Garlic Shrimp over Whole Wheat Pasta

A few months back when Sam's Club Canada was liquidating their business, I picked up a couple of bags of frozen shrimp, shelled and veined.

I was over at Eat, Live, Run and saw how Jenna raved about her Engagement Scampi. I altered the recipe and I must say it was pretty yummy.


Garlic Shrimp over Whole Wheat Pasta

2 packs of whole wheat spaghettini, cooked according to package directions.
1 bag frozen shrimp, defrosted, shelled and veined
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp chives (I used freeze-dried)
1/2 cup turkey broth
1 stick salted butter (next time, I will use unsalted as I found the sauce too salty)
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp of red pepper flakes
small handful parsley, chopped

1. Heat the olive oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute for about a minute.

2. On high heat, add the shrimp to the garlic. When the shrimp is bright pink, remove shrimp and set aside.

3. Stir in chives, broth, butter, lemon, and red pepper. Boil until the sauce is reduced by half. Stir in the parsley and the shrimp and heat through.

Makes 6-8 servings.

After this meal I am regretting that I didn't pick up more bags of shrimp.

Leftovers Galore!

We had a lot of leftovers from the turkey dinner: bacon, rice, and, of course, turkey. I also had some fresh pineapple chunks and lettuce sitting in the fridge for a few days and wanted to use them up. I decided on making fried rice, Hawaiian-inspired.

Leftover Turkey Fried Rice, Hawaiian-inspired

4 eggs, lightly beaten with a fork and seasoned with a pinch of salt
4-5 C cooked rice, preferably from the night before (it makes for a less mushy and sticky fried rice)
1 C turkey, cubed or sliced
6-8 slices bacon, trimmed of excess fat and fully cooked and crumbled(I cooked mine in the microwave and used a paper towel to absorb the extra grease)
1/2 can of pineapple chunks (I used fresh)
1/3 head of lettuce, sliced in thin pieces
1-2 Tbsp soy sauce

1. Preheat a large non-stick skillet on medium heat. Spray with canola oil. Pour half the egg mixture into pan to make an egg pancake. When bottom is lightly browned, flip over. Once cooked, remove from pan and place on chopping board and cut into thin slices. Reserve the remaining egg mixture for later.

2. Spray the pan with canola oil and fry the rice (to warm it up). Season the rice with soy sauce to taste and add the remaining egg mixture to coat rice. Add turkey to pan and warm through. Add pineapple chunks. Once warm, add bacon, lettuce and sliced egg pancake. Season, if needed. If it isn't salty enough, add salt or fish sauce to taste.

Serve hot. Makes 4 servings.

Need Freezer Space and a little more

When we renovated our kitchen a year and a half ago we bought another fridge and put the older fridge in the basement. We decided that it was also time to dispose of our deep freezer because always had a lot of frost build-up and the foods were getting freezer burned. We figured we could do without a deep freezer and just live on the freezers in the fridge. Well, now I regret our decision of not having a deep freezer (well, tossing out the old deep freezer was a wise idea since it was not energy efficient and not doing its proper job in freezing our meats). I want to get another deep freezer because we have maxed out the space in the two fridge freezers and can't take advantage of any deals on meats or stock up on BBQ meats and burgers for the summer.

A couple of weeks ago there was a great deal on some beef short ribs, pork side ribs and some other meats. I knew we didn't have any space in the freezer but I couldn't resist a great deal. What's a girl to do? I knew I had to make room in the freezer. Then it hit me! I had a turkey in one of them. What a great way to make space. I took the turkey out and I instantly freed up 1/4 of the freezer. I put it in the fridge to defrost. It took over a week to defrost (thank goodness). Even as I cut off the packaging I noticed small chunks of ice in the cavity of the bird.

This is how I prepared the turkey. I took out the giblets and neck (I threw them out even though I could have used them to make a yummy gravy). I scrubbed it with sea salt and rinsed it under cool water. I thought to myself, what kind of stuffing should I throw into my bird? I brainstormed quickly and decided on a "everything but the kitchen sink" stuffing, thus freeing up more fridge space. A lemon, a bunch of parsley, garlic, celery and carrots. It keeps the turkey meat nice and moist with a hint of flavour from the stuffing ingredients (I learned this from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook). I sprinkled seasoning salt, steak spice and a Tuscan spice blend (from The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean). I then placed uncooked slices of bacon over the bacon (a little trick a friend told me 15 years ago).











This is how the turkey looked going into the oven (preheated at 350 degrees F):

And this is how it looked after 2.5 hours:

Remove and discard the bacon (my mom gobbles them up). I mixed the pan drippings, fat separated, with the gravy mix. The mix I use is the Nestle TRIO brown gravy mix - the best I've tried so far.

Hubby's rating: He doesn't like turkey but this time he raved at how tasty and moist it turned out.

Cook's rating: (that's me!) Delicious.

Ack! Carpenter Ants!!!!

Sorry for the long hiatus from the blog. I'm sure you'll understand after reading this post.

Yup! As I've already said in the title, our home has been raided by these pesky black ants since the end of April. It's bad enough as is but with 3 young children the problem is no laughing matter. Have you ever seen these nasty insects? They're gross. Take your regular ant and magnify it to the size of the top digit of your baby finger (well, I do have small hands so maybe I'm exaggerating for some of you). Ewww! And when you squish them, they make a crunchy noise. Have I disgusted you enough?

So I'm hoping you can understand why I haven't been posting. I have not been cooking for fear that an ant might walk across my counter while I'm prepping the ingredients. A scary thought indeed. So yes, these ants have invaded my sanctuary, er, kitchen. They drove my baking/cooking mojo away.

How did we deal with this problem? Well, we noticed that these ants were always in the dining area. I called my cousin, who also has/had a problem with these invaders. Her method was to put a drop of Raid Kill the Colony ant poison near them and let them eat it. According to the label, the ant brings the poison back to the nest to share with his buddies and the queen and it kills them all. Sounds good, in theory. Because we had a mild infestation (though astronomical in my world), it did work to some degree. My brother also emailed me some research on the web. It said to watch where these ants go and I noticed they came out of and back into the dining room heat vent. So on the second day I used waxed paper and made a cutout of the heat vent and placed it over the vent then dripped loads of the poison onto it. After 3 days we no longer saw any ants in the dining room (and the occasional ones in the kitchen). A day or two went by and not one ant was seen around the house. Then the next thing I knew there was an ant around the kitchen sink and another near the front of the house. I'm not happy and from the research I've read I'm thinking that the ants have moved to another area of the house!!! Another couple of days go by without another incident of ant-sighting and then boom! Another ant, but this one was jumbo. The biggest I've seen yet in the house. This was enough to send me running to the phone and call in the professionals. Enter Orkin PCO. They're so fast. I was able to get a booking the following business day. Hallelujah! They were professional and knew their stuff. The technician thinks that he found the mother nest (located just outside the basement window where the dining room vent would be). He sprayed his "magical" wand around the outdoor perimeter of the house and then he proceeded to spray the inside, especially around the sink, laundry and washroom areas. This stuff is poisonous and the fumes are so dangerous that most healthy adults cannot enter a well-ventilated house until after 6 hours and 24 hours for small pets, children under 1, expectant mothers, or people with respiratory problems. Because I have a baby about to turn 1, I decided to take her over to my brother's for the night. My brother was so considerate and concerned that he invited my other two children (4-1/2 years old and 2-1/2 years old) to stay the night just to be on the safe side (thank you, B & V). We returned to the house the next day at exactly 24 hours and the house no longer had any smell from the pesticides. It's been 3 days and no sightings of carpenter ants. Thank goodness. Orkin PCO has a one year guarantee. They even suggest that we get the exterior of the house sprayed at the end of the summer and near the end of the one year. You can bet I'll be using that guarantee.

Now that we've resolved the problem (fingers crossed), I am getting back into the kitchen and will be making yumminess once again.

One last note: If I never see a carpenter ant, it won't be long enough.