Switching things up for dinner

For some reason or another it is really easy for us to fall into a dinner rut that consists of at least four pasta dishes in a week. Now, I know what you are thinking… an Italian whose go-to easy dish is pasta? Go figure. Anyways, when I bought baby shrimp at the grocery store last Saturday that is exactly how I intended to use them… in some kind of creamy alfredo sauce. But after eating birthday baked ziti two nights in a row, the last thing I wanted for dinner was pasta again and those shrimp needed to be used. Lucky for me I found what looked to be a very interesting recipe from Real Simple (love this website).

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 cup long-grain white rice
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 4 slices bacon
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/4 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 10-ounce package frozen corn

Directions

1. In a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, combine the rice, 1 ¼ cups water, and ½ teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Stir once, cover, and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 18 minutes. (Do not lift the lid or stir!) Remove the rice from heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork before serving.
2. Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp, 5 to 7 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel, let cool, then break into pieces.
3. Wipe out the skillet and heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 4 to 6 minutes.
4. Add the wine and cook until reduced by half, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cream and bring to a boil.
5. Stir in the shrimp, corn, and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Simmer until cooked through, 4 to 6 minutes. Stir in the bacon and serve over the rice.

Now, of course, me being me, I couldn’t just make the recipe as is… so here is how I changed it:

·         The recipe tells you to cook the bacon, and wipe out the pan before cooking the onions… what person in their right mind would waste all that good bacon grease? So I cooked the onions in it – lots more flavor (and calories).

·         Instead of heavy whipping cream and white wine for the base of the sauce I made a basic roux (but thinner than normal) and added garlic powder, dill seafood seasoning, about ¼ cup feta cheese, and probably a tablespoon or so of white wine (only because the bottle was already open) along with the recommended salt and pepper.

·         I would have added the olive oil, but I forgot it… turned out fine without it.

·         Instead of frozen corn I used canned corn, and instead of long-grain rice, I used short grain sticky rice.

I made steamed broccoli to go with and it all turned out great. Willy and I both really liked it and it really didn’t take too long to make. I think I’m going to keep this one in my back pocket.

The Entertainment Factor

Even CWU grads get to a point in their lives where get-togethers with drinking games as the primary method of entertainment get a little old.  So this summer Willy decided to make our very own set of Washoe Boards. For those of you who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, here is a link to some background and the general rules. The concept is pretty similar to horseshoes, but we can take it from house to house and not dig holes in the middle of the yard.

There are quite lot of variations to the game, and I’m not quite sure where Willy got the directions he used to build our board but here is what I CAN tell you. He constructed the base of the boards using 1” particle board and cut 3” holes in the center. For the surface of the boards we used green Astroturf – mostly because it is fairly weather resistant. We cut it to size, wrapped it around the bottom and took the staple gun to it. To tell the two teams’ washers apart, we had to spray paint them different colors. So what colors did we choose? Why purple and gold of course (Go Dawgs!)

The game has been a pretty good hit this summer. We played on 4^th of July, at our summer BBQ and even brought it camping. I have yet to master an effective toss – the washers just bounce all over when I throw them. Willy is much better at it than I am. Here is a great example of washoes stance demonstrated by Wadz. Just let us know if you want to come over and play!