A Tale of Two Shrimp

We love seafood here at the Sweet Posy house.  Shrimp is one of my favorites (and clams, and trout, and salmon; okay, okay, I'll stop).  This is a tale of two shrimp dishes.

Our son gave me a wonderful cookbook for Christmas, The Skinnytaste Cookbook by Gina Homolka.  (Homolka also writes a blog which you can find here.)  We've been trying lots of fabulous, healthy entrees from the book.  Almost everything we've tried has been a hit except the Silky Chocolate Cream Pie, not a fan of that one.  One of my favorite recipes from the cookbook is Cilantro Lime Shrimp, which I have made several times.  Recently when I pulled out a bag of frozen shrimp to thaw for dinner, my son expressed a little bit of boredom at the prospect of Cilantro Lime Shrimp again.

So I looked around online for another shrimp recipe and, since the weather had warmed up enough to grill, a grilled Cajun shrimp recipe sounded good to both of us.  We served it over quinoa with grilled vegetables, and it turned out beautifully.  Beautiful to look at, that is.

I like fairly spicy food, but this was so spicy hot that my lips tingled for at least half an hour after dinner!  Yikes!  I didn't save the recipe, so I can't link to it, but as I recall it contained three tablespoons of Cajun seasoning for two pounds of shrimp.  (I use a homemade version of Emeril Essence.)  I know we reduced the seasoning a bit, but whatever it was, it was WAY too much.  I couldn't face peppery food for days afterward.

About a week later, I pulled out another bag of shrimp.  There was a little grumbling from a certain quarter, but I made the Cilantro Lime Shrimp again.  The husband completely understood why -- I had to get the taste and memory of that super hot shrimp out of my mind.  I served the Cilantro Lime Shrimp (recipe here) over brown rice seasoned with cumin, lime juice, and cilantro.  Bliss.

Something Fishy

I am back among the living, having come out of the weeds and the zombie state of an imminent deadline.  After a weekend spent celebrating the baby's twenty-first birthday, I have now settled back into my usual routine.

It is still winter here, despite the occasional robin sighting, so last night I decided on a warming meal of seafood chowder.  I had eaten clam chowder lots of times, but didn't discover seafood chowder until a trip to Ireland in 2009.  Our daughter went to the University of Limerick for a semester, and she and I spent about ten days driving along the west coast of Ireland before school started.  Being cheap, I soon learned that a bowl of chowder, served with that wonderful Irish brown bread, made a fabulous, inexpensive meal.  It was available almost everywhere, and I never had a bad bowl.





I recently watched Ina Garten make seafood chowder on Food Network, so when I saw wild-caught shrimp at the grocery store, I decided to try it.  I followed her recipe as closely as I could, only substituting cod for monkfish, which was not available.  This is a hearty, fishy soup, loaded with fish, shrimp, scallops, and crab meat.

A pound of shrimp, half pound of scallops, a little more
than a half pound of cod, and  six ounces of crab meat

There are vegetables, too: carrots, potatoes, celery, corn, and onion, but seafood is definitely the star of this chowder. The husband actually said he would like more potatoes, and I think I agree with him.

The vegetables simmering before the stock and seafood are added.

I would also add more flavoring I think.  Some recipe reviewers said they added a touch of cayenne.  That might help.  It was very good overall, but a little mild.  The stock was flavored with thyme, onion, and garlic, but it just needed more ooomph.  Maybe I didn't add enough salt and pepper.  For the recipe, you can click the Food Network link, here.

With One Meatball

When I was growing up, my mother would occasionally make meatballs and cabbage.  It was never my favorite dish -- I prefer my cabbage raw -- yet I made it for my own family as they grew up.  It's a simple dish of porcupine-style, rice-studded meatballs, stewed with cabbage and tomatoes.

The most appealing thing about this meal growing up was it would usually prompt my dad to sing a few bars of One Meatball, a Depression era tune recorded by The Andrews Sisters among others.  Of course, I never heard a "real" version of the song until the internet came along.  In fact, I wasn't even sure there was a real version.  And frankly, no one else sings it like my dad.  Every time I eat this dish, I hear him warbling "You don't get any bread with one meatball."

Dad isn't much of a singer, but he did have one other signature song.  As with One Meatball, my dad only sang the "good part" of his other song, Jack of Diamonds.  Here is the part I learned as a wee little child.

"If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck/I'd dive to the bottom and never come up."  

This was followed by a loud hiccup.  I love the complete political incorrectness of teaching that song to little kids.  By the way, my father is the next thing to a teetotaler, so it's especially funny that this is "his song."

Just as I've shared the meatball cabbage meal with my family, I also passed my father's two songs along to my kids.  I hope they'll remember to sing them to their kids someday too.