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.

Now I Want to Try the Potato Chips....

Revelation time!  Well, "revelation" might be a bit too extreme.  Kind-of-small-but-still-techincally-life-changing-realization time!  Turns out shrimp don't really taste like anything!  I like that!

Let me start at the very beginning.  As a small child, I actually enjoyed shrimp.  "Enjoy" doesn't do my feelings justice.  I loved shrimp with every fiber of my seven-year-old being.  We would go to Old Country Buffet so I could gorge myself on mac and cheese and shrimp for ultra cheap.

Then something happened.  It might have been an association between that kid who spewed at Old Country Buffet while I was eating shrimp and shrimp themselves.  It might have been a simple case of over-saturation.  Who can say?  Whatever it was, I suddenly found shrimp disgusting.  I could not stand the idea of having those things on my table, let alone in my mouth.

About two or three years ago, I realized that the egg rolls I had been eating my whole life (from the absolutely divine Mee Mah) had shrimp in them.  Curse you, mood lighting, for not revealing those disgusting little creatures!  But I was too old to just stop eating delicious egg rolls.  (The best in the country, my father and I would argue.)  I tried to pretend I had never seen the little things.

Even before I started dating Joey, he would talk about how much he and his family loved shrimp.  He made it sound like they were actually a Scottish-American off-shoot of the Gump family.  I would tell him that his family, like shrimp, was gross.  Who would eat such ugly, disgusting, little animals?  (Of course, his family is lovely.  They were lovely even when I thought shrimp were the oceanic equivalent of worms.)

Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and try shrimp, securely on my "Do Not Eat" list for well over a decade, one more time.  Joey was ecstatic.  I was apprehensive, to say the least.

We bought Jumbo Butterfly Shrimp.  I was nervous that these would be too big.  Joey pointed out that "jumbo shrimp" is an oxymoron.  Shrimp would never be huge.  We also decided to make a whole bunch of mac and cheese in case I hated the shrimp.

So we cooked up some dinner.  I nervously sat down to eat.  They weren't as big as I thought they were going to be.  That was a plus.

There they are.  They've still got tails attached to them!

Obviously, I dipped them in tartar sauce.  They tasted like tartar sauce.  When I ate them plain, they tasted like fried batter.  Shrimp doesn't really have a strong flavor.  It seemed to just take on the flavor of whatever was closest.

I liked it.  It doesn't have the same texture problem that fish does.  I would totally eat this again.  I don't know if I'm ready for them without any breading, but I might be ready for prawn potato chips.