Honey Lime Shrimp

I love finding new recipes that I love.  If their easy, healthy and quick for a weeknight I'm even happier.   That's just what happened last night when I tried a recipe for Honey Lime Shrimp that I found on Pinterest.

Photo from The Dough Will Rise Again

Stephen and I love shrimp (all seafood really) so I'm always looking for new ways to serve it.  This recipe was so easy I had the marinade done before Stephen got home from work and 45 minutes later we had dinner.  The part that took the most amount of time was letting the shrimp sit in the marinade for 30 minutes.  The next time I make this meal, I'll make the marinade for the shrimp in the morning and let them sit in it all day long.  Then after work dinner can be ready in 15 minutes!

I followed the directions exactly as they are in the original post, but I did cook the shrimp in the marinade.  Based on how crisp the shrimp look in the photo above, she didn't.  My way turned out AMAZING, so I think you're safe either way.

I served the shrimp with some rice and sauteed broccoli.

Baked Shrimp Scampi

When we're on our honeymoon we need to make sure our dogs are well taken care of.  We could board them at the vet's office like we did when we went to Boston for my cousin's wedding but Goose is so much bigger than he was in May (which means more expensive) and it would be for 6 nights.  That seems like a long time to be stuck in a crate in a vet's office.  A co-worker of mine offered to take the two dogs to her house so they could play with her two dogs, but they didn't get along as well as we had hoped.  Two dogs (one being Mabel) thought they were the Alpha dogs and in just 30 minutes together there was a tiny scuffle and I would worry the entire week we were gone that something more serious could happen.

When I thought we didn't have another option, one of our friends, who we call Danger, offered to stay at our house for the week to watch the dogs.  Miracle!  It was perfect.  We promised him that in addition to payment with liquor we'd have food for him for the entire week.  I started working on a freezer meal menu and of course I headed to Pinterest.  I found this awesome dish that I wanted to try for me and Stephen and it sounded perfect to freeze.

Baked Shrimp Scampi from the blog What's Cookin Chicago?

Since I followed the recipe exactly this time around (shocker!) please go to the original website for the full details.  It's a pretty expensive dish if the shrimp aren't on sale, but in reality we can get 6 servings out of it, so it's not too bad.  When it was time to put the shrimp in baking dishes, I used one 8x8 dish for the portion that Stephen and I would eat that night and I used a disposable 8x8 dish that I put in the freezer for Danger.  Our dish I put right in the oven and Danger's dish I double covered in foil, wrote the instructions on the top and stuck it in the freezer.

It is such a great meal!  Because we butterfly the shrimp it was so tender.  I'll definitely keep that trick in mind for other shrimp dishes.  For our side we wanted to be a little healthy so we went with Quinoa instead of rice or pasta.  It was delicious.  It's a little salty for me, but I had a lovely glass of milk with dinner and I couldn't have been happier.  I also plan on making some manicotti tonight and doing the same thing - half for us and half into the freezer.  The last meal that I'll make ahead for Danger is a chicken dish with individual serving sizes that go right into a freezer bag.  I used to make it a lot when I was single.  That should be enough food to feed one person for five nights.  If not, we also have a frozen pizza hanging out just in case.

I've never really considered making meals ahead of time and freezing them.  I know there are a TON of people out there who make a month's worth of meals in one day, but I've never seen the need.  Some of my favorite evenings are in the kitchen with Stephen.  However, now that I've seen how easy it is just to split off a dish into two more reasonable servings it might be something I tackle moving forward.

And just because I love this picture so much, here is a picture of the dogs at the dog park this weekend. There were a ton of other dogs and humans at the park this trip so we decided to keep ours in the small dog section.  We didn't want anyone to piss off Mabel.  They loved it.  In a short 10 minutes our dogs were in the grass in the shade, spent.

Goose is finally figuring out how to stay still long enough for me to take a picture of him! Mama is so happy.  He's also been spoiled and allowed to fall asleep in the bed with me a few nights before Stephen comes to bed and then he's put in the crate.  He loves it.  But it's 100% obvious that two humans and two dogs will not be able to sleep in the bed.  It's a good thing he loves his crate.

Shrimp, Feta and Fresh Herb Mac n Cheese

I love Pinterest.  I go on every single day and look for new recipes to try.  I look for craft ideas, ideas to help make our house prettier/better/more useful.  Pinterest has everything.  I saw this recipe while pinning a few weeks ago and decided to give it a shot.  I mean come on, it's a twist on such a great Southern Comfort Food, with shrimp, how could it go wrong?!

Photo from Annie's Eats - author's photography

The original recipe is from Annie's Eats blog.  That's another great thing about Pinterest - I can find blogs I would have never found without the website.  The blog is wonderful and I plan to add it to my list of daily blogs to check out.  (The list keeps growing and growing and growing...)

I stayed with the recipe from start to finish.  The only thing I did add was some fresh, chopped up bacon that we had on hand. It was delicious.  The night I made the meal we had 4 other people at hour house for dinner, I needed something that could feed a crowd and wouldn't keep me in the kitchen all evening.  This was perfect.  The 6 of us, three men and three women, ate a little less than half of the dish.  Last night three of us had leftovers and we still have enough for two more servings.  This meal goes the distance!

The ingredient list isn't crazy either, which is nice.

Ingredients:
1 lb. pasta shapes
1 lb. raw shrimp (31-40 ct.), peeled and deveined, cut in half (if desired)
10 oz. feta cheese, crumbled and divided
Zest of 1 lemon, divided
½ cup Panko breadcrumbs
2 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped, divided
5 tbsp. butter, divided
4 tbsp. all-purpose flour
3 cups milk
2 tbsp. fresh dill, chopped  (I used dried dill from the pantry)
8 oz. Gruyere cheese, shredded (about 2 cups)
½ tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. ground black pepper


For the pasta, I used elbow macaroni because that was all I had on hand in the quantity that we needed.  Apparently it's time to do some pasta shopping.

The feedback from everyone, all SEVEN of us who have had some, has been very positive.  It was such an easy recipe, I'm so glad it was so delicious so I can add it to my mental cookbook.

What happens when you put shrimp in the garbage disposal?

I can tell you.  Let me set the stage.  Late Sunday afternoon we had a few friends over for some drinks and Stephen and I offered to cook dinner.  Earlier in the day we had gone to two different farmers markets so we were stocked with some good food.  We had a cocktail or two each and then started cooking.  I was trying a new recipe, more on that later, and I'd had a drink, so I was running around the kitchen a little more frantic than when it's just the two of us at the house.  Stephen was helping me with some shrimp for the meal.  He removed the shells and tails and cut each of them in half so they were more bite sized pieces.  Stephen is a great cook and I never watch over his shoulder to see what he's doing to correct him.  Yes, sometimes I look over his shoulder to ask why he's not following the recipe, but he hasn't made a bad decision... until Sunday.

I was mixing something by the stove, with my back to the sink and turned around just as I saw the shrimp tails and peels go into the sink with the garbage disposal.  I shrieked that they shouldn't go down, but it was too late, he had made up his mind.  Shrimp was fine, he said.  He throws everything down the garbage disposal, even the things I know shouldn't go down; egg shells, lemon peels, ice, etc.  Fast forward to turning on the garbage disposal with the shrimp tales inside.  Begin the bubbles.  In the middle of our dinner party, with a ton of stuff going on in the kitchen, the sink was blocked up.  For the rest of the night we used the other side of the sink, no clog there, but we were unable to really rinse off any dishes when the meal was done.

We tried a drain cleaner, we tried the plunger, and we even tried the Pinterest suggestion of baking soda with white vinegar.  Nothing worked.  The disposal would run, the water wouldn't go down.  After some research online I found that there weren't any magic suggestions and out next step was to take apart the pipes.

I was ready to call the plumber.  Stephen gave it a shot while I kept myself busy.  If I couldn't see what was going on under the sink, I wouldn't stress out.  As soon as he had the pipe off the clog was right there in front of us and it was easy to clean out.  I took the pipe outside and hosed it out before we put it back into the sink.  Problem solved!

Moral of the story: As soon as you put shrimp peels and/or tails into the garbage disposal it will form a nice little ball and clog the drain.  Nothing will clean that clog.  You must take apart your sink.  Don't be like us, avoid shrimp in the sink.

Goose hanging out on the bed - 5 1/2 months old!

This post is pretty boring, so here is an adorable picture of Goose.  He's getting so big.  There are days I get home from work and I think he's grown while I was at the office.  Six cups of food a day will do that.  (Yes, that's a lot of food.  We know.  We'll cut him back once he starts to look chubby.  Right now he's still super lean.)  Goose totally demolished a rope chew toy so we had to replace it with another non-distructable one.  Enter Kong Ball.  I'm pretty sure Goose thinks he is the best dog in the entire world because we gave him such a special treat.  He tried to sleep with it last night, too.  Cute little buddy.

Quinoa Seafood Salad

Yes, another post about Quinoa, but I can't help it, it's so good!  I found a recipe on Pinterest that I had to try, the original recipe is called the Superfood Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette.  Superfood it is!  I made a quite a few adjustments to the recipe but click here to see the original- totally worth it.  I want to give credit where credit is due - I never would have made my version of this salad without Iowa Girl Eats.

Superfood Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette from Iowa Girl Eats 

We didn't have all the ingredients to make the dish, but we substituted and it was still amazing.  We cooked the quinoa as directed and I used chicken broth (I was out of chicken stock) for the liquid.  I made double the quinoa needed for this recipe so we have it already ready to go for tonight's meal.  Half a cup uncooked quinoa in this dish is about 4 servings because of all of the other stuff added in.  I had the can of black beans, so we were good to go there.  I also didn't have frozen corn or pomegranate arils or orange.  Yes, the recipe was basically just a guideline for me at this point.  I used canned corn, rinsed and it worked just fine.  In place of the pomegranate arils I used some fresh blueberries that we picked ourselves over the weekend at a blueberry farm.  Nothing beats fresh blueberries.  We didn't have anything to substitute for the orange, but the dish was fabulous without it.  Will try to remember an orange the next time we buy avocado.  Everything else we had on hand.

We did mix in some shrimp to the dish and loved it.  Stephen was in charge of the shrimp and he cooked it in a very little bit of bacon grease and lemon juice, pepper and garlic powder.  Once it was done he removed it from the heat and added a bit of milk to the pan to make a rue.  Then he put the shrimp back into the pan to coat.  We added the shrimp to the quinoa mixture and he squeezed a large lemon over the dish while I mixed everything together.  Because we had that to mix in, we didn't make the lemon vinaigrette in the recipe.  I liked the dish without olive oil.

Overall, the salad was amazing.  Where most of my meals with quinoa have had quinoa as the main ingredient, this dish was an mix of so many flavors.  The quinoa coated most of the other ingredients, but was definitely just a supporting cast member.  I absolutely can't wait to get home to have the leftovers.

Here are the ingredients that I had in my Quinoa Seafood Salad:
1/2 cup dry quinoa
1/3 cup red onion, chopped
1 avocado, chopped
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, rinsed
couple handfulls of fresh blueberries
1 lemon squeezed, more to taste if necessary

For the shrimp:
1/2 lb shrimp
one lemon
small amount of bacon grease, enough to coat the bottom of the pan only
splash of milk
pepper
garlic powder

Cook the quinoa as you normally would, let it cool while you cook the shrimp.  Once the quinoa is cool, mix in all the ingredients then add the shrimp.  Mix in juice of half the lemon.  Stir to coat.  Mix in the juice of the second half of the lemon.  Serve room temp or cold.