Elliott x Reader One Shots - Stardew Valley

5. Crab Cakes

  It was just days before the Spirit's Eve festival, and Pelican Town was bustling in preparation. Pierre had been especially busy, trying to ensure there would be plenty of fresh ingredients for the buffet him and Gus were working to set up. Truth be told, they were going above and beyond this year, and Pierre had underestimated the work load. So he commissioned me to grow a few extra crops to help fill in the gaps, which I had managed to do with the help of his signature speed-grow fertilizer. 

  I dropped off the produce the previous day, and so my work to contribute to the festival was done. As the season came to a close, I had a lot of extra time on my hands. I'd spent some of my downtime catching up on the knitting project I had been neglecting, and I had even written a few new poems. Still, I wasn't used to all of the sitting around, and I was beginning to get restless. I knew it would just take some getting used to, but in the mean time I decided that having some company would be a welcome distraction. And who better to invite round than my dearest friend in Pelican Town, Elliott? 

  My only regret was specifically inviting him over for lunch. It was only on the night before our scheduled lunch date that I realized I had no idea what to make. There were two meals I knew for certain that Elliott would like. The first being fruit salad, which I'd already made for him once, and which required several ingredients that were now out of season. The second, of course, was Gus' spaghetti, which we'd eaten fairly recently, and which I would likely never be able to fully replicate. I heaved a frustrated sigh as I made my way down the stairs and into the kitchen. 

  I pulled open my kitchen cupboards, searching for anything that might be of use. Thankfully, I had all of the staples; flour, rice, sugar, oil, and an array of various spices and herbs. If only I could think of an interesting way to combine them. I turned to my refrigerator, once again thoroughly underwhelmed by its contents. Opening a drawer at the bottom, something caught my eye; a container which held two small crabs I had recently captured in the crab pot Willy gifted me. 

  I recalled a Queen of Sauce episode I watched a few weeks back, which featured a recipe for crab cakes. With a new sense of excitement, I scrambled for my notebook, flicking through pages as fast as my hands would allow until I found my copy of the recipe. I was struggling to keep up in certain steps, which was visible in the vast sections on the page in which my usual neat handwriting had suddenly transformed into a frantic scrawl. I read the page over, then returned to my cupboard to double check for all of the necessary ingredients. I was somewhat relieved.

   While I wasn't terrible in the kitchen, I also wasn't the best. It often took me several tries to finally nail down a new technique or recipe. And since my time was fairly limited, the pressure was definitely on. Though I hadn't any better ideas, so it was a risk I decided I had to take. Satisfied, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I had never cooked a crab before, let alone shelled one. And of course, the Queen of Sauce never had to prep her own ingredients, so her demonstration was no help in that regard. 

  I had no choice but to wing it and hope for the best. After looking the crabs over for a while, I made the best plan of attack I could manage with my lack of experience and dug in. It was a lot more difficult than I initially guessed, and I struggled for quite a while to collect the crab meat. I was mildly disappointed when, after all of the work I put into it, I had only a small bowl of usable crab. It wasn't exactly the most bang for my buck, but it would do. 

I looked up at the clock to find that I had spent considerably longer than I hoped on this one task, and it was only the first step in the recipe. I was frustrated and tired, and looking at the steps I still had yet to complete was overwhelming me, but I knew I had to press on. The rest of the process wasn't so bad though; it was mostly measuring and mixing ingredients, for which I was grateful. After patting the mixture into shape and laying my cakes out in between layers of parchment, I slid the baking sheet in place on a shelf in my fridge and called it a night.