54. Shrimp Creole

Now, I didn’t plan to prepare a Creole dish for Mardi Gras, because I really don’t keep track of such drinking holidays. I don’t need a reason to drink–your Cinco de Mayo is one of my any given Thursdays.

Now on to Creole Shrimp! Now, with this recipe I followed it to the letter. The only change is that I used 1 pound of shrimp instead of 1.5-2 lbs, and adjusted all the other ingredients accordingly. Also, I omitted the MSG. Not because of health reasons, mind you, but where the hell does one buy MSG? Online? It pops up in a lot of the other recipes. Maybe I should invest in some.

OK, so if you look at the recipe on this card, that is what I did. And it turned out pretty good. It wasn’t the best of the dishes so far, but it was very easy and cheap (I already had frozen shrimp in the house).  And although there wasn’t any sort of heat in the dish (isn’t Creole food supposed to be spicy?), when plated, I topped it off with Louisiana’s own Crystal Hot Sauce. Cleveland and his college buddies once wrote a fan letter to Crystal Hot Sauce. Seriously. Perhaps he can elaborate in the comments.

I also followed the Cherry Crisp directions with minimal changes. First, I don’t have a 9 inch baking pan, so I used a pie dish. And second, $3.79 per can of cherry pie filling seems ridiculous, so I bought just one can and then supplemented with a can of tart cherries in water for $.99

Everything else I did as in the recipe. I don’t know why it asked specifically for ‘biscuit mix’ instead of regular ordinary flour, but who am I to question Dinner is Served? So I bought Bisquick. I don’t know what makes it special except for that it says directly on the box to refrigerate it once opened.

The Cherry Crisp turned out well. But how could it not? It’s so damn simple! I think that using the tart cherries was a good move, it kept it from being too sweet, and accounted for the later addition of Cool Whip.

So, so far so good, right?

• Shrimp Creole: check.
• Cherry Crisp: check.
• Fluffy Rice: check.

And then it all went to hell in an immersion blender.

Dinner is Served did not supply directions for Pea & Celery Salad in Lettuce Cups with Cucumber Mayonnaise. So I decided to make up my own. Unlike other times when I consulted the Internet or a cookbook to find recipe, I decided to make my own. Silly me. I now regret going rogue.

This seemed like a no-brainer. I threw together what the name of the dish implied. I mixed the following: peas, celery, cucumber, mayo, and put it in a lettuce cups. Alas, the lettuce cups were the only successful part of this dish: I over cooked the  peas, put in too much celery and the mayo…

Oh, the horror of the mayo. I threw together mayo and cucumber (obviously) with ingredients that, in theory, should have worked–onion, salt, pepper, dill weed, celery seed, garlic powder.

I think that there was too much onion and I should have skipped the celery seed. Duh, there was already celery in the dish! There was so much going on that I couldn’t even taste the mayo. FAIL.

So for that I cannot blame Dinner is Served. I can only blame myself.

A note on timing: I didn’t do anything on this card in order. In fact, between when the crisp came out of the oven and when I started to prepare the shrimp, I blow dried my hair. So I cannot give you a good sense of this dinner’s timeline.

Also, sorry for the wonky layouts. I don’t know who sucks more, me, WordPress, or Cleve’s computer. I still have Baked Ham to post–but it takes me soooooo long to do these things if I include photos. Speaking of which:

Obligatory comparison shots:

Dinner is Served! Now go give up something for Lent.