We've got a friend who is very lactose-intolerant. This is one of our favorite soups, and when she tried it, she loved it too! We're not vegetarian, but I've found this soup requires a vegetable broth. I always have a rich poultry-based stock in my frig, but it really does not work as well in this recipe as a veggie stock will. SPICY CORN CHOWDER with Coconut and Lime (revised from vegetarian cookbook) 4 cups good vegetable stock OR 4 cups water and a Knorr packet of dry mix Vegetable Soup (vegetarian base) two 1-lb bags of frozen white corn, preferably C&W brand 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes 32 oz (4 cups) plain coconut milk 1/2 to 3/4 tsp lemon pepper (different brands of lemon pepper have varying 'saltiness') OR, 1/2 tsp salt plus 1 tsp lemon juice Hot sauce to taste (we use Busha BrowneâÂÂs Pukka hot sauce, but standard Tabasco sauce can be subbed) 1/4 to 1/3 cup lime juice (you may not need all of it; season to taste only) - If using soup mix, bring water and KnorrâÂÂs packet to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes. - Turn the heat back up, and bring back to a boil; add the corn and red pepper flakes. Cover, then simmer for 5 minutes. Uncover, turn off the heat and let cool to lukewarm. Do NOT try to blend soup while hot; your blender will erupt! - Add all other ingredients, being careful to add the hot sauce and lime juice to taste. Start with the 1/4 cup lime juice; add more if you like. - Puree in blender until reasonably smooth -- it won't be completely smooth unless you strain it, but you want it as smooth as possible to retain more fiber. - Reheat to serve; will keep 4-5 days in refrig. This makes 3 qts of soup: enough for 6 as a meal starter, or as a main course for 3-4.

I don't think they should be spicy. I want to be able to taste the crab. Joe's Crab Shack used to have such good crab balls....not really cakes. They had chopped up shrimp in them too. I liked them....then they started putting jalapenos in them. I don't know how they make them now....I only went there for the crab balls and haven't been back...and that was a few years ago. I make my own....but the last time I made some I used Paula Deen's recipe, and was really disappointed in them....for crab cakes. I followed the recipe exactly and they tasted more like salmon patties to me. I haven't made crab cakes very much....prefer just boiled crab, and I usually just get them off our boat, but this time, I had trapped them in the bayou, cooked, cleaned and picked them out....a lot of work and a big disappointment.

Crab cakes are not super common in the PNW. I usually make them with lump crab, and try to get a loose patty that is mostly crab and barely holds together. These Krabby Patty types were an experiment and not my fave. I don’t know if we’re going to have any more mono-ingredient raves this holiday season. We have prime rib for NYE, they are salted and dry-aging in the fridge. After that I kind of feel like eating kale, egg whites, and protein bars for a couple months. Among the 2020 things I’d like to leave behind is about 20 lbs . . . If anything, probably going to get back into Japanese dishes. DS got a bunch of Japanese cookbooks from Santa and DD and SWMBO plan to go back on keto in the New Year. Ms Bao is a Himalayan that our friend in Eugene found as a stray. She was so matted that they had to shave much of her fur off. It grew back, obvsly. She was declawed in front, sadly. When Eugene went into Covid lock down early in 2020, DD was stuck living alone in her college apartment so our friend “loaned” her “Missy”. Missy was renamed Ms Bao and became DD’s permanent cat, and moved to our house with DD. Unfortunately she has taken over the house and dominates my cat - which is interesting, since my cat has a full set of claws, but Ms Bao doesn’t seem to realize her lack of fighting power, and she has a rather terrifying personality when she’s angry - maybe it comes from growing up on the street. The two seem to be ever so slowly coming to terms, finally. At the end of this school year, DD will go to California to work at the Berkeley Echo Lake camp again, training the new staff and developing recipes and processes for the 2022 reopening of the big Berkeley Tuolume Camp that burned down in the Rim Fire several years ago. In fall 2021 she’ll go to France to teach English in the TAPIF program, assuming she gets accepted - if not, she’ll probably go anyway to travel around, visit our friends in Brussels, Marseille and Poland, and check out schools. When that’s over in spring 2022, Berkeley will hopefully hire her to run the food operations when the Tuolume camp reopens. Then she wants to go to art grad school in Europe, maybe. All that is by way of saying that I’m going to be stuck with Ms Bao for a while. That’s fine, she is very cuddly and has an interesting personality, even if keeping up with brushing her coat is a pain in the you know. She likes to sleep in cute places and don’t mind wearing hats. Our theory is that she is actually an Ewok spy, altered through plastic surgery to look more like a cat, and sent to earth to investigate our defenses. Which explains her lack of front claws (Ewoks don’t have claws, they kill stormtroopers with spears and slings), her cuddly cuteness (she’s been trained to infiltrate our household), her fierce side (the Ewoks would only choose their fiercest for this mission, and she’s pissed at the plastic surgery), and why my cat was so afraid of her (“miaou miaou that’s not a cat can’t you tell miaou miaou” and “hiss spit if you blow my cover I’ll freeze you in Carbonite you worthless earth cat hiss spit”).

Carol, ”This made me recall that our neighbor, when I was kid, seeded quahog clams into the bay behind our houses, and years later, after the neighbors were long gone, I would harvest them when the tide went out. I always flushed them for a few days in a big bucket of saltwater with a handful of cornmeal tossed in, changing the water daily. I used them for clam sauce and chowder - they were huge! The cornmeal made them extra tasty, IMO.” Interesting. lucky you! When we first summered, there were quahogs ( ercenaria mercenaria) with very few soft shell clams (Mya arenarius). Then they were only the soft shell clams, steamers, and you couldn’t find a quahog for the life of you. The quahogs don’t move as fast, and they’re much easier to catch. They usually are maybe only 6 inches down or 4 inches. But those soft shell clams are like race cars; in our enthusiasm it was easy to have the tines of the clam hoe puncture the clamshell. The quahogs have a very hard shell and didn’t have that vulnerability. As you can imagine once you’ve got sandy muddy soil into the clam, by puncturing it shell, you could still eat the clam, but you better rinse it well before putting it into your mouth. What a lot of people used to do is pour the broth into a separate cup next to ones cup of melted butter. So you can rinse off the clams in the broth before dipping it into the butter and eating it. With practice not so many clamps, punctured.