Firecracker Shrimp

Quick.  Run!  Make this for your graduation party, your Fourth of July party, your random summer grill-out parties, and (*sniff*) your end of summer Labor Day party, too.  But wait, why am I talking about the END of Summer when today it has officially just begun?!  They're sure to be the hit of the party.  This recipe is SO AWESOME that even though I am backlogged on posting recipes from May (finally got through April with that last Orange Berry Muffin recipe!) I just had to share this one with you.

Watch out, they're fiery little guys.  A mini explosion of fire inside of your mouth!  The beauty of this recipe is it is ridiculously easy to make.  Very few ingredients involved and fast cooking.  Watch the shrimp carefully so that they're not overdone.  You want them pink, opaque, and slightly charred but a couple of minutes on the grill is all it takes.  Good thing, too, because you'll be downing these shrimps like snacks.  Oh, and don't forget the water to quench your thirst!

Oh, and another thing.  Use the Sriracha hot sauce.  It really is THE BEST hot sauce in the world.  It's commonly used in Asian cooking and so you can usually find it in the Asian section of your local grocery store.  It's a clear bottle with red chili sauce inside and a green cap.  The easiest identifier is the rooster depicted on the front.  If you don't already have some, go buy some!  You won't regret it and it's totally versatile.  I put that s*** on everything!  Oh wait...that's supposed to be Frank's Red Hot.  But really, this is better...and I do put it on pretty much everything (lo mein, pizza, chili, etc.!).  It's sweet AND spicy.  Winning combination!

I served this one as a side dish for our Father's Day meal.  Kudos to Chris for grilling this one up all nice and yummy!  All I did was marinate them :).  Lots more delicious recipes on that one to come.  I was excited that there wasn't a single bad dish in that meal.  But this one, this is a keeper for sure.  Enjoy!

One Year Ago: Chicken Gyros with Tzatziki Sauce and Pasta Salad

Firecracker Shrimp

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Ingredients

• 1 pound large (16 to 20 count) shrimp, peeled and deveined.
• 2 tablespoons hot chili sauce (Sriracha is the best!)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 4 to 5 cloves garlic, pressed

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a large Ziploc bag, then add shrimp and marinate for 20 minutes to 2 hours.
2. Skewer shrimp and grill until opaque and with black bits (couple minutes ought to do it!).
3. Serve hot with lots of cold drinks handy!

Source: The Pioneer Woman

Orange Berry Muffins

Hi again.  Sorry I've been so sporadic in posting.  Toby keeps me very busy and even though I wake up at like 6AM daily now because of him I've been spending my extra hours cooking and uploading vacation photos rather than blogging.  There are so many great things I still need to blog about but I've been struggling to sit down and make myself write...err...type. 

Posting recipes is surprisingly a lot of work!  There's witty commentary to be made, photo editing, finding the recipe again months after you made the dish (I was about to give up on finding this one again!), recipe copy/pasting/modifying, and then making a printer-friendly link (another project left unfinished...I was supposed to back convert older recipes and am probably only halfway through.  Mental note to self to finish that up...).  Now add to the mix a dog that you have to watch to make sure he's behaving and you've got yourself some blogging difficulty.  It's a wonder I can even *cook* anymore.  But, I wouldn't trade my beagle Toby for the world.  He's awesome and so loving!

Back to the story on this recipe.  I made this one wayyyy back on EASTER WEEKEND!  Whoa that's a long time ago.  I had made these to eat as a snack in the car and for quick and inexpensive breakfasts while we were spending time with our friends Sig and Kristen on a couples road trip to Washington DC to see the Cherry Blossoms.  They were beautiful albeit I had expected it to be more enchanting.  Guess that's what happens when you go in peak season.  I was so mad when I saw people picking the blossoms and/or whole branches off the trees.  Way to ruin it for everyone!  The city itself was soooo much more awesome than I remember.  The last time I had gone was probably elementary school.  I definitely would like to visit again someday.  We *almost* saw President Obama on the way to Easter Sunday service but got tired of waiting for (at the time) what we thought might actually be nothing.

I'd have to say that Sig and Chris probably had more than their fair share of these muffins.  And I can't blame them.  They're TASTY!  The orange zest (use organic oranges to avoid the pesticides!) gives it a great morning wake-up zing while the berries burst with flavor.  The zest also smelled so fragrant and citrusy when I was rubbing it in the sugar...I'll admit I kind of wanted to stop right there and just eat the orange flavored sugar haha!  They are relatively healthy because I substituted some whole wheat flour for the white and there's relatively little sugar for a sweet bread type recipe.  I must have added strawberries to my muffins because I had some leftover.  The original recipe was just for blueberries but why not do a berry mix for some gorgeous color :).  I definitely plan on making this one again.  Especially with berries being in season now.  Yum!

One Year Ago: Exquisite Pizza Sauce

Orange Berry Muffins
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Yields: 12 Muffins

Ingredients

• Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
• About ¾ cup lowfat buttermilk
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• ⅓ cup (2.33 ounces) sugar
• 2 cups (9.6 ounces) all-purpose flour (I substituted 1 cup whole wheat flour for the same amount of all-purpose white flour)
• 2½ teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup blueberries and/or strawberries – fresh, preferably, or frozen (not thawed)
• Decorating sugar, for topping (optional)

Directions

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line the pan with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups.
2. Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey and melted butter.
3. In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of orange strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy and bubbly, and that’s just the way it should be. Stir in the berries. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.
4. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes. If you want to top the muffins with decorating sugar, sprinkle on the sugar after the muffins have baked for 10 minutes. When fully baked, the tops of the muffins will be golden and springy to the touch and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Source: Slightly modified from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From my Home to Yours, as seen on The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Buckeyes

Hello readers!  Have you missed me?

I'm sorry I've been so bad a blogging lately but a lot has been going on in our lives lately.  Chris and I went to Europe for a couple weeks and had a FABULOUS time in Germany, France, Italy, Croatia, and Greece.  I was blown away by the things we saw...

The Eiffel Tower (and no, I'm not talking about the one at the local theme park King's Island, either!)

Beautifully unique Venentian canals (AND St. Mark's Square flooding...it's so heartbreaking!)

 The Parthenon in Athens...I am bewildered at how old some of these ruins are!

And let's not forget the quintessential white house on blue water look of the Greek Islands such as Mykonos...

My stomach was also delighted by all the delicious things we ate.  I came back refreshed and ready to cook.  In fact, our travels home took us nearly a full 24 hours of being awake but once we got home, the first thing I said was "Oh kitchen, I love you and miss you!".  Imagine that...I MISSED COOKING!  Now, most normal people would probably dread the end of the vacation because that would mean back to cooking.  But me?  I was so inspired by all the foods that we ate that I just couldn't wait to get started.

Now, we got back two weeks ago as you'll see, I haven't posted in well over a month.  I also can't say I've done any real good big meals yet (thank goodness for my frozen stash of homemade meals!) because week 1 was spent re-adjusting to the Eastern time zone and week 2...well, that's the other part of our busy lives.  We are now unexpected first-time dog owners!

My sister's friend had found a little stray beagle at her work and decided to take him in.  They did everything they could to reunite the poor lost doggy with his owners but sadly, none could be found and her mom had had enough of him.  Enter my husband and me.  My sister knows that I love dogs and have wanted one for years now.  She also knows that we LOVE beagles.  Somehow, I convinced my husband to go visit the beagle, who was temporarily named by his foster family as "Richard".  We went and played with him for about an hour or hour and half and honestly, I did my best to stay distanced because I had a feeling my husband would just say no.  We slept on it and after some convincing from his mom and what I felt was a miracle, Chris agreed the next day that we could keep the dog!  So, we made arrangements to pick him up this past Friday and brought him home with us.  Needless to say he's kept us busy trying to acclimate him to us and our house.  Though, we're very fortunate because he is already house broken and quite a mellow little fella.  We have renamed him Toby and he's a happy little 24lb, ~2 year old beagle boy :).

Oh man...who could resist this sweet little guy's cute face with his big brown eyes, floppy ears, and wagging white tipped tail.  *Sigh* I'm a sucker for cute animals!

Anyway.  I do hope to get some recipes on here EVENTUALLY about my European traveling inspirations but given that I'm backlogged on recipes still in March and haven't gotten much cooking in lately it may be awhile.  Add to that our new furbaby Toby and cooking...and even more so, blogging about cooking...may be less frequent than in the past.  Bare with me though, I promise it will be worth it!!

For now, I leave you with a recipe that comes to you from my homestate of Ohio: The Buckeye State.  Buckeyes are nuts that come from the Buckeye tree.  The buckeye is named as such because it looks like the eye of a buck deer, from what I read.  I have no idea what a buckeye nut tastes like but apparently you roast them before you eat them.  The recipe that I am sharing with you is for a Buckeye Candy which mimics the look (though I highly doubt the taste) of a Buckeye nut. 

If you like peanut butter and chocolate, this recipe is for you!

One Year Ago: Garlic Cheddar Chicken

Buckeyes

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Prep Time: 15 Min

Cook Time: 5 Min
Ready In: 50 Min

Yields: 30 Buckeyes

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups peanut butter
• 
  
  1 cup butter, softened
• 
  
  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 
  
  4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 
  
  4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. 
   
   In a large bowl, mix together the peanut butter, butter, vanilla and confectioners' sugar. The dough will look dry. Roll into 1 inch balls and place on a waxed paper-lined cookie sheet.
2. Press a toothpick into the top of each ball (to be used later as the handle for dipping) and chill in freezer until firm, about 30 minutes.
3. Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until smooth.
4. Dip frozen peanut butter balls in chocolate holding onto the toothpick. Leave a small portion of peanut butter showing at the top to make them look like Buckeyes. If desired, use finger to cover the toothpick hole and smooth out the surface of the peanut butter.  Put back on the cookie sheet and refrigerate until serving.

Source: Modified from All Recipes