family + food + feelings
How has it been a year and a half? I honestly have no clue. 
This week marks the longest we will have left Beck (5 nights! I kind of don’t want to go when I write it out), and so it has me all nostalgic for the times when leaving her for five hours was a massive deal. …
I. Love. Summer. 
I love the feeling of school being out even though I’m not in school anymore and work 366 days per year. It’s miraculous, I know. I love the heat and humidity, even when I bitch about it. I love the longer days, the smell of gardenias, going to hear music down town, the whole cliche shebang.
I especially LOVE summer-feeling food. Grilled meat with fresh or raw side dishes, that great mix of healthy and decadent, salads so fresh and crisp that they somehow quench your thirst, you know?
Because you’re thirsty from all the beer.
This is one of those salads for our family, and I can’t get enough. My mom used to make picnics of hummus and tabouli and pita long before those things were cool, and bring them to the pool for night swimming or late swim practices in the summer. She made both with a heavy hand of lemon, one of my favorite flavors for dishes like this. This version is a teensy bit jazzed up with marinating the chick peas, but that’s super hands off and can be done way in advance – the longer in advance the better, actually. The garbanzos end up creamy but still with texture and so much flavor from the lemon juice, garlic, and crushed red pepper. I honestly can’t even.
…
I made you cake! Savory, salty, crispy seafood cake topped with a tartar sauce that is just.so.good. At restaurants I’m always tempted to order crab cakes but rarely do, and here’s why: if I get even the slightest crunch that indicates shell, I don’t want to eat anything else at all and become hungry and annoyed and sad. So this solves that. With salmon!
You could totally make these into burgers btw.
But! This totally feels like summer to me, and has two important characteristics that are important to us at the moment. First, they’re relatively low carb. There are some breadcrumbs in the cakes, but not many, and we went with lettuce wraps for health and flavor. AND, we used canned salmon here for frugality. I’m actually a big fan of canned fishes; they taste great, are inexpensive, and are great for recipes like this where the fish gets so cooked that a super fresh piece would almost be wasted.
We had these for lunch on a Saturday recently, and it was such a great mid-day meal. But now I’m thinking..brunch. With a runny egg on top? Can eggs go with seafood? Seafood can go with a bloody mary, that’s for dang sure.
…
Dear Jay,
Happy Father’s Day! Beck would say it but she’s too little to understand and also if I said “do you hope Daddy has a good day?” she would say noooooo like the budding comedian/jerk that she is.
…
