Drunken Shrimp part II

This time it kicked ass! I did the same marinade as the first time but grilled them instead of over-boiling/steaming them. So yum! Glad I got it right this time.

Drunken Shrimp Gone Wrong

Every Sunday starts the same. We sit down as a family and discuss what we want to eat for the week, make the menu and the grocery list and go to the store.

This week, we decided to have Chile Lime Grilled Shrimp for dinner tonight. Sounds good, huh? Too bad, I wouldn't know. Driving home from the store, my wheels started turning. What could I marinade the shrimp in? I had a lemon so I decided lemon and white wine. I got the shrimp out and squeezed the lemon until I could squeeze no more. As I reached into the fridge for the wine I got a change of heart and grabbed a beer. A Sam Adams Oktoberfest. Poured it all over the shrimp and added a few cloves of garlic. Sampled it and it was amazing. At that point I decided I would either boil the shrimp or steam it using the marinade I had created.

Fast forward 6 hours to dinner time, I had never boiled or steamed shrimp so I had no clue what I was doing. I figured boiling couldn't be too hard so I went with that. Everything was going great until Rylan started screaming. I left the shrimp to boil a little longer and went to nurse her one more time and put her back to bed. Bad idea. The shrimp boiled too long and tasted like pencil erasers.

I was so pissed. It would have been amazing if I had known what I was doing. I don't know if I mentioned this (I say that like people actually read this)but I know nothing about the art of cooking. I make it up as I go and rarely use a recipe (for the record, if I post it here, it was recipeless). So when I boiled the shrimp,I was simply going off my knowledge of boiling other food. I had no clue that shrimp were supposed done after boiling for only 2 minutes.

Damn shrimp. It would have been so good.

The Dangers of Fresh Herbs

What a crazy night. Forgetting it was a school night, a friend and I took the girls (her one and my two) to Ikea. By the time I got home, got Rylan in bed (did I mention that she screamed the whole 30 minutes home because she was hungry, or cold, or tired, or something...)and Ansley fed, it was almost 8 pm and I was exhausted. I wanted to start dinner-Mediterranean Shrimp Pasta- and Ansley wanted me to read to her from Ramona before she went to bed. I got the genius idea of having her sit on the counter and hold the book while I read and cooked. Too bad she hated the idea. The counter was to hard for her princess behind and it wouldn't be comfy. I had already started the shrimp and the pasta so I couldn't leave the kitchen. I was stuck. After lots of tears, a few moments of yelling, and a promise to read double tomorrow, I finally convinced her to go to bed Ramona-less.

Breathing in the peace and quiet, I poured a glass of whine and headed out to the porch to cut some basil. I chose a branch and sniped it off. I was just about to walk back into the kitchen when a frog lept from the branch I was carrying. I let out a small squeal. Whew, that was a close one, I thought. I would have freaked if I had brought that frog into the house. I made it into the kitchen. Put down the basil, took a much needed gulp of whine, stirred the shrimp andpa sta and then grabbed my knife and was set to chop the basil. That's when I saw it... a set of eyeballs. Lizard eyeballs attached to a lizard, sitting on the basil. I grabbed the basil, screaming, and ran to the sliding glass door. I was almost there when he jumped. I screamed louder, threw open the slider and kicked that little hitchhiker right out the door.

Seriously, what are the chances? A frog and a lizard on the same branch of basil. Good Lord, there is not a enough wine on this earth to make up for the evening I have had.