shells with shrimp, sauteed peppers and garlic

I made a decent dinner tonight, and though I didn't manage to get a picture of it (Sorry Mom and Michelle. I was too hungry!). Basically, I wanted to have a noodle dinner we could eat with a spoon and the dish is constructed to that end (and from stuff left in our fridge). Here's what I did:

I cooked a pound of small shell noodles, gave the kids their portions with some sauce from the fridge mixed in and set the rest aside.

We bought some raw shrimp a few weeks ago. I cooked them in just a little bit of olive oil until they had only just just turned pink and set them aside.

I diced three cloves of garlic and set the small pile aside.

We had three halves of bell peppers (red, orange, yellow). I diced them into very small squares and started them sauteing in some butter and olive oil.

While the peppers cooked, I cut the now cooled shrimp in small chunks and then added it to the peppers with a bit more oo.

I added the garlic now and turned down the temperature (cooking with garlic is tricky--it cooks quickly and therefore burns quickly too. I usually add it as late as possible).

In the pot that I cooked the pasta in, I started about 2 cups of whole milk heating up. When it started to steam, I added about a cup of graded parmesan.

After that cooked down just a bit, I poured in the shrimp/pepper/garlic mixture and let it cook some more (oh yeah--I added the shells now too). At this point, I realized that I probably shouldn't have used so much milk--it was taking a long time to thicken up--but it did eventually.

That was it! What was cool about it though was that the sauce had this really nice roasted pepper/shrimp flavor. I don't know if it was the fact that we started with raw shrimp, but they were especially tender. I served it with slices of lime which I added, but Tina didn't.

I was pleased--especially since I was flying by the seat of my pants. You should go for it too.

tree at sunset

Here's a cool photo I took a few weeks back on a park trip with Tina and the kids. In real life there was even more pinholes of light escaping through the trees. One day I will have a camera that will be able to capture that...

Is it really a blog if...

...the dude never posts?

I am sorry folks. Wasn't I just whining about how I seemed to have so much to say that I needed two blogs to contain it? I just typed and then deleted a pledge to post daily as an exercise in both writing and discipline, but let's face it: It probably won't happen. So at least I am being honest with myself about it... or something.

This week it's gotten a bit colder. Tina taught me the proper (or at least fancy) way to wear a scarf. It's been harder to get out of bed--especially after being up half the night with restless kids with runny noses. This morning was the first morning that I full on skipped both parts of my other daily activities pledge (30 min study/30 min exercise) that I started after General Conference. So, with all of these horses on the move, it's hard to know which ones to get get back on after the initial fall.

More posts in the near future: likely.

Potential for anything very thought provoking or worth-your-while in those posts: unlikely.

Keep checking back anyway though.

Everything in its right place

(I have been sitting on this blog for a few days wanting to put more links to cool Radiohead stuff in it. I just haven't had the time. If you check back, there will be more fun stuff to play with.)

Tina and I are watching the first season of Alias on DVD. It’s taking a while, but we like it. We get in one or maybe two episodes a week. I check out the discs from our library’s huge movie holdings. There are literally thousands of hours of media, all free to students—one of the perks, I suppose. The other night, we were watching one and during a swanky, under-double-cover moment that should have been intense and interesting, an old song by Smash Mouth started up. It made the scene funny. Now, I am fairly certain that the scene wouldn’t have been funny if I had seen it in the context of its original air date (2001). I don’t know that there is anything very significant about that story, but it made me think about music, media, and context. I know one example of a movie that was re-scored—the pop soundtrack it was released with was replaced with an orchestral one—in order to alleviate the cheesiness of viewing the movie post-1984 (interestingly, I'm wrong here...you'll see what I mean if you click the link). It’s interesting that sometimes music, even old music, helps maintain the “moment” for viewers—like in something like, say, Say Anything, and sometimes music makes things hopelessly silly.

On a different note (there’s that pesky pun again), if you haven’t downloaded the new Radiohead album (In Rainbows) yet, you should do it right now. Some of you may have heard about how the band released the album all on their own and made it available for a you-name-it price (a move that totally shakes things up in the music business). You can legitimately pay nothing for it; I paid 1 Euro (the equivalent of $2.14). It is really really good. I’m not really that good at deciding if it is the best music they have ever put out. As my buddy Mat said last week, their Kid A might be the best album of all time.

I came to Radiohead late in the game. When I was in high school, Marisa H. made me a copy of their first album. I was mildly interested because of their hit Creep (every 14 year old’s theme song) but wasn’t really moved by any of their songs—later, once Creep had been played out, and the Bends came out, I was much more interested in the louder, more aggressive music that was coming out at the same time. I left on the mission right as Paranoid Android was being debuted on Mtv, and while I sensed that there was something interesting about the band (I only know this because I mention a notice of the release of OK computer in a letter to Tina from Palo Alto), I didn't pay much attention to the music or what the critical mass was saying. But then, Radiosilence.

When I got home, it wasn’t until Amnesiac was released—particularly the enchanting Pyramid Song in the summer of 2001—that my attention was piqued. I remember listening to it in San Diego with Tina on our first anniversary. I quickly learned that I had been missing out on something special.

If you are not a fan, you have too.

I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.