Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Mini Chocolate Chips

As I was deciding what cookie to bake and send to the troops I thought about what would best remind them of home. I asked Jim what his favorite cookie was. His answer? He actually told me Milano Cookies. As in Pepperidge Farms Milano cookies. I like those too but I was referring to the homemade varietal. After a quick search I actually found a recipe for a Milano copy cat recipe that I will make for Jim later. But for the troops, I thought who doesn’t LOVE oatmeal cookies? I like mine without raisins. I like all my foods without raisins. Eew, raisins in food…yuck-o. Instead, I used mini chocolate chips to sweeten the deal.

Here is what you need to make Oatmeal cookies the way I like them:

1 cup shortening (you can use butter too, I used a butter flavored shortening)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs well beaten
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
3 cups oats (I used Old Fashioned Oats, the instant kind would not work here.)
3/4 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts, or no nuts)
3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used the mini chocolate chips)

Like I said earlier, this is one cup of Crisco that is butter flavored. Mom, would now be a good time to share with the world how you used to use this as moisturizer when your skin was REALLY dry?

I'm using a borrowed mixer, one day I shall have my very own. One cup of crisco (or butter).

One cup packed brown sugar.

1 cup granulated sugar.

Then we "cream" the mixture. I turned the mixer on medium for about a minute or two. It looks thoroughly mixed here.

Add two eggs. It is best practice to crack your eggs in a separate bowl just in case one is bad you don't ruin the entire mixture. These look like great eggs, so into the mixer they go.

One Tablespoon of vanilla (I like this mexican vanilla).

Then blend this really well, it is all creamy after about 2 minutes on medium high.

I'm using a whole wheat flour because that is what I had on hand. I like to sift the dry ingredients together first. I sifted right onto a sheet of parchment paper...it makes pouring in the mixer SO much easier.

Once the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon are sifted together, just fold the parchment paper like a Tex-Mex taco and transport to the mixer.

This makes funneling into the mixer SO MUCH EASIER. I'm all about making things easy!

Here is a good handful of pecans.

Simply chopped with my chef knife.

My favorite secret ingredient - mini chocolate chips.

I mixed the chocolate chips in.

The last thing to do is mix in the oats.

Here is what it looks like when done.

I scraped down the bowl and then licked the spoon. C'mon, you do it too!

Using rounded Tablespoons I formed a dozen balls on my baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 13 minutes.

Move to a wire rack to cool. This recipe makes three dozen cookies.

These smell delightful! I hope someone serving in our military will get these and be reminded of home. I hope they know how many people here at home are thinking about them and praying for their safe return. I'm proud of our troops and very honored to be participating in Baking GALS.

Firecracker Shrimp

Before I get to these Firecracker Shrimp, let me back up a bit to what Jim and I did this past Saturday. The two of us attended Wurstfest in New Braunfels, TX with some friends. This is a German festival celebrating all things ... German... but particularly sausage and beer. Neither of us had attended such a festival, but we both like sausages and we both like beer so it sounded like a GREAT idea. We had SO much fun. I have ridiculous pictures to prove the fun...

A group of nine people drank all those pitchers of beer...even though Jim and I are the only ones posing with this monstrosity. The hats? Oh, that is something everyone does. We actually purchased these at the festival so we wouldn't feel left out. My little honey bee has wings that flap when I pull the string under my chin. How cute is that?

Here are the guys.

And here are the girls.

I'm "flapping" the wings in this pic. Jim is happy as he returns from picking up another pitcher of beer. Beer and Brats, that's what we "did" from 7 PM to 1 AM.

After a while you start to dig the polka music. I think Jim is teaching our friend Amanda how to do his white boy dance. Oh, gosh... it's an awful dance... but really funny when Jim gets into it.

For our next trick Jim will balance 140 empty pitchers of beer on his nose while not puking.

Wurstfest, we love you. We will be back...with our crazy hats and all!

Now on to the SHRIMP! My local Whole Foods was having a ridiculous sale on these big shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico. I heard about the sale on Thursday (I'm on their e-newsletter mailing list) and thought about what I was going to do with these shrimp the rest of the week. When Jim and I were driving home from New Braunfels we made a stop at Whole Foods to pick up a pound of these ugly things.

Oh god these are ugly. So ugly in fact that I could hardly touch them. I have this weird thing about things from the sea - I hate them... but sometimes I eat them, but I do strongly dislike thinking about them as living things. eeewww....I'm getting grossed out just reliving the experience as I post this.

These are not my pretty manicured hands, why? I cannot bring myself to touch these bad boys. This is my delightful boyfriend Jim who is handling the peeling for me. I had to look up on another blog exactly how to prep shrimp, so I made sure to take good pictures while Jim de-shelled these shrimp so I could return the favor and show others how it's done.

Here we see Jim ripping the legs off the shrimp.

...I think I threw up a little in my mouth....

Next, Jim peels the shell off the little guy. It looked like they peeled right off without a struggle.

See here, he just lifts it off with his thumb.

Ew, again.

Here is a tip. There are (apparently) lots of good flavor in these shells, so I had Jim stuff the shells into a zip top bag and I put them in the freezer. I plan to make fish stock with them later. I could use this stock when making risotto, maybe a seafood risotto where I add shrimp or scallops.

Here I am! Yes, I'm wearing thick pink gloves to handle the shrimp. I squealed every time I tried to pick one up with my bare hands. I actually think I had the grosser job of the two of us. I have to "devein" the shrimp.... translates to pull the poop tube out of the shrimps back. Yeah, if you are too squeamish to finish the post, go back up and look at Jim and I in our crazy beerfest hats.

You basically hold it like this, then with a paring knife you cut down the back about 1/4 an inch until you expose the dark vein. Then you pull it out, scrape it out, suck it out. Just kidding, don't get your mouth anywhere near this filth.

Keep the shrimp in ice water or on ice the entire time you are working with them. Once peeled and deveined I put them in a colandar and rinsed them REALLY well.

Here is what I came up with for cooking the shrimp. Lemon juice, a favorite among sea food recipes. Here you see I used the real juice from a squeeze bottle. The Worcestershire to add mucho flavor. Sea salt, because I like the way it feels in my hands. Black pepper, because I'm adding salt. The two just go together. Add one, go ahead and add the other. The show stopper was this chinese hot sauce. Love this stuff. Not pictured is olive oil and last but not least....everything is better with butter, right?

First I lay the shrimp in a single layer (as much as possible) and give it a good heavy sprinkling of ground pepper.

This looks like a tablespoon of sea salt.

I gave enough Worcestershir shakes to cover the bottom of the pan. Maybe a half cup total.

This is about a tablespoon of chili sauce, but definitely fix this to your taste. We like things spicy, but not CRAZY spicy, just hot enough to make your nose run.

To the chili sauce I added an equal amount of olive oil.

Stir this together...and now let's make some magic.

Just spoon this over the top of the shrimp. No rhyme or reason, just try to "dump" evenly if you can.

Everything is better with a stick of butter. Is there an echo in here?

Yup, this looks like a Paula Deen recipe. It aint. Now pre-heat your oven to "hot" which in my kitchen is the broiler setting at 525 degrees. These shrimp cook fast.

10 minutes later, look what we have here!

These are nice and pink. I cut into one and they were perfectly cooked through, just swimming in this amazing sauce. FYI, I can touch these now with my bare hands. I can even eat these, with glee...without squealing or squirming.

I have this great two sided bowl that I believe I bought on impulse at World Market. I use it ALL the time. For this appetizer I put all the cooked shrimp on one side and spooned a little of the drippings on top of them.

Beautiful darlings, aren't they?

Here is another magic trick for you. Now you see them....

Now you don't. Voila, success!!!!