Breaking All The Rules

Ok, maybe not all of the rules...

But I did do some Christmas baking and candy making today.

I debated yesterday on whether or not to do it. 

And I caved this morning.

I took two recipes from A Whisk and  A Prayer: Snickers and Cookie Brittle.

They were both phenomenal.

She does a much better job at food photography than I do, so I'll let you head over there to check out the recipes and pictures. 

I will say a few things though:

1. The nougat in the Snickers stays pretty chewy and it has made the cutting of my large candy block difficult. I don't know how to remedy that, just a word of warning.

2. If you go ahead and eat all of the edges of the Snickers, you may go into a diabetic coma. I'm serious!

3. If you make the cookie brittle, I would get the butter to the almost melt stage, it makes it much easier to mix.

4. The longer you cook the brittle, the more brittle it will be. Seems logical, but I kept thinking that I was going to overcook it so I ended up with two very different things - a more chewy cookie and a real brittle-y cookie. I guess it depends on your taste.

Since I skipped the food photography this time, I took a few pictures of my kitchen in the process:

A completed pan of cookie brittle - with a combo of milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips.

 You can see the beginning of the snickers there in the foreground - it is the nougat layer.

 

Does anyone want to come clean for me?

Wow!

I know you thought that you were never going to read another post on this blog again.

I was beginning to think that was true.

However, tonight, all of that changed!

I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm a great cook!

Since I've been "working from home" since November, I am really trying to make my own meals and not eat out.

Yesterday, I roasted a turkey breast. I don't even like turkey, but this one was good and it is nice to have in the fridge for a quick snack or lunch.

But back to tonight.

I've had a couple of spaghetti squash sitting on the counter that need to be cooked.

Earlier today I was looking for butter in the freezer (to do some Christmas baking) and I found a bag of uncooked shrimp.

I decided that I would combine the two.

And combine I did.

First, I popped the spaghetti squash in the oven - it takes a long time to cook.

One of the things I've learned is that if I don't want to eat after 8, I need to start thinking about dinner around 4:30 so that I have time to get everything prepared. 

So, after about 30 minutes of the spaghetti squash cooking, I started preparing the makings for the shrimp. 

I diced up about 4 cloves of garlic. (What can I say? I'm Basque and Italian - I LOVE my garlic)

Then I heated some olive oil in a pan. No, I don't know how much - I just drizzled it in until it looked right - remember this is going to be the sauce for the squash.

Once it was hot, I threw in the garlic, after about a minute, I threw in some crushed red pepper.

I have a friend who LOVES crushed red pepper. Puts it on everything. One year, her brother and SIL got her this for Christmas:

Ok, I need to get better at my food photography.

Either way.

So then I threw in the uncooked shrimp.

I'm going to stop here and tell you that I hate cooking shrimp. It is such a delicate balance between salmonella and chewy protein.

But it is nice to add variety to my life and it was nice to use it from the freezer.

Once the shrimp was all pink, I turned off the heat and threw in some diced up sun dried tomatoes.

Then I added some salt.

I once took a cooking class and the teacher told us that the main reason people think they can't cook is because they don't use enough salt. I took it to heart.

Once the spaghetti squash was shredded, I put the shrimp mixture on top and then mixed it all together.

You can't really tell from this picture how great it all looked and tasted.

And even better with a nice glass of red wine.