Slow Cooker Corn & Potato Soup with Sautéed Shrimp

I’ve built up an assortment of cooking magazines from over the years, but I’m not very good and taking them off the shelf and using them. Most of the time I end up picking our meals from Pinterest.

I have a collection of Rachael Ray Every Day, Bon Appétit, Southern Living and Cooking Light. We wanted something easy for dinner this week, so I found a slow cooker soup recipe from the August 2016 issue. This soup was even better as leftovers when we added some shredded chicken to it!

Slow Cooker Corn & Potato Soup with Sautéed Shrimp (adapted from Cooking Light)

Ingredients:

•        7 ears yellow corn, shucked
•        4 cups unsalted chicken stock
•        1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
•        1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
•        6 small red potatoes, cut into 3/4-in. pieces
•        1 cup half-and-half
•        1/4 cup unsalted butter, divided
•        1 teaspoon black pepper
•        Sprinkle of Old Bay seasoning
•        1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
•        3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives, divided
•        Optional: cooked chicken, shredded (great way to use leftover rotisserie)

Directions:

1. Cut kernels from corn cobs to measure about 4 cups. Using the dull side of a knife blade, scrape liquid from corn cobs directly into a 6-quart slow cooker.

2. Add cobs and 3 cups kernels. Stir in chicken stock, thyme, 1 teaspoon salt, and potatoes. Cover and cook on LOW for 7 hours and 30 minutes.

3. Discard cobs. Stir half-and-half and 2 tablespoons butter into corn mixture. Transfer corn mixture to a blender (depending on your blender size, you may have to do half at a time). Remove center piece of blender lid (to allow steam to escape); secure lid on blender. Place a clean towel over opening in lid (to avoid splatters). Process until smooth. Pour into a large bowl. Stir in pepper.

4. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet over medium heat; cook 2 minutes or until foamy. Add shrimp, remaining 1 cup corn kernels, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt to pan; sprinkle with Old Bay seasoning.  Cook 4 minutes or until shrimp turn pink and are done, stirring occasionally.

5. Stir in 1 1/2 tablespoons chives. Divide soup among 10 shallow bowls; top evenly with shrimp mixture, and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons chives.

Valentine's Day Garlic Shrimp Alfredo Dinner for Two

I love Buzzfeed Tasty’s video recipes.  They always make the meal look so simple. Luckily, this one was actually as easy as it looked.

When we were trying to decide what to cook for Valentine’s Day, I stumbled upon this menu for two with bruschetta, garlic shrimp alfredo pasta, and chocolate mousse for dessert. 

While it says “for two,” it really should have said “for two for a week” because we could have fed ten.  Which was fine because the meal was delicious and we wanted leftovers. 

We didn’t follow the mousse recipe from Buzzfeed.  I actually had found a recipe that used coconut cream instead of whipping cream, but it didn’t work at all. No matter how long I whipped the coconut cream, it just wouldn’t fluff up.  We ended up adding normal cream and saving the dessert (I would still include the coconut cream because I liked the slight coconut taste it added). 

We enjoyed the meal with wine from one of our new favorite restaurants, Cooper’s Hawk.  Their Barbera is an amazing deep red wine that we received with our Cooper’s Hawk “Wine of the Month” club. We aren’t connoisseurs of wine by any means (we are happy with our “Two Buck Chuck” Shiraz from Trader Joe’s), but this wine is really fantastic.  My friend James gave us a wine aerator that attaches to the bottle so there's no need for a separate decanter to enhance the wine's flavor.  

The wine of the month club costs $18.99 to sign up, and they give you and your significant other $15 gift cards the month of your birthday. Since Lance and I both have January birthdays, we received a bottle of wine plus a $30 Cooper’s Hawk gift card for only $18.99 (you can cancel the card anytime…)  

Below is the full dinner recipe if you’d like to recreate this dinner!

Tomato Basil Bruschetta  (adapted from Buzzfeed Tasty)

Ingredients:

·        1 6-inch baguette

·        ¼ cup olive oil

·        3 medium tomatoes, diced

·        1 clove garlic, minced

·        1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

·        1 tablespoon basil, chopped

·        ½ teaspoon salt

·        ½ teaspoon pepper

·        1 clove garlic, whole

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450°F
2. Slice the baguette into ½-inch rounds and place on a baking sheet.
3. Brush both sides of the baguette slices with olive oil.

4. Bake for 6 minutes until slightly crispy.
5. In a medium bowl, combine the tomatoes, minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt, and pepper.

6. Rub the garlic into one side of the baguette slices, then spoon the tomato mixture evenly across the slices.

Garlic Bacon Shrimp Alfredo  (adapted from Buzzfeed Tasty)

Ingredients:

·        6 slices bacon, chopped

·        1 pound shrimp, deveined and peeled

·        1 teaspoon salt

·        ½ teaspoon black pepper

·        ½ onion, diced

·        1 medium tomato, diced

·        3 cloves garlic, minced

·        2 cups heavy cream

·        1 pound fettuccine, cooked

·        1 cup parmesan cheese, grated

·        ½ parsley, chopped

Directions:

1. Cook the bacon in a large pot until crispy.

2. Add the shrimp, salt, and pepper, cooking until the shrimp is pink throughout.

3. Remove the shrimp and bacon.
4. Add the onions, tomatoes, and garlic, cooking until the garlic is slightly starting to brown.

5. Add the cream and bring to a boil.

6. Toss in the fettuccine with the shrimp, bacon, parmesan cheese, and parsley, stirring until the cheese has completely melted and the sauce coats the shrimp and pasta nicely.

Chocolate Coconut Mousse  (adapted from Cafe Delites)

Ingredients:

·        1 can full fat coconut cream

·        1 cup heavy whipping cream (not shown below, but the coconut cream did not fluff as expected...) 

·        2 T confectioners’ sugar

·        3 T unsweetened cocoa powder

·        2 squares dark chocolate, shaved

·        Strawberries, raspberries and/or mint to garnish

Directions:

1. Place sealed can of coconut cream in the refrigerator overnight.  Without shaking the can, open and scoop out the thick cream sitting on top of the water.  Discard the liquid.

2. Add the heavy whipping cream and confectioners’ sugar, then beat on high with either a hand mixer or stand mixer (I used my KitchenAid).  When thick and creamy, reserve 4 T of the plain whipped cream to the side to use as a topping.

3. Fold in the cocoa powder and beat until smooth. 

4. Serve the chocolate mousse in a glass topped with the plain whipped cream.  Garnish with the fruit, mint, and shaved dark chocolate.  

Surf & Turf Dinner for Two

I’m officially a Mrs. now!!! Our wedding was better than I could have imagined and we feel so lucky.  Can’t believe that after 5 years I can finally call him my husband. 

I took off work the Wednesday – Monday of the wedding week (we are honeymooning later in June…)  so it was back to work on Tuesday.  But my coworkers made coming back so much better by throwing me a really wonderful party to celebrate the wedding!  They had a potluck with all the kinds of foods I like, decorated our conference room, gave me flowers and balloons, and best of all gave us a huge basket of food to make a romantic dinner for two. 

Food gifts are my favorite so it was absolutely the perfect present for us!  The basket they gave us was packed with every single ingredient we’d need for the meal, down to the spices.  

They even gave us caviar and a bottle of wine (I had this one before while on a work trip to Gainesville – The Prisoner is a spicy red blend from Napa and it’s delicious!)

We registered for an electric grill after seeing the same one at our hotel in Austin.  I love it because you don’t have to deal with the mess of gas or charcoal.  We picked it up the day we planned to cook our fancy meal – luckily Lance is handy because it came in a thousand pieces and had to be assembled. 

While Lance build the grill, I started to prep our food.  The recipe they gave me had a side of mashed potatoes but I baked them whole instead (since that’s what seems to come with steaks at classy restaurants…) I followed the steps from Gimme Some Oven to make the perfect baked potatoes. 

The salad for our meal had grilled watermelon, which I’d never tried before.  One of the dishes at our wedding was actually a watermelon arugula salad, so this was the perfect side to go with our first fancy meal cooked as a married couple. 

To grill the watermelon, we just cut rounds of it, rubbed one side with olive oil and sprinkled with sugar, then put that side down on the grill for about 3 minutes.  The recipe from A Whole New Twist says to give it a quarter turn (don’t flip them) part way through so you get sear marks both ways. 

The shrimp they gave us was already cooked but we drizzled some oil on them with salt & pepper and let them heat up a bit on the grill as well.  We also grilled up some bacon wrapped scallops (although we had even more scallops with our main course too! 

The salad was pretty easy.  We cut up the grilled watermelon and served it over arugula with the shrimp and some bleu cheese. The dressing for the salad was very simple too - 2 T balsamic vinegar, ¼ t Dijon mustard, ½ t raw honey, 2 T extra virgin olive oil, and ¼ t ground sea salt.  I could make a bigger version of this into a dinner sometime. 

Then we began prepping our steaks.  They got us two giant filet mignons – and I was a bit worried because I never cook steak myself and didn’t want to end up ruining them.  I usually leave it up to the pros at restaurants.  But I followed Iowa Girl Eat’s recipe and they turned out perfectly. 

I’m planning to use the spice rub from that recipe any time I make steak in the future.  It was a blend of salt, peppercorns, fennel seeds, red chili pepper flakes, dried minced garlic, and dried minced onion.  I don’t have a mortar and pestle so I put it all in the food processer and blended until the fennel seeds got chopped up a bit. 

It was actually very easy.  Just rub the steaks in olive oil, generously spread the spice rub on both sides, then sear in an extra hot cast iron skillet with 2 T melted butter until they get nice and golden.  Then, put the whole skillet in a 400 degree oven for 8 minutes (this ended up being just enough to cook them rare – but obviously keep an eye on them so they don’t get overdone!)  

Once the steaks were ready, I took them out and covered them with foil while they rested.  In the meantime, put the skillet back on the stovetop and sauté some minced shallot and garlic.  The recipe said to use red wine (which of course would make it even better) but I didn’t want to waste our good one on cooking.  So I added in a cup of beef broth along with a sprig of rosemary and another tablespoon of butter.  As that simmered down, it turned into an amazing sauce to top the steak. 

Then for the scallops, pat them dry with a paper towel then season with salt & pepper.  I put these in a separate skillet with 1 T butter and 1 T olive oil until they got a nice sear. Just before they were done, I tossed them into the steak sauce to finish them up. 

This is probably the best meal I’ve made for us.  It says “dinner for two”, but it really could have been for four since it was so much food.  We actually ended up making a steak salad with homemade bleu cheese dressing for lunch the next day with all the leftovers.   

Since there were so many steps to this meal, I don’t have the time right now to break it all down, but you can visit these sites to get the full recipes: 

The Perfect Baked Potato - Gimme Some Oven

Grilled Watermelon Salad with Shrimp & Arugula - A Whole New Twist

Surf and Turf for Two - Iowa Girl Eat’s

Thanks again to my coworkers for such a sweet welcome back from the wedding week!  

Backfin Blue Cafe – Gulfport, FL

One of our Christmas presents this year from my parents was a stack of Creative Loafing deals to different local restaurants.  It was a really great gift idea because we’ve gotten a lot of free/cheap date nights out of them!  The only thing is you have to keep an eye on the expiration dates (usually you’ve got about a year until they expire, but some are only a few months…) 

Well last week we realized our Backfin Blue Cafe deal was set to expire, so we headed to Gulfport for dinner.  It’s a really laid-back town just west of St. Pete.  Usually when we go there, we’re by far the youngest people walking around (think most residents are retired…) 

The restaurant is in an old bungalow and the relaxed vibe makes it feel like you’re having dinner at somebody’s home.  Our table had reindeer salt and pepper shakers.  Being near the gulf, we decided to try out some seafood.  Lance ordered the Bacon Wrapped Basil Stuffed BBQ Shrimp and I had the Macadamia Nut Crusted Mahi. 

Each was served with a simple house salad – then Lance had the mashed potatoes and I had the edamame salad with my entrée.  The coating on my fish was pretty generous – I definitely got my share of macadamias.  The edamame salad was pretty hearty – with chickpeas, corn, beans.  I couldn’t tell all the ingredients, but it was really tasty.  Lance’s mashed potatoes tasted homemade with some chunks and potato skins mixed in.  The shrimp was good, but the sweet BBQ sauce was a bit overpowering.  Overall, it was a great meal. 

We took a walk around town afterwards along the shore – most shops close up early, so there weren’t any open to wander through.  But we watched people fish off the pier and enjoyed the water views.  It’s not far from Tampa, but with the small-town atmosphere, it’s a nice getaway.    

Backfin Blue Cafe is located at 2913 Beach Blvd S, Gulfport, FL 33707.  They are open 4pm – 10pm Mondays, Wednedays – Saturdays, 4pm – 9pm on Sundays, and closed on Tuesdays.