Last updated on September 30, 2018 by Liza Hawkins
Heather is the founder of (cool) progeny where her use of parentheses in a blog title is almost as (cool) as mine.
I met her online in 2010—we started our blogs and jumped into Twitter at just about the same time.
Call it cosmic or whatever … our personalities just synced.
Oddly, we don’t live that far apart, and often times end up in the same little town in central Maryland, but we’ve never actually crossed [in real life] paths.
Looking for things to do with as a family, and especially things that are kid and toddler-friendly in and around Baltimore? Heather’s your writer to watch.
I’m simply amazed by how much information she’s able to push out there into blogland, with such high velocity.
How does she keep up? I have no idea, but she’s mastered it.
Here’s more about Heather and her co-(cool) husband in super cool font from their site:
Enjoy this childhood memory from Heather about Maryland’s favorite entrée: crab cakes at the beach!
As far back as I can remember, Ms. Cindy and Uncle Al joined our family on vacation at the Outer Banks every summer.
We’d have a rental house from Sunday to Sunday, and they’d arrive on Wednesday just before lunch.
Ms. Cindy was a big personality with a loud, infectious laugh.
She’d whirl into the kitchen with the subtlety of a tornado—Rubbermaid bin of kitchen odds and ends in tow.
(The rental house never had the right gear, according to her.)
As the pots and pans went flying, the concoction would always be smell-binding.
Like the pied-piper, the aroma would call everyone from their hammocks, reading nooks and out of the water.
We’d all crowd around the kitchen counter—who uses a table? —and munch away.
There’d be a grumble over whose turn it was to do dishes.
No one ever really wanted to be the one responsible for scraping the cookie sheets and pans after a Ms. Cindy meal.
PAM cooking spray wasn’t exactly a hot commodity yet.
We started going to the Outer Banks before the restaurants and huge houses built up the area.
So, my family would plan what the meals were for the week, stop at the grocery store before hitting the peninsula and spend the week cooking.
Even as restaurants started sprouting up and down the coastal area, cooking remained a cornerstone of our vacation.
Our favorite dinner night was Thursday: annual crab cake night.
My dad did the cooking in our house growing up and was allergic to crabs. So every Thursday night at the beach, Ms. Cindy would whip up the most delectable crab cakes (and something for dad, too).
She and Uncle Al frequented G&M’s in Baltimore, well-known for their crab cakes.
But, Ms. Cindy’s crab cakes at the beach scored higher than theirs in my book.
Honestly, I don’t even know what held them together. It was as if you were biting into solid lump crap—perfectly spiced, with a slight crunch of crumb on top.
Heaven help ya if you scored dish duty on crab cake night.
Ms. Cindy passed away two summers ago, and Uncle Al followed her last fall. But we’re still headed to the beach this summer.
In preparation, I’m perfecting my recipe for crab cakes at the beach.
Read more from Heather here:
