Shrimp on the BarBie

Published April 17, 2016 | By Susan W Bosscawen

Shrimp on the BarBie!

Like you, I have 14 other things going on in my life at any given time. Writing Barefoot Affairs is one of the more enjoyable things I do. If I could do just one thing every day, it would be to write to you. It’s truly that fun.

As I’m not a trust fund baby and there are other things that creep in and steal my time, I try to write to you one a week. Unless, it’s something important. And this is important. Well, not really important, more fun important.

Each post takes several hours to write, take photos, edit, and prepare for publishing. I’d planned to send this to you next month. But, you need it now. This very day, before any more time passes. Why? Because it’s that time of year. It’s still cool enough at night that it’s not too hot to have a fire and, like I said, this is fun—tastingly fun.

I showed you how to make free fire starters. Today, I’m going to tell you what to do with that fire after you’ve made it.

EAT.

Once again, I’d come in from being gone four days and my guy, bless his heart, sat outside with me on the deck to let me decompress. As I’ve mentioned, most of my time at work is in a metal tube, stinky airport, or stale hotel room, so being out in fresh air has become my decompression chamber once I’m away from there.

And while my body decompresses, so does my brain. And mouth.

Everything I wanted to tell him while I was gone needs to get said. We call every day and check up on each other, but it’s hard to connect heart to heart over the phone. Especially, since we know we’ll be back together in a matter of days. So important stuff tends to wait.

It’s been stated that women speak about 3:1 words for every word a man says in the course of a day. Women are supposed to speak about 20,000 words a day vs men speaking about 7,000.

Not true! Thanks to a study published in Science, that’s a bunch of hooey. Men and women each speak about 16,000 words a day.

Except I’ve got four days backed up. Plus, I want to hear everything he thought about, too.

One of our favorite meals is apps by the fire. Every evening, we try to stop and sit on the deck watching the lake as it does absolutely nothing. We’ll have a glass of wine, a tray of various appetizers, and talk until dark.

It’s a meal of finger foods. Nutritious finger foods.

Yesterday, I got home about 3:30 pm, before my guy, and had everything prepared by the time he arrived.

Fire started.

Apps were ready. I put together a tray of cheese, veggies, bread, and meats. It varies depending on what’s on hand.

Tonight, we had Coastal rugged mature English cheddar (Love it. Bought at Costco.) and Fontina cheeses, sour dough slices of bread, Boar’s Head Sopressata sausage, some leftover steak I cut in bite-size pieces, celery, and Giardiniera veggies. A little light on veggies I prefer—like broccoli, carrots, red onions, cukes, squash & zucchini, or cauliflower, but I’d not been to the grocery store in a week.

I thawed out a pound of shrimp, too. And that’s what I’m going to show you now.

Shrimp on the BarBie!

These shrimp are 15-20 size (15-20 per pound). I peeled them, but since we weren’t having company, I didn’t go to the trouble to devein them. That skewer came from Northern Tools. It has a telescoping handle and it’s about eight years old. Good $2 investment.

Let your fire wood burn down a bit so you have some nice coals. You want to avoid the smoky parts because your shrimp will come out covered in a grey soot. Not pretty.

See how there’s a little cave? That’s a perfect oven. After the fire had settled down, I rearranged the wood to create that cave—hot coals all around.

This is on the side and cooler than in the cave. Your shrimp will cook slower here. I started it out here.

You can see how it’s still translucent. Cook it slowly.

I pulled it out frequently to check it. I wanted it about 75% cooked, then I brushed on some bar-b-que sauce. This came from a friend. I don’t have the recipe, but it’s a spicy, mustard-based sauce. My guy loves it. I do, too, but would probably make it a little sweeter.

This shrimp is cooked and ready to eat.

See the ashes below? No, that’s not where I accidentally hit the coals.

I’m deliberately making it healthier—coal ash is full of minerals.

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Cooking anything like this is sort of like eating crab. It tastes great, but it’s slow going. I began doubling up on my shrimp.

They’re not actually in the fire below, but on the back side. The wood had burned down, so I’d added another piece. I didn’t want the tails to get overcooked and rubbery, so I slid them beyond the fire to the back of the chiminea.