Beer Battered Shrimp

I have been craving shrimp a lot lately. I have always loved it. Shrimp cocktail, sauteed shrimp, battered and fried, any way you can make it i love it! The other night i was really wanting it so i got on Pinterest and looked up Beer Battered Shrimp and this is what i found. 

The Lady and Sons Beer Battered Shrimp

(yes its from the one and only Paula Deen)

1 Cup Beer (I used light beer)

1 Cup All Purpose Flour

Salt and Pepper to taste

Mix the beer, flour, salt and pepper and let sit for at least an hour. Preheat a deep fryer (these things are amazing) Once your batter has set and your fryer is all heated up. Peel your shrimp, i left the tails on cause i like something to hold onto. Pat your shrimp dry, it helps the batter to stick to them better. Hold onto the tail and dip it into the batter making sure everything but the tail has a nice coating on it. While still holding onto the tail place the shrimp into the oil and hold it there for a few seconds until the oil really starts to bubble around it and then let it go. Repeat for as many shrimp as you have. They only have to cook for a few minutes until they start to turn golden. I only put maybe 8 shrimp in the fryer at a time cause i didn't want to over crowd them.

I served them with cocktail sauce and a garlic/cilantro butter sauce which is melted butter a couple cloves of garlic (pressed) and some cut up cilantro. It was AMAZING and the shrimp literally disappeared. It is definitely a recipe we will be using a lot. It was super simple and delicious. 

When ever i watch people make a beer batter they always use dark beer and the batter is heavy, by using the light beer it is not heavy and doesn't feel like you are eating a lot of batter, it just gives the shrimp a nice crunch when biting them. I have tried this with Bud Light and also a Bud Light Lime which gave it a slight citrus flavor. Overall a very good recipe that did not disappoint.

Tis the season

I think about Christmas year round, constantly making mental notes as to what i want to give to everyone for gifts or who would like certain things. Every year i come to the same conclusion that ALL men are so hard to shop for. I have already got gifts for my sisters, mom and Jason's mom. I kind of know what i want to get Kendall but haven't made any decisions yet. But for all the men in my life, i don't have a clue even where to start. It feels like every year you kind of get them the same things as you did the year before but its just a little different.

It's also the season for football, oh joy! This year I have joined a pick em football pool upon Jason's request, and let me tell you how much i suck at it. Week 1 I had 8 wins, week 2 I had 7 wins and now for week 3 I decided forget this losing crap, logged onto ESPN expert picks and found the "expert" with the best win record and picked almost all the same teams he did. Jason has decided since we are in competition together he will only help me just a little bit or give me hints here and there but wont actually tell me who i should choose (he seems to be doing pretty well). Only like a zillion more weeks to go so hopefully i start doing a little better with this new strategy i am trying out. Did I mention I can win $60 a week if i have the most wins. 

I may have not mentioned that due to the fact she got pink eye this smiley little monster had to have her eye surgery postponed by a month and a half. 

Not only did she wake up with pink eye, but she got herself a nasty cold, so most our weekend was spent inside cuddled up on the couch (watching football). She was so excited when my parents got home. She was taking a nap when they got home and my dad went in to see her and she looks at him and smiles and asked where Huck was. Since then, she has hardly left my dads side and is back to her ways of only wanting grandpa to help her.

This may just be the most random post every from Christmas to Football to Pinkeye. Have a Happy Thursday Friends. I am hoping to have a good post for you tomorrow covering some sort of delicious food i plan on making :)

What?!?! 2 days in a row

For the last week and a half it has just been Kendall and myself at home. My parents are off in CA helping my Grandma and Aunts clean out my Grandpa's belongings.

I always randomly decide that i am going to cut out bread, rice, potatoes and cheese. All the starchy high in fat foods that stick to my belly and give me that lovely pooch i hate. Every time i decide this it never fails we seem to have dinners that consist of all these items. Since my parents are gone i decided i would give it another shot and being here and just having to cook for myself and Kendall it is WAY easier. I always forget to take pictures of what i make until its halfway demolished so you get 2 pictures of stuffed tomatoes.

 

The first day i was by myself we went off to the grocery store and bought some miscellaneous groceries. Earlier that day i had seem a recipe on Pinterest for turkey spinach burgers. It had feta in them and i substituted that for grated parmesan cheese (i don't really consider this cheese, just more of a binding agent and garnish) i didn't serve them on a bun and i cooked them up, they were pretty good but could have used some more seasoning. The next night i used the leftover turkey/spinach meat and stuffed it into a tomato, baked it and then drizzled them with balsamic vinegar.

 

I have had a lot of salad this past week and a half and it was getting a little boring and i was running out of ideas of what to eat. Tonight i decided i would do stuffed tomatoes again but this time i stuffed them with sauteed shrimp and onions with cilantro and garlic. IT WAS SOOO GOOD! I made a mayo/cilantro/garlic sauce to put on it. It was similar to a shrimp po boy except stuffed into a tomato instead of on bread.

 

It has been a little hard to stay on track because we have actually been really busy and on the go almost everyday. I have cheated its hard to not eat all that stuff (i should have added ice cream to the no eat list, oops) We will see what the rest of the week brings for meals, thinking of meals is hard work.

Holy Smokes.....Literally

It is fire season in Montana....again. Usually we get hit with a couple fires a year and its bad for about a month. But seems like every 10 years or so we get hit REALLY HARD with the fires and it doesn't feel like fire season is going to end. This is one of those years. There hasn't been too many fires in the area where i live (until recently, like 2 days ago) but the wind has been blowing in the smoke from the fires everywhere and its been so smokey here for AT LEAST the last month.

 

 

In the above pic you can see the fire that is in my area. Last night it was 800 acres, this morning it was 1300 acres which i guess is about 2 square miles. However this evening it is now 2600 acres, it doubled in size in just a day.

 



 

 Here you can kind of see some flames as the fire has crested over the top of the mountain. I tried to take a picture of the glow of the flames tonight but i couldnt get a picture to turn out, it was to dark.

 

 

 It is literally "raining" ash. Those are some pretty big pieces that were found about 5 miles away in town. Most of the ash is like course dust in the air but there are some pretty big chunks that make there way off the mountain (PS I cant take credit for any of these pics, i got them all off of my friends facebook profiles)

 

 

This picture is from the News Cam that they have on top of a bank in town to show the weather. You can kind of see the sun. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to being a stormy day when you cant see the sun behind the clouds, except there is more of an erie glow to things.

 

 

This depicts how smokey it is and has been for the last month. The smoke has been far worse this year then it has been any other year that i can remember fires. The last time we had REALLY bad fires in our area was 2000, where our house was in potential danger and the fire was less then a mile away before they managed to get it put out.

 

Although i do know fires are unpreventable and no matter what they are going to happen i do think that they could do a better job of fighting them and trying to prevent them. There is so much beetle kill in Montana and they are choosing not to contract sections of the national forest out to log the beetle kill. Not only would they create jobs if they did this they would be clearing out a lot of the "materials" that are fueling the fires making them harder to fight. I know it also creates jobs for the firefighters but it seems like sometimes they just let fires burn on and on when they can really attack them hard and put them out. There was a fire a couple years back in pretty much the same spot but a little closer to town and man they had that thing out within a week. They attacked it hard, had nonstop water helicopters and dropped several loads of fire retardant on it. So why don't they do this for all fires? It would cost them far less money and a lot less grief for all the people who are having to evacuate their homes. It hits everyone in the community hard when Natural Disasters hit and being from a smaller community it is really great to see how people come together to help one another out in a time of need.

Oh Hello

Did ya miss me? It has been a while since i have been in the blogging world. I think about it all the time and how much i need to update and then my 5 second attention span kicks in and i get distracted and forget i was going to do a post.
There has been so much that has gone on this summer. I started a new job the beginning of July and I am really enjoying it. Its full time and i have to go shuttle Kendall around in the afternoons when the daycare closes and take her to the sitter. But so far it is working out really good and we haven't run into any problems with it.

We decided that Kendall was going to have the eye surgery to correct her lazy eye. Its a very minor surgery where they cut the muscle and then reattach it to the correct place, she goes in on Sept 14th. I am a little nervous about it but it is a common procedure so i know everything will be OK. Oh and she broke her glasses, so she hasn't been wearing them. Most likely after she has her surgery her glasses prescription will change so she will have to get a new pair anyways so we are just waiting to get them fixed.

This last weekend was our local county fair. I wasn't super interested in going and i knew it wouldn't make a difference for Kendall if we did or didn't go, but my sister and I took her to go look at all the animals. She was a little scared of petting the animals but after she saw me do it she was all about petting them. She loved the cows and the mini horse.

 

Meal times are all sorts of interesting now. For a while there she would not eat if i was feeding her or if i was even in the room. She is pretty much over that now but she has to feed herself, she doesn't like it when people help her. She still loves fruit and will eat that over anything else. She is not a big meat eater but will make an exception for sliced ham and hot dogs. The messiest foods like macaroni or spaghetti automatically get put into her hair. Its easier to just take her clothes and let her eat naked then to keep a bib on her and try to keep her clothes clean. Guaranteed if you want to keep her clean she is going to end up a mess. She prefers yellow cheese to white cheese. Her absolute favorite food would be popcorn. She likes guacamole but will not eat avocados plain.



Every morning when she wakes up the first thing she wants to do is sit with grandpa and drink a cup of chocolate milk. She calls it her coffee. He is currently her favorite person. He gets her up every morning and gets her dressed. She wont let me do anything for her, it always has to be grandpa who helps her. When she needs her diaper changed she will go get him a diaper and lay down on the floor in front of him, when i do it i have to hold her squirming/screaming body down with one arm while i try to wrestle the diaper onto her. These next 2 weeks are going to be hard for her cause grandpa is gone and its just the 2 of us and she isn't used to that.

As you can see her eye is still crossed. She is all about getting her picture taken again. There was a small period of time where she thought it was hilarious to turn and run away from the camera and now she will actually ask me to take her picture. 

This is her friend Titus (he is going to be a big brother) they don't see each other often but when they do they are like old buds. I don't mean to brag, although i am very proud, but at Kendall's daycare they tell me she is the only kid in the class who knows all her classmates names and she will call them by name. She is very social and talks nonstop. A lot of times i cant even understand the words that are coming out of her mouth. For her age she communicates very well. I haven't been consistent about it but lately we have been practicing the ABC's and numbers with her. I know she will learn it all on her own but i would like to help her as much as possible.

 

I cant make any promises but i am really hoping now that fall is on the way and we are not on the go all week long that i will be able to get back into a blogging schedule. I have to wait until Kendall goes to bed or she tries to fight me for the computer, i am not sure you would be able to read what she has to say.

Ahhh, its good to be back......



Beauty secret

A while ago i heard about a beauty secret my stylist did and i thought it was rather interesting and then forgot about it. A few days ago i saw something similar online and duh remembered that i was going to try it out way back when i first heard about it.

How many of you hate buying shaving cream? I know i sure do, especially since it basically washes off halfway through the shave job and i usually end up cutting myself cause i cant see what i am doing. I also feel like i am wasting money when i buy it. I have also tried using a moisturizing conditioner as shave cream and it works ok, but still washes off. The point of using an aid while shaving is to try to keep moisture in the skin. So here comes the next idea....

Baby oil! I tried it out this morning and it didnt wash off. It puts, I would call it a film, on your skin that you shave off and since it is oil the water just beads up and drips off. The plus side is it made my shower smell like a cute little baby. I bought a small little bottle at Walgreens for about $1.50. You do not have to use very much, i used about a nickel size area in my palm and rubbed it straight onto my legs. The one thing i didnt like is since it is oily and leaves that film on your legs is it gums up the blades of the razor and i had to wipe the blades off a lot to keep it from getting clogged.

My legs didnt really feel any different after i got out of the shower and i dried off and put lotion on like normal. But I would say it did make shaving a little easier and i will probably be trying it again.

A couple suggestions i have is DO NOT use this if you are taking a bath or it will probably leave a gunky ring of oil and little microscopic leg hairs in your bathtub and i would use a nail brush to (the kind with the little bristles) to clean the razor to prevent build up from the oil.

Have a Happy Friday friends, hope you all have a grand weekend!

Whats for dinner?

I always struggle to make dinner for just myself. I love cooking so when i cook i don't want to be the only one eating it. Kendall is not a huge fan of red meat but she really likes chicken. She also likes to eat dinner around 5pm so she eats a lot of random stuff that i can cook fairly quick.

3 nights a week i have been doing Zumba classes so i don't get home until 7pm and then i have to get Kendall ready for bed so i don't end up eating dinner until after she is in bed. If I cook something then that takes forever. I usually just end up eating popcorn or scrounging something up in the fridge.

Last night i was feeling motivated and made this......

It is pan seared deer steaks with sauteed ontions. Then topped with a large slice of tomato, mozzarella cheese and garnished with some cilantro.

I seasoned the steaks with some pepper and garlic salt and put them in a HOT pan with a little bit of melted butter. I let them cook on the first side for about 4 minutes. Then I flipped them over and topped then with the onions, tomato and cheese. I put a lid on the pan to get some steam so the cheese would melt. After 4 more minutes i took the lid off and put a few leaves of cilantro on and it was done! It ended up being really tasty and I was trying to use things we had, our fridge is pretty empty right now since basically for the last week it has just been Kendall and I and half the time we are at Jasons house.

The longest part about cooking this was defrosting the steaks. I really enjoy simple delicous meals like this. It would have been good with a salad but by the time they were done cooking i was starving and ready to eat. I brought the leftovers for lunch today that i am going to assemble onto a sandwich which should be just as good.

On a side note, my little brother Dillon is graduating from Basic Training tomorrow and I am the lucky one who gets to pick him up from the airport Friday evening. My parents are currently in GA for the graduation ceremony and their plane comes back friday but several hours later then his. We are all very proud of him and cant wait to see him! (This gets me out of going to a birthday party at a water park, i wasnt really excited about having to wear a bathing suit).