Half a crab cake? Half?

Last night my husband and I took my friend Elaine out to dinner. Elaine is Chinese, lives in Hong Kong and China, and comes to the States maybe once a year. When I traveled in China on business three times a year, I would spend a lot of time with Elaine, and ate many, many wonderful meals with her. She loves my cooking but since I had to work yesterday, I decided not to try to combine cooking and socializing, so we went out to Sassafrazz, one of our nicer local restaurants.

Elaine and I each ordered the appetizer crab cakes (2 generous cakes) and a half-size house salad. We were served the salads first, and by the time they arrived at the table, I was starving. I hoovered down the whole salad, no problemo (it was quite finely chopped), then thought, "How could I eat that whole thing?" (forgetting the days when I would have eaten a full-size salad and an entree and a dessert).

The crab cakes were marvelous, but I told myself I would eat only one of them and save the other for lunch the next day. Crab cakes are so soft, they really don't count as solid protein, so I didn't expect to feel much satiety after eating the one cake. Surprise! Halfway through the crab cake, I had to stop eating. I heard myself say, "I can't eat another bite." Hurray!

Elaine is a few inches shorter than me and (like all her family) solidly built, but not fat. She told me that she has gained 10 pounds and asked me to guess her weight. I hate that kind of game, but I played along. I guessed she weighs 130 pounds, so I said,"120 pounds."

"No! XXX! I weigh XXX pounds!" [Note: she swore me to secrecy about the actual number.]

I was truly astonished. "But Elaine, that can't be! That's only 10 pounds less than me!"

She in turn was astonished. "No, Jean! I think you weigh 110 pounds."

That was a slight understatement! I laughed, but I was flattered.

Elaine made me promise to follow up with her in a month to make sure she's still working on losing those 10 pounds.