  Yes ma’am.