Mouse Tale, Bowling, Malaysian Plane, A to Z.

Got me a new mouse from Staples today. Simple one, simple price, but it does what I want it to do. I am not quite sure what the very expensive one’s do, but I don’t need to spend that kind of money anyway. I know, I got a girlie one, but when I saw the birds, which I thought were Cardinals, I couldn’t resist. However, when I had fought the packaging and finally unwrapped it, I realised the birds were just plain brown. Oh well, it works on my laptop which is I guess all that really matters.

Had a reasonably good afternoon bowling, my third game wasn’t anything to write home about, but the first two were good so I bowled quite a bit more than my average. According to the computer at the Lanes I am now 159.8 – we thought it would round it up, it didn’t. Damn, I wanted a 160 average. Maybe next week. Matt’s bowling was OK but not spectacular. Enough that he wasn’t depressed about it anyway. Our Thursday bowling will be Travel League this week so there will be quite a few of us. Lunch at the Red Lobster beforehand. I have a problem with Red Lobster since I found out that the shrimp dish which I have been eating with enjoyment contains more calories than I allow myself for a normal day. Will have to rethink it. Not sure if this is the right dish, but anyway.

It seems they have found the missing Malaysian plane. Or have they? How come it was over the Indian Ocean in the first place. It would, presumably, be easy enough to arrange to drop some debris to fool everyone.

It was so nice, yesterday, to be featured by Tina at Life is Good. Made me feel quite special. Thanks Tina. I will enjoy being a member of Tina’s Terrific Team. That means I am a) taking part in the A to Z Challenge starting on April 1 (click on the badge on the right to find out more and to join in) and b) I am responsible for keeping an eye on 20 of the entrants during the month.

I mentioned doing a Snow Pea dish on Saturday, here is the recipe:

Snow Peas and Peppers

1 Tbs (15 mL) butter, or vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
1/4 tsp (1 mL) pepper
1 sweet red pepper, sliced
3 cups (750 mL) snow peas
1 Tbs (15 mL) wine vinegar

1. In deep skillet, heat butter or vegetable oil over medium heat; cook garlic, salt and pepper until fragrant, 30 seconds. Add sweet red pepper and snow peas. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender-crisp, 5 minutes. Stir in wine vinegar.

Servings: 4

Tips
The final step adds vinegar. I suggest you don't add this until just before service otherwise it will discolour the peas. Prior to this, they remain a pretty green, but I added the vinegar a good while before service and they didn’t look nearly as good.

Have a great day

No Water, Missing Plane.

Disappointing. We turned up at the bowling alley on Thursday afternoon and were sitting there having a coffee and waiting for another bowler. We were told the water was off due to a broken main. There were a whole bunch of women there from a league too. Suddenly one of the owners comes over and tells us he is sending us home. Apparently Health and Safety had phoned and said they had to shut down and they would be sending an on site inspector. He wasn’t best pleased as you can imagine, and nor were we. Originally they had been told they mustn’t serve food (well they don’t really anyway) but then they said no customers should be there at all. One group of women who were there were prepared to give the inspector a piece of their minds, don’t know if they did that, we went home of course. I discovered later that the water was on again at 4 which was good for their evening leagues. Matt and I have decided to bowl on Friday afternoon.

I am fascinated by this missing Malaysian plane story. What I don’t understand, in this day and age, there must have been loads of cell phones on board and yet nobody called anyone to say what was happening. If they could make calls on 9/11 I am sure they could have managed it on this plane unless it was blown to pieces all in an instant. Now they are maintaining it flew for several hours towards India? There have been all kinds of rumours, lots of speculation, now they are looking at the Indian Ocean. I wonder if we will ever know?

This is a particularly delicious sounding way of serving shrimp. The source today, World Wide Recipes, doesn’t do pictures and after Googling I found this picture from Closet Cooking which is a similar recipe but doesn’t have all the ingredients. Something of a boozy dish.


Shrimp Amaretto


Description: Slightly sweet shrimp dish with flavour of Amaretto
and brandy. Excellent entrée, served with rice.

12 Large shrimp, peeled and deveined, fresh, washed
3 Tablespoon butter, salted or non-salted does not matter
1/2 Cup Brandy
1/4 Cup white wine
1/4 Cup Orange juice
1/3 Cup Amaretto
1/4 Cup heavy cream or half & half Lactose free if able to
find for those who can't do dairy
1/2 Teaspoon orange zest

Rinse shrimp in cool water.  Using a sharp knife, split shrimp down the back and remove the vein. Sauté shrimp in butter for three minutes on the first side and 2 minutes on second side until done.  Remove the shrimp from the pan.  Pour off any excess butter from the pan.  Add the brandy to the pan and flame it.  When the flame goes out, add the white wine and orange juice and reduce by half until syrupy.  Add the Amaretto, cream and orange zest.  Simmer for 3-4 minutes until it reduces, and return the shrimp to this pan and reheat in the sauce and serve over white rice.

Have a great day