I had said I wasn't done talking about San Antonio. It was true. Almost all of my relatives in SA are on the Atkins diet. Or at least they SAY they're on Atkins. I saw one of the so-called dieters asking for the basket of rolls to be passed her way to eat with her breaded shrimp. Things that make ya go hmmm.... Or was that yum?
I did find out something interesting about the diet, though. When I looked in my Uncle's refrigerator, I saw multiple cans of whipped cream. When I asked about this, I was told that whipped cream has hardly any carbs and low sugar. LOW SUGAR? When I got back to Houston, I asked the local Atkins diet success story at work about this and he confirmed it. He sang the praises of whipped cream. And in the topsy-turvy world of Atkins, heavy cream is more diet compliant than half-and-half.
Speaking of culinary issues, one of our lunches en famille was at a place called Sea Island. Both Cliff and I ordered the stuffed shrimp and beef shish-kabob plate. I've had stuffed shrimp at a few places in Houston (all Cajun/Creole), and it's always basically consisted of a tasty crab stuffing and a shrimp in a breading to bind it together. When I bit into the stuffed shrimp at Sea Island, it tasted a bit off. Not bad, but off, different. I shrugged it off thinking it was just a different recipe and took a couple more bites. The wrongness continued and led me to examine it more closely. I noticed stringy bits in the stuffing with one bright red side with the rest white. It took me a bit, but I finally realized it was imitation crab meat. d00d!11! They went all cheapazoid on me! I don't think I'd ever eaten imitation crab before. Not hideous, but certainly nowhere as good as crab. I didn't finish the stuffed shrimp. ::shrug::
