Crabby Patties: Maryland Style Crabcakes

 That Sponge Bob is a crybaby.”   No kidding. 

It’s not that Sponge Bob’s crabby patties are better than mine.  Or that Mr. Krabbs won't give out the secret recipe.  It’s just that I’ve spoiled everyone to anything but my crabcakes.  No one I know is willing to risk greasy heavy breading, canned ingredients, or heaven knows what other kinds of additives.

It took me many years to perfect them. 

It took me many years to even eat crab. 

My first experience with crab was as a kid when my mother and my aunts made spaghetti and crab sauce, from the local blue crabs available in Connecticut.  Cooked whole in tomato sauce.

(They were from Southern Italy.  Everything was cooked in tomato sauce).   

I couldn’t even stand the smell in the kitchen. 

Years later, I moved to the DC area, home of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab.  One of my first social outings was to a crab feast.  A tactile event where whole crabs are steamed in Old Bay and dumped on a brown paper-covered table in front of a group of people with mallets and nut crackers.  

It was all I could do to get down my beer and corn on the cob.

Somehow, someone managed to get me to eat cream of crab and corn soup.  It was all the rage at a restaurant chain in the area called The American Café.  (I have never successfully duplicated that soup, try as I might).  From that point on, I would eat nearly anything with crab in it, as long as someone else picked the crabmeat first.

After I moved to California, I would often visit my cousin and her husband on Kent Island, which is smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.  The hunt for the perfect crab cake and the perfect cream of crab soup would continue through my entire visit.

Turns out, I already had the perfect Crab Cake Recipe.   It came out of one of the White House Cookbooks, published during any Presidential administration, and I just happened to have a Clinton Administration copy. 

The first time I made them this season, I sent a plate over to my sister, who was babysitting her grandson.  To convince him to try them, she told him they were Sponge Bob’s crabby patties.

Out of the mouths' of babes.