A New Home

If you haven't noticed already, I've moved my blog to a new host. You can get to it quickly and easily by going to shinyhappyrachel.com. Add or update your favorites!

That link will work in about an hour (at which point I'll remove this little note) in the meantime I'm at ShinyHappyRachel.wordpress.com

Pimp Her Blog #1

Looking for delicious recipes and not finding what you want here? You need to check out my girl's blog.
It's called Not Your Mommas Kitchen and Dana comes up with some recipes that make me drool.
I think I'm going to make a big batch of her Homemade Meat Spaghetti Sauce and I'm gonna HAVE to take a paleo break to try Crock Pot Orange Chicken.

So, RUN, don't walk to her blog.. RIGHT NOW... why are you still here????!!!!

Delicious Buttery, Garlicy, Lemony, Spicy Shrimp

I was (again) wandering punchfork last night and searched for "Paleo Shrimp" and this jumped out at me. First off, it's really a Paleo cheat because it uses a lot of butter. Butter is "ok" from time to time. I use butter now and then and I'm careful to buy the "Happy Butter" as I call it. Grass fed cows, free-range, no funky stuff fed to them or injected.. so yeah, happy butter!

I also served it with some homemade french bread because the sauce you end up when it's cooked is just too good to waste so you can either pour it in a glass and drink it or use some french bread to sop it up. The latter won't make you feel dumb. ;)

You're going to need:

2 pounds Raw Shrimp, Cleaned and Deshelled
2 sticks COLD Unsalted Butter Cut Into Pieces
1 teaspoon Sea Salt
4 cloves Garlic, Peeled
1/4 cup Fresh Parsley
1/2 teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper
1 whole Lemon, Juiced

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (190.6 C).

Get out your food processor. You're really going to need one to make this painless. Use the blade attachment that chops everything up.

In the bowl add your cut up COLD butter pieces. It's important that it's cold and hard butter or it's not going to crumble right. So butter, sea salt, garlic, parsley, crushed red pepper and the lemon juice.
Pulse it until it's all combined and kinda crumbly. 

Get a baking dish out (I used a 8x11 casserole pan) and lay the cleaned shrimp out all flat in one layer. The original recipe calls for the shells to be left on and then peel them as you eat them BUT, from experience, when you cook shrimp with the shells on and then peel them to eat, all of the good taste comes off with the shell! SO... I'm saying deshell, clean and put on the tray all nice and flat.

Sprinkle the butter mix all over the shrimps and pop in the oven. You're going to want to cook them until the shrimp is pink on the outside and opaque in the middle and butter is hot and bubbly. It took me about 13 minutes and Gary said it was cooked perfectly.

Next, take your plate and serve the shrimp up with big spoonfuls of the butter sauce that you can use your french bread to get off of your plate. The butter sauce is the best part in my opinion!

(image courtesy of punchfork stock)

Slow Cooker Apple BBQ Chicken

I stopped looking for new crockpot recipes awhile ago because everything seems to be "protein plus BBQ sauce". It gets really old, really fast. Well, I was bored, wandering punchfork again, and came across this recipe. It had some extra flair so I decided to give it a go and it turned out pretty stinkin' good!

That is not my picture. I used punchfork stock.

You're going to need: 
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I used 3)
4 slices of bacon (I skipped this step)
1/2 cup of BBQ sauce
2 large apples, peeled and cut into small pieces
2 Tbs lemon juice

You're supposed to start by wrapping the chicken breasts in bacon slices. I skipped this step. I'm sure it adds some decent flavor but I like my bacon one way.... burnt. I HATE soggy bacon and there can come NO GOOD from bacon in a crockpot for 8 hours.
Anyway, place your chicken breasts in the crockpot.. with or without bacon.

Peel the apples and chop them up into little pieces. (I highly recommend peeling them even if you like skins. The skins won't break down in the crockpot the way they're supposed to.)
Mix the BBQ, apple pieces and lemon juice.
Pour it over the chicken and cook on low for 8 hours.

I used green apples. Those are pretty much the only kind that Gary likes. If you try a different kind of apple, you'll have to let me know how it tastes!

I was out of Steve's Original BBQ sauce so I used another gluten free/NO HFCS BBQ sauce that I found at Sprouts. :)