Crunchy Crab Salad

Got dinner plans? How about some crunchy crab salad! Crab salad is popular here for special occasions and this version is a twist off the usual. Typically it's crab, hard-cooked egg and corn for the basic ingredients. But this we'll call Crunchy Crab Salad because it's got some texture thrown in there.

(Click photo to enlarge.) So the crab we buy packaged and ready to go. It's probably that imitation crab with lots of added salt. Okay, whatever. This version has chopped celery and cucumber then canned corn. A bit of onion, parsley, mayo, salt. Oh, this recipe throws in chopped apple. I used a tart one, a Granny Smith. Got this recipe out of Liza magazine, can't take credit for the jazzed-up version.

This made a big container for our brother Volera who's in the hospital and dear wife Lyda, who's staying there with him. See, in the hospitals here, the dietary department is scaled way, way back. Seems as though the hospital provides a basic sustenance diet - like thin soup, bread. Mostly it's family who feeds the patient. He's flat on his back, so here's hoping this can be spoon-fed easily to someone who's horizontal. Myself, I scarfed down a bowl of it likity-split.

Freezing Rice: Super Cool Kitchen Secret

Rice is nice. . .that's what they say. Rice is nice. . .throw some my way. Remember that song?

Rice can be great but come dinner time, I'm disinclined to fiddle around with cooking it, especially the ultimate - brown rice. But hal-le-lu-jah, there's an easy-peasy way. And that is to cook the whole big bag and freeze it in meal-sized portions.

You see, there was a kilo of rice that was sitting in the cabinet calling my name, singing that Rice is Nice song. So I gave in, cooked it up and most of it's frozen in small portions. Then come dinner time, throw the rice onto a hot skillet and it's done in no time. So here's the methodika, as we say it around here.

While water is coming to a boil, pick through for any pebbles, diamonds or other precious stones. Not that I've ever found any, but there's always a first time. Then run some water through the rice and boil it until just a tad under-done.


Talk about quick rice, here in the blink of an eye, in the flash of the cursor - our rice is cooked. Rinse it off in cool water using the strainer. Then cool to room temperature in shallow pans.


After cool, package the rice for freezing. These quart-size zip-lock bags I bring from the US and put 2 cups rice in each bag. That works here in this household of three, which includes two little birds. They're such gentleman though, they let me have all the rice. So package it according to how much rice you would serve at a meal.

In the freezer, these packets stack nicely. Being thin, it's easy to break of a chunk of rice and slide it out onto a hot skillet.


Happens that we have a hot skillet here, two in fact. One for heating the rice, the other for whatever else is cooking. In this case it's chicken chunks, straight out of the freezer too.


And here we have an easy lunch, ready in about 15 minutes.

Try freezing rice sometime. It's more economical than the boil-in-the-bag packets, which are not always available here. It's so handy come dinner time because there's no messing w/ a big pot of water and then cleaning it up after. So that settled, altogether now, a rousing rendition of rice is nice!