Deviled Eggs

Oh my. How did I let myself go so long without posting again? By way of apology, let me explain that I've been on three trips in the last month and a half (Boston, DC, and Indy for my little sister's wedding) and am now working on editing wedding photos while also catching up on actual work. I guess time has just gotten away from me, and I apologize for leaving you hanging for so long. It seems like it comes to this every few months, unfortunately, but you know, life gets in the way sometimes.

Spring is in full force here in Hampton Roads. (Actually, when we came back from the wedding, it seemed like we had skipped spring entirely and gone straight into summer. when we left it was in the 50s, and when we came home, it was seriously in the mid to high 80s.) With spring, comes picnic foods--ham sandwiches, potato salad, macaroni salad, and deviled eggs. I personally am not a fan of deviled eggs, but Justin loves them. Being the wonderful wife that I am, I do occasionally make them for him. This recipe is our attempt at recreating his mother's deviled eggs. She doesn't use a recipe, of course. She just adds the ingredients until it tastes right. Someday I'm going to use a food scale to weigh the containers before and after to figure out her exact recipe, lol, but I haven't done that yet and so this is as close as it gets.

Crawfish Bread

As soon as March arrives, I start to crave one thing: crawfish. Crawfish season is typically March to June. This is when they're cheap, big, and easily available, and so it's also when you get to have crawfish boils, an integral part of my childhood. There's nothing like running around in the spring sunshine while someone boils up a huge batch of crawfish, red potatoes, corn, and sausages/hot dogs. When it's time to eat, they just dump it all into a big pile on a newspaper-covered picnic table, and everyone digs in. It's messy. It's hot. It's a lot of work, but oh man is it delicious.

Living outside of southern Louisiana makes it difficult to experience anything even close to a crawfish boil. Thankfully, Norfolk, VA holds a Cajun festival every summer, and one of the things they offer there is fresh boiled crawfish. It's WAY more expensive than they would be in New Orleans (like $5-6/lb at the festival rather than $2-3/lb in New Orleans) and doesn't come with all the awesome extras, but it's the closest I've come to the real thing since moving away.

Bang Bang Shrimp

I should preface this post by saying that I have never eaten at Bonefish Grill, where this is apparently a menu item. Our favorite local restaurant has an appetizer called Boom Boom Shrimp for which the menu description only says "You know the story. We stole it and made it better." Having heard a few times just how great these shrimp were, we decided to try them, even though we really didn't know what to expect at all. We were quite pleasantly surprised at what we received, fried shrimp coated in a sweet, creamy, rich sauce with a lot of Asian zing to it. When we asked what the "story" was behind them, that's when the owner told us that he improved upon the Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish Grill. I had no idea what ingredients the original recipe would include, much less this modified version, but I knew I wanted to try to make it at home because it was extra tasty.

Mushroom Soup

Mushrooms are another one of those things that I really love but that Justin could really live without. He'll eat them in various recipes if they're chopped up pretty small, but he definitely doesn't want to eat soup based entirely around them. I knew that this was something I wanted to make while he's out of town, and I was not disappointed.

I've only tried making mushroom soup once before, and I didn't love it. It wasn't creamy enough or mushroom-y enough for me. This one was much better. It would make a good first course, but I just ate it as dinner along with some crusty bread. I still think it would be even better with a few additions; my favorite mushroom soup ever was one we had at the coffee shop where I worked which was made with brie and madeira wine, so I think next time I'll try adding those and see how it comes out. However, if you just want a basic, tasty, creamy mushroom soup recipe, this is it.

Roasted Tomato Caprese Salad

There aren't too many things that I crave that Justin doesn't eat and vice versa, but sometimes we just have to have a fend-for-yourself night where we each get to eat whatever it is that individually makes us happy. It's summer, and it's been a pretty hot one at that, and so I just want to eat cold things. Caprese salad is one of those things that just hits the spot. Yes, technically caprese salad is usually more of an appetizer than a full dinner, but it's cold and delicious and everything that's good about summer.

I actually didn't really eat tomatoes until fairly recently. I always ate tomato sauce and spaghetti and whatnot, but I never ate actual tomatoes. I didn't like them for whatever reason. Since I've grown up and started eating a wider variety of foods, I've discovered that I do like them after all, and since I started eating tomatoes, I discovered the delight of caprese salad. Fresh basil? Love it! Fresh mozzarella? Can't get enough of it! Put that on a perfectly ripe tomato with a drizzle of balsamic reduction, and you've nearly got perfection. (If only there was a good way to work in some bacon there. Hmmmm. I might need to work on that.)

Fiesta Chicken Bread

Justin was browsing through the Chive one day last month and found this food post. When we saw number 20, we decided we had to know A) what exactly it was, B) how to make it, and C) how awesome it would taste. Analyzing the photo, I decided that it obviously included bread of some sort, bacon, cheese, and what I thought might be some sort of ranch dressing. I googled bread bacon cheese ranch, and voila, I found myself at the recipe for Cheddar Bacon Ranch Pulls on Plain Chicken.