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I borrowed heavily from a link my Brother sent me for this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/dining/25mini.html?ref=dining

but when I tried it on the kids recently they gagged. Soon after they all got sick, really sick, and have stayed home from school most of this week.  So I tried it again with different ingredients:

3 bullion cubes (Beef, Veg, Chicken, whatever)

Bag of noodles (not Italian pasta–using that for anything non-Italian kinda grosses me out)

2 Scallions, sliced up super thin

Boil a big pot (fill halfway w/water) and a small pot (3-4 cups) of water. Add the noodles to the big pot and the builion to the small pot. Drain the noodles when they’re soft, throw them back in the big pot, pour the builion over the noodles, and dump in the scallions.

You can add more stuff if you want, but remember–gag-risk increases exponentially with number of both ingredients and kids.

I been working on my coconut shrimp:

• 1 pack 25-35 frozen shrimp, e-z-peel®™©
• 2 tb Flour/2 tsp Old Bay mixed together in a bowl
• 1 Lime
• Handful Sweet Shredded Coconut
• Handful Bread Crumbs
• pinch red hot pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup Milk/cream
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp Mayonnaise
• 3 tbsp Orange Marmalade

1. Throw frozen shrimp in some cool water for 1/2 hour or so or whatever
2. pull off the shrimp shells and chuck ’em
3. heat up pan with 1/4 inch oil on medium/high
4. dry off shrimp in some paper towels and chuck em in the flour/old bay mix and dredge those bad boyz
5. coat the dredged shrimp in a whisked mix of egg/milk/beer
6. Toss coated shrimp in the coconut/bread crumb/pepper flak mix
7. Whisk mayo/marmalade, squeeze 1/2 lime in it and whisk more
8. Throw shrimp in pan for 3-4 miutes, turn
9. Wait 3-4 minutes, place cooked shrimp on paper towels
10. When cool enough, serve with mayo/marmalade dip. Toothpicks are good to have at this point.

How do we prove we are the owners of our content? It’s trickier than you might think.

Made this last night, easy and quick, mmm. This is a great way to cook shrimp as it’s hard to overcook them, and they absorb all the flavors of the rice. I call it “Dirty” rice because this batch ended up with a nice grey-brown color, but YMMV…

Ingredients:

• 1 bag frozen, EZ-Peel shrimp, 24-30 count (preferable western hemisphere like Belize)
• 1 cup rice (I used Jasmine, anything should work)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 tbsp white wine
• 1 peeled carrot
• 1/2 peeled red onion
• 3-4 cloves peeled garlic
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 Jalapeño pepper
•  2 tsp. black peppercorns
• 1 tsp.  caraway seeds
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tsp. ground cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp. oil of your choice

Rinse the shrimp briefly under cold water and allow to thaw. The bag says run continuously under cold water until thaw. Great advice;  way to conserve water. When they’re ready, peel off and chuck the skins.

Dice the veggies into small pieces.

Mortar/pestle the spices into a coarse mixture.

Heat up the oil in a heavy pot on medium-low heat. Let the oil get really hot, then throw in the veggies. Stir them until they caramelize.

Pour in white wine to de-glaze. Add rice and continue stirring until wine is absorbed and stuff starts to sizzle again.

Pour the chicken broth slowly, a little at a time, stirring continuously, over a 15-18 minute period. Test the rice occasionally, it should get tender yet firm, creamy and maybe a little crunchy.

Turn heat on low, toss in the shrimp, and cover for 5 minutes.

Serves 4.

I’m researching plugins that will auto-post to FB and Twitter accounts. Most plugins force you to create facebook “apps” to do the FB thing, a process that I despise. This one is called “social”, and it apparently doesn’t require an app.  I’ll report my findings at the next Buffalo WordPress Users meetup tomorrow evening. If you haven’t joined the meetup group yet, what are you waiting for? It’s free! http://www.meetup.com/Buffalo-Wordpress/