Happy V Day!

Here's Todd's Valentine's Day present...I think he'll be pleased. Chocolate-chip cookies are his all-time fave, and he's had several sub-par versions at various restaurants in the past few months. I don't know why I don't bake them more, but I did, just for him, today, because he's my sweetie-pie!

We got a little snow here last night, but it's mostly melted now. Just the stuff on the north side of the house where the sun never shines is still there. So pretty.

I'm still walking around looking like I'm half-zombie, with my one bloody eye. Call me Mrs. Sweeney Todd. [Neat movie, great music, but--um...rivers of blood just don't do it for me.] I keep forgetting about it, and then I look at someone and they do this little double-take at me, and then I remember and feel dumb. I am so not the kind of person who worries a lot about what I look like, but this thing is making me really self-conscious. I ran a couple of cookies out to the mail lady just now, and she did the double-take thing...I'm sure she was thinking, "Do I really want to take food from this person?" I'm kidding, of course, but I will be so happy when the red goes away!

In fact, I'm cooking dinner at home tonight partly so I don't have to go expose my freak eye to half of Newport News. I'm going to make shrimp scampi and crabcakes. People always say, "Oooh, shrimp scampi!" like it's this really complicated thing, but it's about the fastest, easiest thing you could ever cook. Way easier than, say, meatloaf!

Here's the recipe; I may have shared this here before. It takes longer to peel the shrimp than it does to cook them:

Monterey Shrimp Scampi

1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and cleaned
1/4 cup white wine
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 T. flavored bread crumbs
2 T. Parmesan cheese

Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add butter and olive oil. When butter melts and sizzles, add garlic and cook for one minute. Add shrimp and cook for two minutes; shrimp should only be partially cooked. Add wine, lemon juice, salt and pepper; cook about two minutes more until the shrimp are cooked through. (They will turn pink and the tails will curl.) Remove from heat and top with bread crumbs and chopped parsley. Place shrimp on serving plates, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, and serve immediately.

I serve this over linguine, by the way. Now, the crabcakes will be a new recipe for me, so if they're successful, I'll share it later. It's hard to tell how they'll come out; the recipe is a little...different.

Hope everyone's having a happy day today, love and hugs to you all. I appreciate everybody who drops in and reads my ramblings!