In Which We Don’t Do South Beach

My mother throws a good party. By which I mean, there are plenty of people, plenty of drinks, and way too much food. At her last party, there were six boxes of pizza, a tray roughly the size of Texas covered in sushi, cheese and bread, homemade chicken wings, two thousand pounds of baked ziti, and seven million dessert options. Oh, and salad. My father narrowly talked her down off the ledge of making five hundred tons of shrimp scampi, meaning that along with half a lemon cake and a barrel full of brownies, the Boy and I left with a Ziploc of peeled, deveined shrimp, a stick of butter, a jar of minced garlic, and this recipe.

Salt-n-peppa.

This recipe comes from the South Beach Diet. It is quick, it is easy, and it is yummy. However, this yumminess comes with a caveat – the Boy and I are not on the South Beach Diet.

In Which We End the Cleanse

Two weeks and a lot of cheating later, we have completed our Cleanse! I will say, despite all of the cheating, I feel pretty good about it. My skin is quite a bit happier now that it’s no longer on a sugar diet (much as my taste buds enjoy that). We ended on a high note with Pumpkin-Shrimp curry that I am still bringing as leftovers for lunch at work!

I made this one pretty much all by my lonesome, as it’s a bit more time-intensive with all the chopping and slicing (and shrimp peeling and de-veining, though I think maybe you can buy them already peeled and de-veined. Mine were not.). The Boy had work and I had a day off, so I did all the chopping, etc. so we could eat at a reasonable hour.

Once you’ve done your mise-en-place (yes, now we’re fancy and French up in here), you cook the onions and ginger:

Mmm…caramelizing.