Runaway October

When­ever any­one asks me where I’d like to eat for din­ner, the first thing to pops into my head is Out­back Steak­house. I’ve had Prime Rib from many many places but I pre­fer it from Out­back by far. I guess you could call me an Out­back Prime Rib fan­girl, I’ll never tire of eat­ing there!

Not too long ago I decided I needed to change things up and order some­thing dif­fer­ent. I set­tled on the Shrimp En Fuego. It’s a lovely com­bi­na­tion of Shrimp, Mush­rooms and Toma­toes in a spicy cream sauce served over an open baked potato. Yum, huh? It seems that when we eat out, I almost always get some­thing heavy in mush­rooms since Matt refuses to eat them.

(Photo by Sarah Caron)

Since we don’t often eat out, I decided I’d try and wing it at home after find­ing a great sale on shrimp. The Inter­nets weren’t so help­ful for a recipe, so I gath­ered all the tips I could find about it and dived in. I can’t tell you how alike it is com­pared to Outback’s because I don’t have the option to try them next to eat other, but it turned out really good. Spicy.

Shrimp En Fuego

Serves 4, dou­bles perfectly

Ingre­di­ents:

• 4 Baked pota­toes, prefer­ably with the skin salted and oiled
• 1  jar Cheesy Ragu Clas­sic Alfredo Sauce (I was lazy and didn’t make my own)
• 1 Table­spoon Chipo­tle Chili Powder
• 3 table­spoon Chili Gar­lic Sauce (Com­monly called Rooster Sauce, and found in the eth­nic food sec­tion of most markets)
• 1 pound fresh shrimp (frozen may be sub­sti­tuted, if thawed), deveined and tails removed.
• 1 pound mush­rooms
• 2 cloves gar­lic, minced or pressed
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 pack­age cherry toma­toes, halved.

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Pre­heat oven to 350°F.
2. Scrub pota­toes and poke with a fork a cou­ple times. Rub the out­sides with olive oil then roll or rub with medium grind sea salt. Place in oven and cook until desired doneness.
3. When pota­toes are almost done, com­bine alfredo sauce, chipo­tle pow­der, and chili gar­lic sauce in a medium sauce pan. Warm over medium heat, stir­ring occasionally.
4. If you wish, the amount of chipo­tle and chili sauce can be adjusted now. I had to keep the spices low or The Hubs and The Boys wouldn’t eat it.
   

   My food pho­tog­ra­phy isn’t very good, but you get the idea.

5. While sauce is warm­ing, sauté shrimp, mush­rooms and minced gar­lic over medium high heat until shrimp is pink and mush­rooms are ten­der. Add salt and pep­per to taste.
6. If you wish, you can add the sauce to the pan of shrimp and mush­rooms, mix­ing every­thing together, or keep them sep­a­rate. Place open potato on a plate, layer with shrimp and mush­rooms, then sauce with halved toma­toes on top. (It looks bet­ter that way. For the ease of feed­ing my horde I mix every­thing together.)
7. Don’t for­get to turn off the oven.
8. Enjoy!

I’ve been tagged by Tamara of Quar­ter of an inch, so here’s my… uhm, entry?

“Open the 6^th pic­ture folder on your com­puter, open the 6^th photo and blog it. Write some­thing about it. Then tag 6 more peo­ple to do the same.”

This pic­ture is hor­ri­ble. It’s fuzzy and there’s a shadow run­ning through it. I like it though. It’s my lit­tle brother pos­ing while get­ting ready to play WoW. Notice the cute pink tower in the lower cor­ner, it’s my moms com­puter — doesn’t that rock? He’s sin­gle ladies. I’ll give you his email

As far as tag­ging peo­ple, well… if you’d like to play please help your­self. Just leave a lit­tle com­ment to let us know and we’ll come visit once you post. Capiche?

If you knew that every minute of the next 24 hours of your life would be recorded on cam­era is there any­thing you would change about your habits?

Well, I’d prob­a­bly stop pick­ing my nose… No just kid­ding. Maybe. I might try to kinda spice things up since my life is pretty bor­ing and rep­e­ti­tious. Maybe throw together a flambé’ for the kids’ break­fast and wear fish­nets? I’d be more con­cious about how frizzy my hair is. It’s got­ten kinda uncon­trol­lable lately. Oh and not so much cussing under my breath. Cam­eras catch that kinda stuff don’t they?

If you could take a one-month trip to any sin­gle des­ti­na­tion in the world and money is not a con­sid­er­a­tion, where would you go?

Wow, I really never planned that far ahead. There’s many sin­gle des­ti­na­tions I’d love to go, but for a month? Pos­si­bly Dublin or Prague or Madrid — ya know, the big­ger places that had a months worth of stuff to do. Or a nice lit­tle cot­tage in the mid­dle of nowhere with green as far as the eye can see and a median tem­per­a­ture of about 70.

What is the best exam­ple of “per­fec­tion” that you can think of?

Breast­milk and breast­feed­ing. Seri­ously. Name me one other sub­stance that is so incred­i­bly pow­er­ful that it alone can triple a person’s size, in a healthy way, while nour­ish­ing the brain and pro­mot­ing emo­tional growth and tac­tile stimulus.

Photo via [Rot­ten­Toma­toes]