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.

Grant Park Farmer's Market

Stephen and I love buying local and organic food.  I've posted about the DeKalb Farmers Market that we try to go to at least once a month and we're always looking for healthy substitutes to our diet.  The park in our neighborhood, Grant Park, has a farmer's market every Sunday from 9:30am - 1:00pm in the warm months (April 29 - December 16).  Click here for the market's website.

source: grantparkmarket.org

Surprisingly, this week was the first time we went over to check it out.  It was pretty nice!  There were a large variety of vendors and there were tons of families out and about.  They even have a cooking demos by a local chef each week.  We caught the very end of the cooking lesson this week by Nick Melvin.  The chef demo on August 12 is on Quinoa Cuisine.  We're huge quinoa fans so I'm going to try to make it to that one.

The area where they host the cooking demos was gorgeous.  We plan to take some wedding pictures in Grant Park and this area is going to be 100% perfect.  I emailed the picture above to our wedding photographer right away.  Don't you love how the light comes through the giant trees to the stone arch. I'm pretty sure it used to be a fountain, now it's perfect for some wedding pictures.

We ended up buying some produce and some jam Sunday morning.  All of the produce that we needed for the week wasn't available at the market, so Stephen and I dropped off what we bought and headed to the DeKalb Farmer's Market to finish off our shopping list.  Great Sunday morning.

Over the weekend we also discovered our new favorite park not too far from our house - the South Bend Dog Park.  Yep, we found a legit dog park by our house.  I noticed the sign for the park a few months ago when we drove past on our way to a Dave Matthews Band Concert at Lakewood Amphitheater.  Now that Goose is old enough and fully recovered from his neutering surgery with all his shots we decided to take the pups out to see how they like it.  Obviously we knew Mabel would be in Heaven as long as we brought a ball, which we did.  Goose was pretty excited about his freedom off the leash.  He didn't quite understand fetch (he can do it in the house, but in wide open spaces he had no clue what to do) but he'd run with Mabel as she went after the ball.  The park is huge and they had tons of space to run.  We were lucky to be the only ones there on Saturday morning.  There are a lot of hills in the park so after 4 or 5 throws of the ball both pups were tired and we headed home.  We met another family on Sunday who come to the park all the time and they said work day evenings are packed.  We'll try to avoid those times because Mabel doesnt' always get along with other lady dogs.  The best part of the park - how tired they are when we get home.