Fish Followed By Seafood

Tuesday morning when I asked Bev about dinner plans and suggested grilled pork chops, she came back with a suggestion of scallops and shrimp. Even though we had fish Monday night, I’m always up for seafood and since I spent my kitchen time, prepping meat for Wednesdays BBQ cook, she did the cooking.

I also decided to run a little allergy test on myself. The last time we had these shrimp and for the first time in my life I broke out in hives after dinner. Knowing my sister developed a similar allergy and years later discovered it was the preservative rather than the shrimp, I wanted to find out what affected me. The shrimp bag is marked ‘contains sulfites’ and online research shows folks are allergic to it, but I drink wine containing sulfites without issue, so on with the test.

We had a bag of precooked popcorn shrimp in the freezer, which I tried first. I ate a half dozen of the little fellers with no effect.

Next, I ate the scallop dish for dinner, and I ate plenty, with no impact except serious enjoyment.

Finally, I sautéed and ate two of the suspect shrimp and had no ill effects - maybe I needed to eat a few more and maybe the shrimp were not the problem. At any rate, since they were only sauteed, I got a good idea of their flavor and it was bad - what's left goes in the trash and we won't buy them again - I may need to build a shrimp pond.

Oh, what about dinner you say - it turned out great - we decided to just have the scallops and a side salad (except for my allergy test shrimp). The scallop dish was one Bev dug out of the archives and the last time we had it was more than ten years ago. We served it then as an appetizer for some Canadian friends who were visiting. I’m not sure how Bev remembered the recipe or found it – guess her Alzheimer’s is not as far along as mine. The dish is called ‘Scallops Provencale’ and recipes for it are readily available. It’s basically sautéed scallops with diced tomatoes, garlic and herbs tossed in. For this one, the sautéed items are all put in a dish, topped with bread crumbs and browned under the broiler.

The scallops were sliced in half, seasoned with S&P, lightly dusted with flour and sauteed in olive oil.



The tomatoes and other flavorings were added.



They were cooked until slightly thickened.


Here they are out of the oven.


And onto my plate. Better picture huh?


It was also BBQ prep day and I’m cooking some chicken. Since I split the chickens and removed the backbone (along with the giblets and other trimmings) I had some good broth making materials. As usual, I put it in a pan, covered with water and cooked on very low all night. After fat separation it’s into the freezer for future use. We don’t have to buy much broth anymore and ours is so much richer than store bought. Here’s a pic using the new camera settings I just learned about.



And to top the evening off, Bev made up a big batch of excellent pecan sandies.

Have a great day.

Larry