A rare treat

 

This photo is completely overexposed (it's hard to see that teenie little screen on my camera without glasses, but I can't take pictures with reading glasses on because they blur things far away ... yet another joy of aging), so I got creative. Anyway, if you're wondering, it's soft-shelled crabs with almond slivers.

I had to do an interview with some ladies about the local symphony's fundraiser and we met at the Promenade at Westlake -- a shopping center in Thousand Oaks, which just also happens to have the closest Bristol Farms gourmet grocery store. For some reason the corporate powers that be have decreed Ventura as not having the right "socioeconomic profile" to deserve a gourmet grocery store. This, despite the fact that the average home is worth well over $500,000 and that our downtown houses to a booming restaurant trade.

So if I want anything more than what the local big chains offer -- Von's, Ralph's and on the west side, the world dirtiest Albertson's -- I have to go either to Santa Barbara or Thousand Oaks, both equa-distant on either side of Ventura. It's probably a good thing because every time I get near a gourmet market I'm like Carrie Bradshaw in the Bloomingdale's shoe department -- devoid of all reason besides that of acquisition.

Adding to my manic mood was the fact that I'd survived another week of turmoil. Rob was called into eye surgery last Wednesday. After repairing his retina, the doctor lets it heal. The eyeball is left lens-less and filled with oil during this repair process. According to Rob's doctor, patients are left like this for up to a year, but Rob heals exceptionally well, so they were ready to give him a new lens after five months. The second operation is where Rob gets his new lens (now we both have artificial parts) and the oil is drained and replaced by gas or air, which will itself eventually be replaced by viscous fluid Rob's body will produce.

An opening came up after we raised a stink trying to find out when the surgery was scheduled -- Kaiser Permanente in West Los Angeles has a real problem with the whole scheduling concept. This meant that I had to drive Rob to L.A. for what we were told was a 9 a.m. appointment. Of course, the surgery wasn't actually scheduled until 2 p.m. -- this is what I man about scheduling.

To get anywhere in L.A. at 9 a.m. from Ventura means getting going at at least 6 a.m. Los Angeles traffic is unpredictable and impossible. There's no way to tell, coming in from the north, when, exactly, you're going to get anywhere. Traffic stops usually in Calabasas and is bumper to bumper pretty much through the L.A. area.

We decided to take the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) because the 101/405 interchange, justifiably rated as the worst in the country in most rankings, is always a nightmare. The PCH is risky, though, because it's two lanes in many places and there's also construction, so it can come to a grinding halt easily. Even so, it's nicer to be stuck in traffic with waves lapping the rocks on the side of the road than it is to be stuck in the vast wastelands of The Valley.

Rob and I ended up having to sit around -- he in his hospital gown with a saline drip -- waiting five hours for the surgery. We would have pitched a fit, but we've learned that there are certain places -- Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles, being one of them -- where the time/space continuum is warped and resistance, as they say, is futile. Unlike the island on Lost, it's not a cool space/time rift, it's just a pain in the ass -- the ass that gets sore just sitting around.

I took off as soon as they wheeled him off because I was exhausted and he was going to be drugged after surgery and probably wouldn't need visitors. I know I didn't really need visitors when I was coming off my knee replacement. Extreme pain and discomfort tend to demand a lot of attention and it's hard to entertain, even minimally.

The surgery went well and Rob was released the next day. It was pretty hilarious at the hospital because they had to keep wheeling Rob around because he was a patient and there I was hobbling along on my new knee with my cane, looking far more in need of assistance.

After all of this, I was really in the mood to get some nice, little treat at Bristol Farms and I knew just the thing. In late May it's soft-shell crab season. When I lived in Ohio, the local gourmet store -- the incomparable Dorothy Lane Market -- used to carry them. Here, in California it's so far away from the Mid-Atlantic Coast where the crabs molt each year, that finding soft- shelled crabs is next to impossible. Sometimes, I'll order them at sushi places -- they're frozen and dipped in tempura batter. But they're not really the same.

Lo and behold, and much to my delight, Bristol Farms actually had the crabs and they weren't frozen. They were actually alive. I was so psyched I overlooked the $25 a pound price tag and got three. I had the butcher clean them, which is good because I tend to bond with living things.

I prepared them as I always do -- simply and deliciously. When I had my food column in the Ventura County Star, I ran this recipe and someone wrote me and chastised me for making it so simple. They seemed to feel that I needed to make up some kind of heavy batter to "properly" fry soft-shelled crabs. Yuk! When you get a great ingredient -- a once-every-10-years ingredient -- you don't muck it up with all kinds of distracting elements. No! You cook it as simply and as well as you can. After all that's the point of a special treat.

I bought Rob a sirloin steak on sale -- which at Bristol Farms means it costs less than $30 a pound -- and prepared it simply on the grill. The steak was amazingly good, especially for a sirloin. I had my soft-shelled crabs and they were every bit as delicious and wonderful as I'd hoped and remembered.

If you ever come across them, here's the recipe that perfectly frames the wonderful culinary sensations that are soft-shelled crabs.

Soft-shelled crabs amandine

olive oil
butter
3 soft-shelled crabs, cleaned
1 cup flour
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Heat olive oil and butter in skillet. Dredge crabs in flour. I don't season the flour because I find the taste of the crabs to be a bit salty and I don't like the way pepper tastes with this (frankly, I think pepper is overused, but that's a whole different topic). Cook crabs over medium heat until browned on both sides. Add almonds when you flip the crabs over, after cooking about 4 to 5minutes. Serve crabs with almonds on top.

I just serve them with a salad. I love the crunch and saltiness of the crabs combined with the almond flavor.

Despite everything, this meal was totally worth it.

Rehab/physical therapy/disability

This is a picture of one of my favorite recent weekly flower arrangements, larkspur and Queen Anne's Lace. I get flowers each week at the Ojai farmers market; it's my "thing."

I'm struggling with a sense of being actually "disabled." Up to now, I've maintained that everything that's happening to me is temporary and I'll be walking like my old self in no time. I mean, I went to the doctor last May 31, complaining that my ankle hurt and my joints -- knees and hips were achy. And while that would have been enough for most people, I had to go and get hit by a truck just days after -- June 5 -- and everything has gone downhill precipitously since then.

What was a tender ankle turned out to be a torn tendon, which has been surgically repaired, but is still sensitive and weak. Then my knee completely collapsed on itself and I now have a new knee -- and a "knee card" (more later). Everyone is really excited about how well I'm doing post-surgery, but I can't help but wonder how well I'm really doing.

The bad part is that I never wanted to be one of those old people who sat around worrying about her health, and now look at me. I'm up to walking with a cane and can finally make it to the first bench at the dog park (there are three benches at various points each farther away from the car and each -- at this point -- a milestone of sorts).

Perhaps it's the physical therapy that's making me feel so glum. Anyone who's had any kind of orthopedic surgery can tell you that one of the main components of treatment in today's world is physical therapy. It's especially important for knee (and hip) replacement because the body has a tendency to form scar tissue after being wounded so profoundly (cutting off the ends off bones counts as "profound" in my book). As a result, the first thing they do post-surgery is have the physical therapy people come in and get you back on your feet.

This is OK by me. The whole point of subjecting myself to all this pain and discomfort is so that I can walk again, so I'm all about getting up and at it. Of course, the first physical therapist they sent in was about 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, if she'd eaten a really big meal. I asked her when she was getting me up for my first walk what, exactly, she planned to do if I DID go down. I'm not exactly a tiny person, and the laws of gravity are, shall we say, amplified in my case. In other words, I'll go down hard. She just grinned nervously.

Since the hospital stay I've had a physical therapist come to the house for the immediate post-surgery work and now I go to the office. The thing I'm struggling with, though, is that unlike previous gym work, this doesn't make me feel good in any way. In fact, after every session, my knee is swollen at least to twice the size it was when I went in and it's painful and weak for at least a day or two.

I can't figure out why this is supposed to be a good idea. I'm all about getting up and being active. I was cooking the first week home from the hospital. I've planted a lot of my spring flowers, even though I require a lot of help from Rob. I do my exercises all the time and ice my knee religiously. But I move at a pace that makes my leg stronger. I push past mild pain -- they DID cut my quadriceps and it's taking a while to heal and become strong again, but I quit when it really hurts. The physical therapy people only seem to feel I'm doing good work if tears are streaming from my face.

The bottom line for me is that I've become really attuned to my body and it's structural workings and I really don't understand how pushing it to the point of agony is going to heal it.

I wish there were some realistic guide to recovery out there. Martha Stewart had a hip replacement last year, but she likes to be all tough and heroic and it was announced that she was "back to work" in five days. This is unfair to the rest of us, who can't afford to hire the best therapists and medical staff and have to scrape by with whatever managed care allows. It's also not fair because it's simply not true. There is no one who is going to recover from joint replacement after 5 days and it makes those of us who are struggling with our own recoveries feel inadequate.

Watching closely I've noticed that Martha still is careful about her bad hip, but she doesn't allow it to be shown on camera, which is too bad for those of us who are looking to her to have a realistic idea of how the healing process will proceed. It's really hard to learn to walk again when a significant joint has been replaced by a mechanical one. It's hard to get the muscles to learn to work with a made-made prosthesis.

I suppose my point is that it would be a lot easier for me to recuperate if I could get a little less of a boot camp attitude from everyone. I'm not some green recruit who needs to be bullied into accomplishment.

Sigh. I suppose a few weeks from now when I'm walking better this will all seem whiny and self-involved -- at least that's what I'm hoping for.

Oh yeah, back to the "knee card." I'm now the proud carrier of a card that shows an x-ray of my new knee along with my doctor's name so I can go through security checkpoints. That's right. From now on, I'll always have to be carefully wanded down to get on planes -- cool huh?

Another thing: Maybe my disappointment is stemming from the fact that my new knee turns out NOT to be bionic. Seriously. I've tried jumping over the car and NOTHING. Damn!

He's dead to me

I was given the assignment of covering a Berry Blast-off recipe contest for the Star. I've covered a million little community things over the years, so I know the drill. This was going to be an Iron Chef-style competition for the best strawberry recipe that didn't need to be baked.

I was sitting there when Tracy Lehr from KEYT News stopped by and said her camera guy was on his way. The KEYT camera guy is Sean -- my nephew. So I'm sitting at the judges table when I hear my name and turn around to face a camera lens about 10 inches from my nose.

After establishing that we were both there to cover the same thing, I told Sean "Make sure I'm not in any shots." When I have full use of my legs, I tend to follow the cameraman around -- then I'm never in any pictures. But since I'm hobbled, I issued the directive.

It was actually a good thing Sean was there because even though I'd called ahead to inform them I was on crutches -- I NEVER EVER want to go through what happened to me in Vegas -- no one informed me that the entrance to the cook-off area was behind the Courtyard Marriott. So I went in the main entrance and had to walk down a really long hall, take a left, walk completely down another hall to reach the area. I was bitching about this to Sean, who then offered to move my car, which was really nice and useful.

But after, when I was working on my story at home, I got a phone call from Sean -- we have individual rings for family members and Sean and Gen's is the Star Spangled Banner. He said, "You might be on TV. You might be eating something. And it MIGHT be coming on in a couple of minutes." I responded with death threats and he just laughed.

No one was home and no one answered when I called their cells, but I finally got in touch with Kim -- my friend. I needed to commiserate. The piece aired and there I was, crutches and all, eating something, as promised.

One of the ways Rob and I will never be native Southern Californians is that we HATE having our pictures taken. For me, it's because I can maintain some self-delusion about how well I'm aging. Photographs burst my little bubble. I like the fantasy. Or as Judd Hersh put it on Numb3rs, "as long as I stay away from all reflective surfaces, I can pretend I'm 18 again."