Shrimp and Grits

Since we live in the South now, Mom thought she would make something for Mimi that was authentically southern. My vote was for fried chicken, or barbecue, but since I didn't actually vote ahead of time and instead voiced my opinion after dinner was served, it looks like I was overruled. I blame Mom for not anticipating my needs.

So here it what Mom made - shrimp and grits.  The grits part I don't really understand, but they had some cheese in them and Mom said they were basically like Mac-N-Cheese.I was seriously dubious about this meal.

She was wrong about them being like Mac-N-Cheese, but I ate them anyway, after my broccoli was gone.

And hey, they were actually pretty good. Mom said she didn't stick with all the cream that had to go into the recipe and used milk instead. I'm not the one in this house watching calories, but I'm also not the one doing the cooking so I guess it's fine.

Here's the girl making a face at Mimi. She liked the grits part, but she kept trying the shrimp over and over and I think it was too spicy for her. She must have been hungry to think that each new bite of shrimp wouldn't be spicy. Me, I don't go for that kind of nonsense and instead stuck to eating just the grits.

So the grits are approved and if you'd like to make the shrimp part to go with it, I can't stop you. Click here for the recipe.

Loaded Baked Potato Keesh

When is enough, enough? Probably when your mom keeps making keesh even though you don't eat it (see here and here). This time, my Mimi was in town and I thought we'd be safe with her because she makes excellent dinner choices evidenced by her bringing me a gift of matchbox cars and M&M's (this lady just gets me).

But no, mom made a keesh again. This time she said it was a "Loaded Baked Potato" keesh. I'm not sure why that makes it better since I'm certain I wouldn't like a baked potato anyway, although it is funny to listen to Mimi say "bodado".

 As you can see above, it also involved ham being inside. Mom put out some extra bacon bits for everyone to put on top, but I'm pretty sure those were just meant for me. At least after I ate them all no one seemed too upset that they were all gone, except maybe Daddy, but that guy eats just about everything so he'll probably get over it.

See, those are all my bacon bits transferred to my plate before anyone else could eat them. The trick is that if I put them on my plate and then eat those, my plate looks more empty than before and then Mom thinks I've eaten something and will allow me to have the M&Ms Mimi brought for me. Aren't I a genius!?

The girl hasn't figured this step out yet. So she actually ate some of her keesh. What. A. Chump. Plus, she got to sit next to Mimi so you know Mimi would have covered for her if she didn't want to eat anything. I try to teach her these things, but if she's not even willing to help herself then I can't really do anything for her.

Anyway, only the bacon part of this is approved. If you'd like to make it yourself, click here.

Chicken Again! - PB2 Slow Cooker Thai Chicken

Every now and then something comes along that makes my mom get all giddy and excited. She tells people about it and gets excited when the want to talk about it. For some reason right now she's excited about peanut butter that is powdery? I don't get it. peanut butter is perfectly fine as it is, but for some reason she thinks this is great.

The only real upside for me is that Mom has been putting the peanut butter powder in her protein drinks, and usually she tells me I can't drink any of it, but if I pretend I'm interested in the peanut butter powder, well then that's a whole new story and she lets me have a drink.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when the new favorite of my mom's started turning up in our dinner recipes.

This is a photo of Mom's plate. She doesn't let herself has as much rice as we get, so you can't really see it under her chicken. She said the chicken looked a bit like dog food - she was supposed to crush up some peanuts to put on top which would have assisted in de-dogfooding it a bit, but I didn't mind. I actually really liked this.

I didn't even just eat the rice this time around. I ate the noodles too. Daddy said something about them being made with zucchini, but I don't see how that's true since noodles are not made with zucchini, everyone knows that. I ate them happily. It was a good peanut butter flavor, I'm not sure what happened to the powder.

Even the girl ate it.

So give it a shot. Pete approved. You can find the recipe here.