Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Shrimpier Than Before

Falling behind again!

About a week ago, I gave shrimp another go.  This time they weren't covered in fried bread.  Fried bread usually makes everything better, and I wanted to see if I liked shrimp or just loved fried bread.

So Joey and I bought a two-pound bag of shrimp.  We figured Shrimp Alfredo should be pretty innocuous.  (Joey forgot he doesn't actually like alfredo.  This fact will be important later.)  We decided to cook up a pound of shrimp and invite Emily to help us eat it.  Emily loves shrimp.

First things first.  We needed to peel and de-vein the shrimp.  I had to rip little, slimy legs off of the shrimp.  And then pull out their digestive tracts.  Gross.

One bowl holds legless shrimp.  The other, their itty bitty legs.

So after that ordeal, we boiled the little ocean bugs.  And we boiled up some linguine.  We did a great job cooking the shrimp, but for whatever reason the pasta was more al dente than even I like.  And I'm a big fan of al dente pasta.  We probably should have heated up our canned alfredo sauce, but we had already been working on this dinner for at least an hour and a half.  We just wanted it to be served already!

And during the cooking process, I had a wave of nausea hit me.  My stomach felt like it was filled with all those slimy feet.  I don't know what the cause was, but my stomach was on high alert for the rest of the night.

So our undercooked pasta, perfectly cooked shrimp, and room temperature alfredo sauce were all finally done!  And I managed to eat about six shrimp.  The meal didn't taste bad.  It would definitely be improved by pasta that was better cooked and sauce that was warm.  I was just feeling so gross!  I ended up having a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner.

The shrimp weren't so bad.  The nausea, undercooked pasta, and room temperature alfredo were.

Shrimp are better than scallops.  They don't have that vinyl texture.  Their taste is pretty bland, which means they can be paired with a lot of different flavors.  I totally understand the appeal of shrimp.  But I was too nauseous to give them a fair assessment.  Looks like I'll to have a another shrimp adventure to find out my true feelings.

Remember when I said that Joey forgetting he doesn't like alfredo sauce would be important?  Well, it only took one bite for him to remember.  So he gave his shrimp to Emily.  After about six bites, I couldn't stomach any more.  So I gave my shrimp to Emily.

Emily ate almost a pound of shrimp by herself.

Emily is a seafood-adventure life-saver.

1 comment: