Saturday, June 21, 2008

PLEASE READ THIS

****************************************************
If you have come to my site here sometime in July and if this blog has no postings for awhile, it is because I am unable to publish at this site. I am lucky to have been able to post this today.
****************************************************
This is due to changing my sign-in name and password AND therefore cannot get into my blog. If this happens it will be rather obvious and an unfortunate happening for me. Hopefully I can get back in and continue posting to my blog.
For now I can give you the LENS where I will post the NEW ADDRESS which is http://www.squidoo.com/coastingalong
OR you can contact me at coastingalong@ezanga.com with Granny's Tasties in SUBJECT.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Shrimp Season is now open on the Gulf Coast

I am certainly looking forward to this summer with the shrimp season opening. I understand they will be pricey due to the increase of cost of fuel but the shrimp will still be a great item for summer salads, cold shrimp, fried shrimp and casseroles. I found something interesting on how to prepare the jumbo shrimp over at SEASONED WITH ABANDON. The recipe suggests cooking the shrimp in less time so as not to become tough and then stuffing the shrimp using crab meat. Here is the recipe:

Crab-Stuffed Shrimp
Serve 4 shrimp as an entree, or 1-2 as an appetizer.
For stuffing
1 cup chopped mushrooms (about 1/4 pound)
3 tablespoons minced shallots
1 tablespoon minced garlic (about 3 cloves)
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley leaves
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 pound lump crabmeat, picked over
1/8 cup minced ham or prosciutto
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup white wine
24 Ritz crackers, crushed into coarse crumbs
For Shrimp:
16 jumbo shrimp (about 2 pounds), shelled
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Garnish: chopped fresh parsley leaves
Accompaniment: lemon wedges
Preheat oven to 375°F. and butter a large baking dish.
Make stuffing:In a large heavy skillet cook mushrooms, shallots, garlic, and parsley in butter over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened and liquid mushrooms gives off is evaporated. Add ham and crabmeat and cook over moderately high heat, stirring, 3 minutes. Stir in broth, wine, parmesan and cracker crumbs and remove skillet from heat. Mixture should be fairly moist.
Butterfly shrimp by cutting lengthwise along inside curve, almost completely through. Split open shrimp and devein. Mound about 2 tablespoons stuffing onto each shrimp, pressing gently, and put shrimp, stuffed sides up, in baking dish. Melt butter and drizzle over shrimp. Add a small amount of wine or broth to the pan. Sprinkle shrimp with paprika and bake 20 minutes, or until stuffing is golden.
Garnish shrimp with parsley and serve with lemon wedges.
This is fantastic and will make a great meal along with salad and maybe a baked potato. What I like about it is there is no rich cream sauce and it is baked versus a fried shrimp platter.
Here is an idea for using summer squash in a casserole. I cannot find where it was posted but here is the recipe without any quantities.
My mom slices the yellow squash, puts sliced fresh tomatoes on top, and then sliced sharp cheddar cheese slices on top of that. Bake till veggies are tender. I'm sure you could use different cheese, too, but there's just something about cheddar cheese and tomatoes. Can't get much easier than this. I definitely want to make this even if in a small quantity.

Monday, June 9, 2008

To All Cookbook Collectors

Here is something you may just like to have if you collect cookbooks or really use it for all your books. It is a software where you catalog all your books. Really fascinating. It is called http://www.bolidesoft.com/allmybooks.html "ALL MY BOOKS". A must-have program for every book collector and book lover! Get your book collection organized! This was taken from the website where you can download it today--FREE. YEAH!!! Just think, you can put all your cookbooks into this file on your computer. Best part here is that you can use the internet to get all the info on a cookbook and store it there for future viewing. I know, why do you want all this on your computer. Well why not. If someone needs to know what cookbooks you have, all the information is already available and you can send your friends an email description. Anyway I have been playing with this today since I downloaded it and it is great. Course you can
also use this software to list all your other books as well. I normally do not talk much about software and computers but this is too good to pass up being that it is FREE. I hope you were able to download it.
Come over and visit my NEW FOOD LENS called "Cooking to Satisfy your Taste" . I decided to set up my food blog in another way for other foodies to visit, so I decided on Squidoo. It was fun setting it up and I tried to separate things in certain modules showing my favorite sites, cookbooks and other sources. Eventually I will add recipes and tips and ideas. Leave a comment, if you wish, as I am always open for suggestions or maybe there is something you would like to see there.