1 cup white rice
2 cups water
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 large tomato, sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper

1. Heat oil in a pot over medium heat and add garlic and rice, cooking until lightly browned.
2. Add salted water and tomato paste and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to a simmer.
3. Once rice has absorbed all of the liquid, stir in tomato slices and season with salt and pepper.

Makes 4 servings

1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup crab meat
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon mustard seed
1/4 teaspoon dried chili flakes
1/4 teaspoon bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon scallions

1. Combine sour cream, lemon juice and scallions and refrigerate while preparing crab cakes.
2. Blend together spices and season bread crumbs.
3. Stir together bread crumbs, crab meat and egg.
4. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Form crumb mixture into patties and place about 4 into the skillet.
5. Allow to brown on one side, about 5 minutes, then flip and fry for another 5 minutes.
6. Repeat as necessary.

Makes 4 servings

I'm still so ridiculously full from Mexican leftovers (I think I ate a total of 4 burrito-like things yesterday) and having trouble contemplating preparing an actual dinner. Continuing on the "making use of leftovers" theme, I made Old Bay Crab Cakes with the faux crab leftover from the California Rolls. I was a little bit leery of using the crab since it'd been in the fridge for almost a week, but it came pre-packaged and the expiry date was late May, so now I'm a bit concerned as to why it would last into summer.

I hadn't a clue what was in old bay seasoning, but 90% of the recipes I found for crab cakes called for it. So, naturally, I looked it up. It's a blend of celery, mustard, red pepper, bay leaf and ginger. I omitted the ginger and used the dried and seed variety to make a spice blend and I thought that the crab cakes turned out really well. I've always thought they had a flavor that I was never really able to pinpoint on any sort of seasoning before, but I guess that it's been mustard and celery seed, since that's the dominant flavors. I topped it with some lemon flavored sour cream and chopped green onion.

I really didn't have an appetite for anything beyond the crab cakes, but since a crab cake is hardly a dinner (and barely an appetizer) I also made Tomato Rice. Just as it sounds, tomato rice is tomatoey rice and although hardly a culinary marvel is still one of the bland favorites. In a sense, it is the true Poor Man’s Jambalaya, for anything less would simply be rice or tomato.