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.