The Best Memories Are the Ones You Can Eat

Two weeks removed from eating a swath through the Pacific Northwest, we broke out the Pike Place Market Cookbook and tromped over to 17th Street to shop and cracked our knuckles and whipped up a batch of the crab cakes we swooned over at Pike Brewing way back on July 3.

Crab cakes with chili-coconut sauce and baby greens.

We arranged the cakes artfully over the sauce. We tucked a tuft of greens to one side. We cut, we held our breath, we bit...

FUCK YEAH. Nailed it.

Next time, cilantro instead of the prescribed flat-leaf parsley, and more coconut milk. Because that just might be even better than the originals, which are pretty damn good.

And the only thing better than the shared experience of the original chompfest at Pike is being able to recreate that shared experience after the fact and finding that it comes with a new bonus layer on top: it's no longer just wow, this is amazing, but wow, this is amazing, and we made it.

I had fretted early this morning that the Northwest trip would wind up lost in the shuffle of the kid's crazy packed summer, a vague footnote somewhere in the back of his brain jumbled with volleyball, Disneyland, and hanging with his buddies. Tonight I'm pretty sure it's going to stick. He can't wait to get back in the kitchen and see what else we can do.