If you're like I am, you watch all the ads for Black Friday sales and wonder what is wrong with the people they're aimed at. And after you've thoroughly stuffed yourself on Thursday, you go to bed and blissfully sleep through all those alarms you were supposed to set, and you're not even camped out in front of Macy's or Best Buy. You arise at the stroke of 11:30 and liberate your chickens. And when food finally sounds good again, you conduct experiments on your spouse with leftovers.

Thanksgiving will probably always be a little poignant for me. I grew up in the house that hosted everyone, and so I remember having leftovers and abandoned side-dishes and desserts for the whole weekend, and probably well into Tuesday. And now, we leave a dish of sweet potatoes for Mr. Strangely's grandmother and take the rest, and nothing else. No turkey or mashed potatoes, no stuffing. Not even any rolls. So this year, I made a pre-emptive strike. I haven't got a turkey yet, but I've got plenty of sweet potatoes, two packages of rolls I accidentally bought because last year we were supposed to bring them, and something much more lavish and brunchy than turkey: fresh crab.

My husband's family traditionally has crab on Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Eve, so it really is a holiday food, I promise. Crab season starts after Halloween. And the store I ran in to on Wednesday to stock up had set them out on sale, already cracked and waiting. Who could resist that?

Baked Eggs Over Crab

Stellaa was the one who turned me on to baked eggs (thanks, Stellaa!!), so I feel like this barely counts as a recipe for me at all. And I could twitter it, it's so easy. "Ramekins butter crab egg cream water bath 350 30 minutes" (only 56 characters!). Serve with leftover rolls to adhere to criteria for Salon's recipe contest~



Sweet Potato Breakfast Blinis

I got my sweet potato recipe from my mother. Then it somehow mutated under my care. Now I make a combination recipe... it starts off like my mother's, boiling the sweet potatoes until soft, and slipping them out of their skins to rest in a buttered casserole. Then it incorporates shades of this recipe, though I've never used the nuts. The result is a lovely sweet but not too sweet dish of potatoes, with a crispy, buttery topping. And this is what I started with to make my blinis. You could probably use most any sweet potato recipe to do this, adding flour or milk to achieve the right kind of consistency. Take a few of these leftover potatoes, and mash them in a bowl with one egg. The dough should be like a squishy cookie dough.



Drop tablespoons of this into a sea of melted butter in a skillet over medium/low heat. Then smash with the back of your spoon into a pancake shape.


Allow this to cook for a few minutes, and watch it carefully, turning the heat down if it seems to be burning. You want these to cook slowly. They're a little fragile in the beginning. You want to flip them when they start to firm up a bit. Then press again with the spatula. It doesn't hurt to turn these a few times, pressing to get a nice dense cake. Remove these from the pan and drain on paper towels. Dress them in pretty proscuitto slices... tiny mozzarella cheeses you bought for appetizers and forgot and crispy little apple slices... Imagine the poor suckers going shopping in the nasty rain... Enjoy by computer, to obtain perfect stream of consciousness dialogue...