Food on Fridays: Shrimp in Garlic Cream Sauce

December 29, 2011 by 6 Comments

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For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes. When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually. Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!

Food on Fridays with Ann

I love eating fresh seafood on vacation in the Southeast along the Atlantic or Gulf coasts. Fresh shrimp, especially, is a treat.Buying it here in our landlocked state is always bit of a letdown. It’s usually been frozen, causing it to lose flavor and texture; also, it’s overpriced.But a few weeks ago I peered into one of the display cases in the seafood department at Kroger and spotted a package of shrimp that looked great. They looked like fresh shrimp I would buy on vacation from a little shack on the panhandle of Florida or near Beaufort, South Carolina, where shrimp boats motor through marshy waters dragging their nets for pink gold.And they were on sale.I placed the package in the cart and when I got home, tucked it in the freezer. These shrimp would be set aside for a special occasion.Christmas Eve turned out to be the occasion. I decided to make a cream sauce with minced garlic and a diced shallot. Salt and pepper. Oil. Butter. Cream. White wine. Parmesan cheese.That was all coming together nicely, but it needed something more, so I dug around in the pantry for a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. After I added a few of those and spooned in some of the flavorful oil, I knew we were close.I peeled the shrimp so we wouldn’t have to smell like shells before heading to the Christmas Eve service, and served the shrimp and sauce over pasta.We were almost done eating before I realized I hadn’t snapped any photos, so this rather unappealing snapshot doesn’t show much of the sauce, but I was pleased with the dish.I started with this recipe from the Food Network as my base and adapted it slightly.Shrimp and Scallops in Garlic Cream SauceSource: Food NetworkIngredients

  • 1/4 cup olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons
  • 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 4 cloves shallots, chopped
  • 2 cups white wine
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves, plus sprigs for garnish
  • 1 teaspoon chopped thyme leaves
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 1 1/2 pounds (20/30 count) sea scallops
  • 1 1/2 pounds (16/20 count) shrimp peeled and deveined with tails left on
  • 1 1/2 to 2 pounds cooked pasta or rice, for an accompaniment
  • 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano

DirectionsIn a large saute pan, heat 1/4 cup oil and cook garlic and shallot until translucent, about 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the wine, and add parsley, basil and thyme and let the liquid reduce by half. Using a fine strainer, strain the reduction into a clean saucepan and add the cream. Over low heat, let the sauce reduce to medium thickness. To the now empty saute pan, add 2 tablespoons olive oil, saute scallops, cook until opaque and remove to a utility platter in a warm place. Then use the same pan to saute shrimp just until pink, and remove to the utility platter. Add cream sauce to saute pan to toss the drained pasta or rice with the cream sauce and seafood, reserving a few scallops and shrimp for the top. Transfer to a serving dish, and sprinkle with cheese, as garnish. Arrange shrimp and scallops on top and garnish with basil sprigs.Don’t forget I added those sundried tomatoes, which provided a flavor boost that made all the difference.For a few minutes on Christmas Eve, twirling the pasta around my fork and savoring those shrimp, I could almost smell the saltwater of the Gulf of Mexico and hear the gulls, laughing.

Photo of shrimp boat taken while on vacation last year.

:::

Photo credit: Images by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.

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    Curiosity Journal: December 28, 2011

    December 28, 2011 by 8 Comments

    Each Wednesday I’ve been recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the previous week using these tag words: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing. Now I’m simplifying the journal, to see if I like a slimmed-down version. [Read more...]

    Filed Under: creativity, Curiosity Journal, family Tagged With: , ,

    Season of Creativity

    December 27, 2011 by 21 Comments

    Heavy, wet flakes of snow are dropping steadily from the sky today, weighing down branches, muffling sound. The girls are playing a CD of a singer whose mellow voice is new to me. I have brewed loose tea in my blue-and-white Spode teapot, poured it into a Christmas cup, stirred in a teaspoon of honey, and begun to sip it down smooth. I figure I can use these cups with their holly design until January 6, Epiphany, Three King’s Day—the end of the 12 days of Christmas.I’m sitting at my computer, enjoying my tea, remembering with a sigh that in a few days, school starts up again and I will return to grading papers and planning lessons. But right now, I’m sitting at my computer, sipping tea. [Read more...]

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    Happy Birthday

    December 24, 2011 by 5 Comments

    One of our daughters has a December birthday. A week ago we celebrated with signage and candles and cake and presents. When her party was over, I started to tear down the streamers, but for the first time in 14 years I paused before pulling down the “Happy Birthday” banner and thought, you know, we could just leave it up.It’s a little cheesy, I suppose, but a good reminder.”For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6).Happy birthday, Jesus.And thank you.

    Filed Under: life Tagged With: ,

    Food on Fridays: Chocolate Decadence Cake

    December 23, 2011 by 6 Comments

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    (smaller button below)

    For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes. When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually. Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun! [Read more...]

    Filed Under: Food on Fridays Tagged With: , , ,

    Curiosity Journal: December 21, 2011

    December 21, 2011 by 10 Comments

    Each Wednesday I’ve been recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the previous week. Tag words were: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing. This week I’m abbreviating, simplifying, and amending the journal. Like so much of life, it’s an experiment.

    :::

    Reading

    As part of the experiment of trimming down the Curiosity Journal, I finished the book Staying Put and published my final response on Monday. Not sure what I’ll launch next.

    Playing

    I made three chocolate cakes in the last week, searching for one that earned the right to be described as “decadent.”I think I found it, and it’s neither of the cakes pictured above (though they were lovely).I’ll post about my CakePlay for Food on Fridays, but I’d like you to know that it was a lot of fun. What family doesn’t love hearing their mom announce, “I’m making another chocolate cake for us to taste test tonight!”

    Learning

    On Facebook a friend posted a link to an opinion article from The New York Times called “The Art of Listening.” This stood out to me:

    Two old African men were sitting on that bench, but there was room for me, too. In Africa people share more than just water in a brotherly or sisterly fashion. Even when it comes to shade, people are generous.I heard the two men talking about a third old man who had recently died. One of them said, “I was visiting him at his home. He started to tell me an amazing story about something that had happened to him when he was young. But it was a long story. Night came, and we decided that I should come back the next day to hear the rest. But when I arrived, he was dead.”The man fell silent. I decided not to leave that bench until I heard how the other man would respond to what he’d heard. I had an instinctive feeling that it would prove to be important.Finally he, too, spoke.“That’s not a good way to die — before you’ve told the end of your story.”

    May we tell our stories…all the way to the end.

    Reacting

    For her 14th birthday, we bought my third daughter, the most voracious reader in the family, a Kindle Touch.Today, her first day to explore its potential, she began downloading free books, mostly classics, calling out the titles one after another: “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes! … 20,000 Leagues under the Sea! … Treasure Island!” At one point she paused from the downloading frenzy and looked up at me with eyes wild from raking in the riches of literary treasure. Hands and voice shaking from excitement as if she’d discovered bucketfuls of gold medallions free for the taking, she exclaimed, “I…love….this!“

    Writing

    Yesterday I wrote about the family Bible my dad received. I had to finish in a rush before heading out the door to pick up my sister-in-law from the bus stop. I wondered later about the ending. I think if I had taken more time, I’d have tweaked that.

    That experience reminded me of conversations Charity and I have had about the nature of blogs versus other writing outlets. If I were working on a chapter of a book, I might revise it several times and spend days tweaking a section; whereas, a personal blog post may be thought up, drafted, edited and published all within a couple of hours. Are blog posts being publishing too fast? Should I slow down and take longer to revise and tweak? Or does the strength of blogging lie in quickly capturing and sharing the spontaneity of life without worrying too much what could have been improved?

    :::

    Credits:Photos: Images by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.

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    What Lies Behind the Family Bible’s Names and Dates

    December 20, 2011 by 15 Comments

    I pulled out my camera to snap some pictures of the four-inch-thick family Bible my dad recently acquired from a distant cousin—second cousin once or twice removed, or something like that. This particular family Bible belonged to Dad’s grandparents, but had been passed down another branch of the family tree. Until now. It recently leaped to our branch due to the generosity of the cousin who inherited this massive heirloom only to decide that Dad would appreciate it much more than she ever would.So she presented it to him a few weeks ago, and now it sits regally on a buffet in my parents’ dining room, with space to the left for it to be opened wide and perused.After monkeying with my camera settings to accommodate the natural light from the window, I snapped some photos, flipping pages to discover some vintage artwork and family records of marriages and births.Then Dad came in to turn to the pages he found most significant, such as the one that notes the date of his grandparents’ marriage, the Bible being my great-grandfather’s gift to his wife on the occasion of their wedding.(By the way, Dad is not offering a vulgar gesture; he often points with his middle finger.)Even my dad’s birth in the late 1920s is the last on the “Memoranda” page, his name duly recorded in blue ink and old-fashioned script.

    Dad rests hand on page with his name, names obscured

    (names obscured for privacy)

    I admired the pages Dad pointed out, nodding as he explained the relationships. When he paused, I mentioned the “Temperance Pledge,” which intrigued me.

    (name obscured for privacy)

    “Oh, yes,” he said. “My grandmother was active in the temperance movement and the women’s movements, too.”I read the pledge carefully:
    Temperance PledgeWe hereby solemnly promise, God helping us, to abstain from all distilled, fermented and malt liquors including wine and beer and to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and the traffic in the same.

    Though I have obscured my great-grandmother’s name, you may notice that she signed and dated it on April 15, 1889. You may also observe that the spot for a signature on the left remains empty. She recorded her commitment on the right, leaving that left area open and available, just in case anyone decided to join her in the pledge. I guess in her household, the plural pledge of “we” ended up being a singular “I.”I wonder what held back my great-grandfather? The possibility of sipping bubbly cider that accidentally fermented on a late fall afternoon? The hope of sharing a beer with his buddies?There is more to the story, I’m sure. The names and dates are nothing more than facts, statistics. Behind them lie the stories.The Bible with its lush illustrations and family notations is lovely, but stories? Those are what I crave. Both the family stories…and the Bible’s.

    :::

    Credits: All photos by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.

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    Who We Are Becoming

    December 19, 2011 by 13 Comments

    Saturday night I tore off pieces of a Post-It to mark passages in Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World. As I reached the last lines of the last chapter, closed the book and set it on the bedside table, I continued to think about story and place and self and how they overlap and interweave. I wanted to wrap up the book and move on…perhaps to start writing more stories instead of simply talking about their importance.

    But first, the wrap-up.

    Sanders makes a case for story trumping data when he quotes Flannery O’Connor, who admitted feeling, she said, “a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as statistics…in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells” (157, 166).

    “By what stories shall we be known?” Sanders muses (166).

    What are we passing on? What content are we preserving on Facebook and blogs, in journals and memoirs? By what stories will this generation be known?

    Sanders answers the question in part by telling his own stories. For example, he tells of returning to one of the places he lived when he was young. After revisiting old haunts, he ended up in a church, entering through an open back door. He observed the “squeaky pine boards of the floor,” child-sized tables used in Sunday school, and hooks where the choir would hang their robes. He continued:

    Every few paces I halted, listening. The joints of the church cricked as the sun let it go. Birds fussed beyond the windows. But no one else was about; this relieved me, for here least of all was I prepared to explain myself. I had moved too long in circles where to confess an interest in religious things marked one as a charlatan, a sentimentalist, or a fool. No doubt I have all three qualities in my character. But I also have another quality, and that is an unshakable hunger to know who I am, where I am, and into what sort of cosmos I have been so briefly and astonishingly sprung. Whatever combination of shady motives might have led me here, the impulse that shook me right then was a craving to glimpse the very source of things. (190)

    I always thought everyone shared that “unshakable hunger” to know who they are and where they are and from where they have been sprung.

    But I have discovered that many people don’t relate to this. Perhaps they simply live in the moment without any desire to dig deeper into the soul or memory. Curious, they are not…at least, not about the past that makes the self. I, on the other hand, continually feel questions arise and want to find answers, seeking to know better who I am…and who I am becoming.

    Aren’t we all becoming in the sense that we are always living yet another page in our story?

    As we are busy living our stories, we aren’t necessarily telling our stories. When we venture to take on the role of a storyteller—an essential role, I believe—we add complicating layers. By revisiting our stories and reflecting on them, we can potentially affect the memories.

    Sanders considers these layers and revisions and the tricks they can play on us. That visit of his to the tiny dot on the map known as Wayland represented the challenge of those layers:

    There is more to be seen at any crossroads than one can see in a lifetime of looking. My return visit to Wayland was less than two hours long. Once again several hundred miles distant from that place, back here in my home ground making this model from slippery words, I cannot be sure where the pressure of mind has warped the surface of things. If you were to go there, you would not find every detail exactly as I have described it. How could you, bearing as you do a past quite different from mine? No doubt my memory, welling up through these lines, has played tricks with time and space…certain moments in one’s life cast their influence forward over all the moments that follow. My encounters in Wayland shaped me first as I lived through them, then again as I recalled them during my visit, and now as I write them down. That is of course why I write them down. The self is a fiction. I make up the story of myself with scraps of memory, sensation, reading, and hearsay. It is a tale I whisper against the dark. Only in rare moments of luck or courage do I hush, forget myself entirely, and listen to the silence that precedes and surrounds and follows all speech. (192-193)

    It’s a bold statement to say that “the self is a fiction.” Is he right? Do we add to our story? Do we forget? Are we gently fabricating the self that we are, by telling ourselves a version of our past that makes the most sense, or sounds the best?

    Do we fictionalize ourselves to the point of believing ourselves to have been far better, stronger, gentler, wiser, and funnier than witnesses would attest?

    Or do we beat up on ourselves by fictionalizing and believing ourselves to have been far worse, weaker, harsher and more naive and blundering than witnesses would attest?

    How can we revisit memories and tell our stories and understand ourselves in a way that is true, even if not 100 percent accurate?

    Because who I am becoming flows out of who I have been. As a self, I would like to know the truth; as a storyteller, I would like to tell the truth.

    All in order to continue becoming.

    :::

    Previous posts that discuss the book Staying Put:

    Curiosity Journal: Geography of the Mind, Birdfeeders, Sarah Kay on Story and Mini Flash Mob

    Curiosity Journal: Staying Put, Christmas Decor and Advent

    Curiosity Journal: Extinct Green Parakeet, Puny Petunia, and First Snow

    Curiosity Journal: November 16, 2011Curiosity Journal: November 9, 2011

    :::

    Note: This book is a title that I bought with my own money and selected from my personal library to read, enjoy and share briefly with you here. I was not compensated in any way by anyone nor did the publisher or author provide me with a complimentary review copy. My “reading” posts are not intended to be reviews; instead, I generally compose personal responses to passages from books I’m reading, focusing on the portions that I enjoy and pretty much ignoring sections with which I neither agree nor connect.Credits: all images by Ann Kroeker, all rights reserved.

    Sanders, Scott Russell. Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Print. (Amazon Associates Link)

    Filed Under: books, reading, self-discovery, writing Tagged With: , , ,

    Food on Fridays: Bûche de Noël

    December 16, 2011 by 17 Comments

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    (smaller button below)

    For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes. When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually. Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!

    Food on Fridays with Ann

    I’m thinking about making this bûche de Noël or “yule log” cake for Christmas.

    buche de noel
    Photo credit: lucy via allrecipes.com

    What’s a buche de Noel?This blog offers a long, well-researched history of the bûche. She pointed out that, like many Christmas traditions, the bûche traces back to pagan roots that were borrowed by Christians and modified to suit their celebrations. Its meaning is not overly symbolic, however, and I mostly want to make it because the one time I had it, I thought it was a very yummy cake.I first encountered it 18 years ago when my husband and I flew to Belgium to celebrate Christmas with his family. Late one evening, his brother announced he was going to make a “bûche.”"What’s a bûche?” I asked.”Bûche means log in French,” he said. “This is a bûche de Noël, or Christmas log, like a yule log, that we make this time of year.”Intrigued, I watched as they worked together to assemble it. I’ve never had access to “boudoirs” cookies (ladyfingers) solid enough to hold up to being dipped in milk and stacked, and they are the key ingredient—American ladyfingers are light and airy, and sort of melt away into a pile of soggy crumbs; whereas, the Belgian ladyfingers proved more solid and formed the cake-like interior to the bûche, sort of like tiramisu or a trifle.If you are reading this in the States and somehow have access to imported boudoirs, perhaps you can give it a try?This is what I recorded from watching my in-laws all those years ago. Sorry no photo. And I obviously should have asked more questions and recorded details with greater accuracy.

    Buche de Noël

    2 tubs margarine (or 1 tub) [um, big difference]¼ C vanilla sugarPowdered sugar as neededVery strong coffee—2-3 drops boiling water through filterMilkPackages of boudoirsBeat vanilla sugar and margarine until really fluffy. Add powdered sugar and beat until consistency seems right for spreading. Add the coffee until it tastes right.Dip cookies in milk and layer in rows of 4 or 5 side by side until desired length of bûche.Spread the fluffy mixture in between each layer. Move up, subtracting one cookie from each row until it looks like a log. Spread cream on top and sides. Leave some in bowl for ends. Put shaved chocolate all around top and sides to look like bark. Form some kind of baby Jesus out of the mixture for the top…or use a store-bought one.

    :::

    It’s simple to assemble, if only I could find the right cookie…(Sorry to confuse readers. To clarify: The photo above is of a jellyroll version of the cake that I am thinking I’ll make since I don’t have access to the right kind of cookie. Sadly, I wasn’t thinking about food blogs 18 years ago, so I have no photo of the homemade version.)Photo credit: lucy (link to allrecipes.com)

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    Curiosity Journal: Geography of Mind, Birdfeeders, Sarah Kay on Story, and Mini Flash Mob

    December 14, 2011 by 16 Comments

    Each Wednesday I’m recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the past week. Tag words are: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing.

    :::

    Some of you have mentioned that you’re keeping a Curiosity Journal, as well. If you do, leave your link in the comments so that we can visit and enjoy your weekly review. [Read more...]

    Filed Under: creativity, Curiosity Journal Tagged With: , , , , , , ,