Good morning. There are blue crabs running in the creeks near where I stay, fat and lively as they pinch the chicken backs we use as bait, swift and angry when they’re pinned by the net, drawn to the surface, banged down into the compound bucket, transformed from wildness, ready for the pot. So steamed blue crabs for dinner on a Monday night, so what? You could get yours from the dock or the bushel basket at the fish market, set to work, eat late and love your life here on the shoulder season, still summer, not yet fall.
Though that may be impossible for you because there’s a budget meeting scheduled for the end of the day and the Google Hangout ticket labels the thing “2020 asks/scenarios” and there’s no way that’s going to get you to the creek or the fishmonger today, no way.
In which case, how about a rotisserie chicken and some supermarket corn tortillas, a quick sauce and a few handfuls of cheese: chicken enchiladas with salsa verde (above)? Add a super-cold beer and the Yankees playing the Sox at Fenway, it could be a very nice night — for the winning side, anyway.
Or, maybe you could make a basic corn chowder, eat it with oyster crackers. You could make tofu with peanut-ginger sauce. Roasted fish. Sautéed kale.
You might prefer a sheet-pan sausage dinner with peppers. Or vegan broccoli soup with cashew cream. Or mushroom shawarma pitas. Or skillet mustard chicken with carrots and spinach. Green shakshuka with avocado and lime?
We have literally tens of thousands of recipes to choose from. (Here are our most popular ones right now.) I know you’ll find the one just right for you.
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Now, it’s a considerable distance from the pantry, but Kara Swisher turned me on to “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,” which may well set Matt Richtel up as the Carl Hiaasen of Silicon Valley. So read that.
Also, check out “The Difference Between Happiness and Joy,” which Jennifer Kornegay wrote for the Bitter Southerner, about the restaurant Drexell & Honeybee’s, in Brewton, Ala.
