Binkies and Briefcases

SUBSCRIBE

Ten Easy Ways To Bond With Your Kids- A FREE eBook

By: Stephaniecomment

A few years ago I put together a gift that was exclusive for my newsletter subscribers. 

A group of my favorite bloggers helped me put together some of our favorite traditions and activities to do with our kids and I collected them in an ebook called Ten Easy Ways to Bond With Your Kids. 

In honor of Mother’s Day being this week, this year I am going to release it to all of my readers for free.

Get your copy of the Mother’s Day ebook!

eBook

If you like what you see, I would love to have you sign up for my newsletter or join me on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest! 

Mommom’s Maryland Crab Cake Recipe

By: Stephanie2 Comments

These are real Maryland crab cakes, straight out of a grandmother's kitchen. This is a great recipe for a quick and easy dinner when you want something light! They also make great sandwiches.

Credit: Deposit Photo

My grandmother spent almost her entire life in Baltimore. Every summer my grandfather would take out his boat several days a week and he would catch a bushel of crabs and bring them home to be steamed. I stayed with them often in the summer and I have vivid memories of sitting around the dining room table and picking crabs. We would separate the meat for crab cakes or soup or just eat the steamed crab meat on saltine crackers with ketchup. 

As a little girl I loved helping in the kitchen and my Mommom was the most patient of all of the adults in my life when it came to letting me be in the room while she was working and letting me help. The other ladies would let me watch, but Mommom would let me actually make the food. She let me put my hands in the batter and form the balls and she didn’t care at all if they came out perfect. As a result, hers are the recipes that are ingrained in my memory. I don’t need to look them up. They are etched in my brain and I can see the pink enamel bowl and the gold flecks on the laminate countertops in her tiny kitchen as I recreate them for my own family.

Mommom’s Maryland Crab Cakes:

  • 1 pound of jumbo lump crab meat 
  • 1 piece of white bread (this is a good use for the heel)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon mayonaise
  • 1 teaspoon mustard
  • 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 teaspoon fresh parsley, finely chopped
  • Old Bay to taste

Directions: 

  1. In a large bowl add the crab meat to one side of the bowl. 
  2. Break the bread into tiny pieces or crumbs in the other side of the bowl. Do not let any of the other ingredients mix with the crab yet. 
  3. Break the egg onto the bread and beat it into the bread crumbs with a fork. Add all of the other ingredients to the bread and egg side of the bowl, whisking with the fork. 
  4. Set down the fork, remove your rings, and use your clean hands to slowly and gently work the egg mixture through the crab meat, careful not to break up the large lumps of crab.
  5. Separate the mixture into four equal parts (this recipe makes four crab cakes) and gently pat each section into a patty about the size of your palm. 
  6. In a medium frying pan, melt a tablespoon of butter and fry the crab cakes until they are golden brown on each side, turning them once. (You can also broil them, but my grandmother never did.) They do not take long because the egg is the only ingredient that needs to cook. 

As adults we have lived up and down the east coast between Florida and Pennsylvania, but I have learned to never eat crab cakes outside of Maryland unless they are being prepared by a transplanted Maryland cook. They are one of those things that are actually incredibly easy to make that people sometimes find intimidating.  Mommom and many of the other Baltimore grandmothers had a limited food budget and were making crab cakes because they were economical, we could catch crabs ourselves all summer long and get meat for free. Don’t worry about trying to make them fancy. These crab cakes aren’t supposed to be. 

Old Bay Affiliate link provided for your convenience. 

You might also like:

Hot Milk Cake recipe

How I Finally Lost the First Ten Pounds

By: Stephanie11 Comments

How I finally lost the first ten pounds after trying for three years to lose weight. These are really practical and healthy tips!

If you have been following my blog for a while, then you know that my weight has been a bit of a struggle for me for the past few years. I’ve written about it before. 

Ever since I had Penny, three and a half years ago, my weight had been hovering right around the 180 pound mark no matter what I did. I tried Weight Watchers and joined a gym, I had my thyroid checked, I kept a food journal and took it to the doctor. No matter what, 180 seemed to be where my body wanted to be. The doctor thought it was very possible that it was because we were under a lot of stress dealing with Nicholas’s special needs and I was operating on about 4 hours of sleep per night when I saw him, that I was just not going to lose weight until I could get more sleep and have less stress. (To which every mom of young kids says “Ha!”) Then last fall when I had a serious health scare, I knew I was going to need to buckle down and start getting serious about getting some of this weight off. 

Well, I did it you guys! I finally broke the barrier and lost the first ten pounds. It came off super slowly and it took me several months to do it, but I did. Actually, I lost 11. Want to know how?

  •  I accepted that my body is going to work in its own way. My body does not like to lose 5 pounds in a week or cooperate with fad diets that say I can live on milkshakes and cereal. And that is okay. My body, eating vegetables and grains and meat, might only lose a quarter of a pound in a week. Or it might lose nothing one week and a full pound the next week. As long as I’m working on being healthy then I’m not doing anything wrong, even if the number on the scale isn’t going down right away. (It can’t stay in the same place forever.) 
  • I started tracking calories. I stopped trying to follow diets that had certain rules and just put the My Fitness Pal app on my phone. This made the biggest difference for me because I could see how much I was consuming. I can still eat whatever I want, I just usually don’t eat a 300 calorie cookie and a 300 calorie soda on the same day. I started looking at my calories like money. I tend to eat healthier things because they are “free.” If I do have a day where I go over budget with my calories, I make sure to pay for it later at the gym. 
  • I joined the YMCA. I accepted the fact that, while I can work out at home, the fact is that I don’t. We rearranged our family budget so that I could get to the gym. We canceled our home phone line and changed our service to Ooma, which is free after a one-time payment for the device. With the money we saved on our monthly phone bill, we were able to afford a family membership to the Y. Now I have access to their childcare and classes as well as the workout room. I started going to Zumba and doing several miles a week (I try to do at least two 5Ks per week) on the elliptical. I hate running outside, but I find I don’t mind it as much on the machines where I can see the numbers count my calories burned and how far I’ve gone and there is air conditioning. 
  • I got by with a little help from my friends. I have a close group of girlfriends who started a private group on Facebook at the beginning of the year so that we could all encourage each other and hold ourselves accountable. We have posted recipes, workout videos, success and struggles. We weighed in each week. It has been fun to see everyone’s pictures start to shrink over the months. Lately, I have been a little less active in the group, but there is no judgement as people cycle in and out as life throws us curve balls. 
  • I tried to make it fun, but I also recognized that some parts are just going to be work. I think that was the key for me. This sounds obvious, but I think this is what made this time more successful for me than any of my previous weight loss attempts: I gave myself permission to let it suck. The fact is that I really just do not enjoy eating salad while everyone else eats steak or running a 5K a few times a week. But I’m in my 30’s now, and I can’t eat fast food and cake and not expect it to take some sort of toll on me. In the past I would get stuck on the parts I didn’t like about dieting and quit because of them. But anything worth doing has parts of it that I’m not going to like. I did not drop out of school because I didn’t like writing research papers. I did not let the fear and pain of labor and delivery keep me from having children. I shouldn’t let the negative aspects of weight loss stop me before I reach the rewards. I can still eat the “bad” stuff sometimes. I just need to make sure I’m balancing it a little better than I was. 

I also did a few obvious things like drinking mostly water. For a while I was starting my day each morning with a warm glass of water with lemon, which I found really did do a lot to help with digestion and making me less hangry in the late afternoon. 

I still have quite a way to go. My goal is to eventually get back down to between 140 and 130, which means another 30 or 40 pounds. I’m not putting a time limit on myself, although I think it would be nice to do it before my ten year wedding anniversary next year. 

What about you? Have you ever lost a significant amount of weight? How did you do it? 

What You’re Saying

Latest Posts

ALL I Never Knowed: The Book Is Here!

It’s finally here, in my hands. It has been a loooong time in the making, but our book, All I Never Knowed: Mental Illness, a Mother’s Love, and a Broken System, is available now. The official launch date is next Tuesday, Oct. 5th. But starting now, you can order from all major retailers. Here’s where […]

Save Money with Fetch

Hey everyone! This is Chelsea, Steph’s asistant, back with the simplest app for getting cash back on things you’re already buying! We’ve covered Ibotta, Shopkick, Coupons.com, Swagbucks and we’re all saving hundreds of dollars by now, right? RIGHT!? I’m really hoping you guys have jumped on the rebate app savings train because it’s just so […]

Splendid Spoon Review

I was excited to receive a box of products to try from Splendid Spoon this summer! They invited me to try their line of plant-based, ready-to-eat foods and delivered them right to my door. Check one in the pro column for convenience. I did receive these products free of charge in order to rate them […]

My Networks