Worries & Fish Cakes

As most of you know, my daughter, Ariel, is the most awesomest person on the planet. I am so proud of her all the time. She is beautiful, joyful, friendly, caring, and intelligent. Most of all, she is beautiful. That is because she is so joyful, caring, and intelligent.

After spending time with her for a year and three months, I had to send her into the outside world, to preschool. You know, to broaden her horizons and such. I know she needs it; she needs more than me. But it has been painful and worrisome to me. How will other people react to her? How will she react to others? Will she be excluded? Will there be racism? etc. etc.

Raising a child brings out the best in me. It is also a mirror to my fears and my self-esteem. When her teacher told me some things about her that I had not seen as problems, they seemed like problems, and I took it personally. I worried all day about whether or not my daughter was going to be okay at preschool. So I did something even more worrisome: I made fish cakes!

I have eaten great fish cakes, and awful fish cakes. I have watched them made on TV, and read recipes on how to make them. Once, I was at a company Christmas party where we made fish cakes as an activity. I have to tell you, it has never, ever looked easy.

But WTH! I tried it last night. And they were damn good.

More with tilapia from CostCo!!!

FISH CAKES

Use frozen fish; thaw it half-way. I used tilapia and shrimp.

Process in a food processor, on pulse: 1/2 of the fish & bread crumbs. Keep it chunky.

Process the rest of the very cold (partially frozen) fish, plus one egg.

Process with more bread crumbs.

Mmmm... this paste looks good. Handle with care. Make cakes, and pat with Saltine cracker crumbs. Fry in oil.

Oh, it's amazing, and it has no mayonnaise. BTW, I used my strawberry-dill sauce for dipping.

Side Dish: SAUTEED FRESH CHARD

Fried Fat Winter Solstice

Yesterday I just wanted to wander around aimlessly in the cold and fall into the snow and die. But instead, I cooked fat!

I don't know much about fat, having been a vegetarian for many years, and also having an aversion to fat. I grew up in the age of anti-fat. I thought I was fat. I wasn't, but I thought I was. I'll never forget the time I was cooking with my Grandma Myrtle and I said we should cut off all the fat from a piece of meat, and she scoffed at me, took the raw fat into her mouth and chewed it. "Fat is good!" she said, "You never get rid of the fat." She grew up on a farm and lived through the Great Depression. Here was I telling her we should get rid of something so valuable. Because I thought fat was bad.

So that's the sum of what I know about fat. But I decided to experiment with it.

I took six chicken drumsticks (free-range, of course; all my chicken is free-range), boiled them in a pot on the stove, and removed the skin. Burned my fingers taking that skin off! Then I used some leftover oil from the night before (more on that delicious experiment later) and fried the skin. Was it good! Yum yum! Crispy, juicy, fried fat! In leftover oil! What's not to love? I think this was a very fitting response to the Winter Solstice darkest shortest day of the year with migraine headache. And a very good start to my blog.