By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea...

Back from Easter vacation at Edisto Beach, SC, and am very sad to be back, I must say.  I love the beach.  The relaxation, the wind, the waves, the smells, the food...oh, yes the food...

There is no more appropriate place than the beach to enjoy a uniquely southern dish known as "Shrimp and Grits".  And oh my God, if you've never had it, then you are missing out:

I decided to indulge this weekend, and had a taste test between two local restaurants (not that there are a lot to choose from on this humble island) and tried out the shrimp and grits at the Sea Cow and the Waterfront...which doesn't have a website, which is so stupid, because they are awesome.  And they won this taste test.

Though both were amazeballs.  You know what else is amazeballs?  Pimento Cheese burgers.  Those were enjoyed courtesy of McConkey's Jungle Shack.

So, tomorrow, the diet and the dreaded workweek start again, but in the meantime, I will share with you the best recipes I have ever found for Pimento Cheese and Shrimp and Grits and just a few pics of my lovely holiday weekend.

Pimento Cheese:

6 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup Vermont extra sharp white cheddar cheese, grated
3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup Monterrey jack cheese, grated
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
4 ounces pimientos (in a jar), chopped
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 dash hot sauce (or more!)
fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:

1 Using a hand held mixer, beat cream cheese until soft.
2 Add the remaining ingredients and beat until creamy and combined.
3 Cover and refrigerate for about an hour.

Ta-da! Then smother it on everything: burgers, fries, celery, crackers, your face, the possibilities are endless!

Shrimp and Grits:

Ingredients

• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup uncooked quick-cooking grits
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups (8 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
• 6 slices bacon, chopped

• 2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 6 green onions, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced

Preparation

Bring chicken broth to a boil over medium-high heat; stir in grits. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 to 7 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in salt and next 3 ingredients. Set aside, and keep warm.
Cook bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat 3 minutes or until crisp; remove bacon from pan.
Cook shrimp in same pan over medium-high heat 3 minutes or until almost pink, stirring occasionally. Add lemon juice and next 4 ingredients, and cook 3 minutes. Stir in bacon.
Spoon grits onto individual plates or into shallow bowls; top with shrimp mixture. Serve immediately.

Trust me, you'll love them both. And if you ever happen to find yourself at Edisto Beach, if you find a shark's tooth while walking the shore at low tide, I hope you'll think of me...because I didn't find one this time around, dammit.  I'm usually a pro at that sort of thing.

Happy Easter everyone! And despite whatever anyone else says, it IS all about the bunny...

And the Godiva truffles...thank you,Rottenator!

Meanwhile, the Nooge survived his first overnight alone. Although he did greet us like this at the door...

Obviously, he has very short term memory and forgot who we were for a few minutes.  Oh, he was not happy with us being gone, and greeted us with fluffy tail and mohawk.  The Rottenator says it's because it was he was prepared to protect the house against strangers.  My thoughts are that he was so fucking pissed that he'd been abandoned he was ready to rip our throats out.

Nevertheless,all was forgiven. Never...leave...again...

They both had a hard weekend

I like this pic because it's kinda abstract

This let's you know that you've really arrived; famous decorated Edisto "tree"

This pic does not accurately show how fucking cold it was

 2nd place winner in the Scrimp & Grits contest

Awesome pimento cheese burgers

Oak trees, wisteria and spanish moss...telltale signs you're hitting the low country

Improved service and awesome food...preview of my Tripadvisor review...

One way in...one way out..."THE" bridge onto the island

My Mood(ring) Tone of the Day:

Just to add, the main purpose of the trip was to put together furniture for my mom's beach house.  Whilst the Rottenator excelled at this task...

He put together two of these bad boys, plus two other chairs lickety-split, whilst I was not so fortunate.  My mother ordered a microwave cabinet that was supposed to look like this...

And I gave her an end product that looked like this....

Needless to say, JC may have been a carpenter, but Kathleen definitely is not.

Clean Sweep

It's funny, when I first started this entry, the opening line was going to be: "Man, I wish there was a Batman premiere every day!" but the I was quickly reminded by my brain of how inappropriate this would be considering what happened in Colorado, so I had to take a step back and rethink my intro.

Because, yes, despite outward appearances, sometimes there is a bit of thought that goes into these entries.

To clarify what I originally meant, my ill-timed and inappropriate phrase has not so much to do with the film (although it was AWESOME with a capital SAUCE, more on that later), but the mood of the Rottenator since then.

It's like he's a whole new person.  A pleasant person in a good mood who is actually...helpful, and generous, dare I say.

Oh, believe me, I know that this is temporary insanity on his part, but damn, I have been enjoying the hell out of it.  After the movie, we went to eat at PF Changs (again! I love that place, so this was fabulous, and we got great service and free food...again!), then hit the mall, where I got a new pair of kicks.

Reeboks; on clearance, 50% off, and cute to boot!

Then Sunday, it was laundry day, but we went out again(!) and I got three new shirts, and he didn't even bitch (that much) about the amount of $ I spent at the grocery store, AND he made dinner Sunday, AND he washed a sinkfull of dishes, AND he vacuumed the living room.

(Of course, he expected to be thanked profusely and worshipped for performing these three chores that I perform without anyone noticing on a daily basis with hardly any thanks whatsoever, but hey, it's cool, because his participation really was appreciated).

This change in personality can only be attributed to the release of this movie he's been waiting a year to see combined with our recent two-income household (relative) wealth, so on the whole, it was a good weekend.

That being said, I have come to recently realize that if I don't get at least one chill day on my days away from work, I am freakin' exhausted come Monday.  I mean, seriously, yesterday, I fell asleep at around 9:30pm and was a zombie at work.  All because Saturday, we had an activity filled day, and then Sunday, it was chore day.

I don't know whether to attribute this to my advanced age, my lack of in-shapeness, or my mental instability, but it is not cool.  I'm still a little wiped out today, quite frankly, and I find this unacceptable.  How to change it, I don't know.  This weekend will be better, because the Rottenator has to work, so I will have at least Sunday to chill.  Maybe this just means that my relationship to God is getting closer, because even He needed a break on the 7th day, right?

So, I mentioned PF Chang's and the free food, right?  Okay, check it: again, yesterday, me, exhausted, I knew the Rottenator was covered food-wise with his leftover stew, and we had a whole meal of Wok-Seared Beef with my name on it waiting for me in our fridge last night.  I was practically salivating, because I didn't have to cook dinner, I didn't have the energy to cook dinner, and all I wanted was to go home and nuke my delicious PF Chang's and enjoy a delicious meal.  I had been thinking about it since, oh, noon, when I had a very unsatisfying Lean Cuisine that did more to piss me off than it did to fill me up.

So, I get home.  I ask the Rottenator: "So, you're having stew for dinner, right?" 
Rottenator: "Yeah."
Me:  "Oh good, then I'm going to change into fancy pants and heat up that PF Chang's."
R: "Uh..."
M: "What, did you eat it?  You said you were having stew!"
R: "It smelled funny...I threw it out".

Again, I would like to direct your attention to this clip of Ross from Friends:

Um...so...yeah.  The Rottenator has a thing about food.  And it's totally fucked up when you think about it.  He doesn't like leftovers, it's like he was poisoned in a former life or something, and he won't eat anything that's a day old, or has been sitting out for more than 30 seconds, or that has an expiration date less than 30 days away.  What doesn't make sense is that this boy will also happily stuff his face at any buffet with the words Golden, Ryan's, Duke's or Eastern in front of it and not think twice about how long it's been sitting there festering on a hotplate under lukewarm lights, or how many booger filled hands have played with the cookies and dove face forward into the chocolate fountain.

OH, and the boy doesn't throw ANYTHING away.  We have collections of empty deodorant bottles, body spray, baby powder (yes, he uses baby powder; he has delicate skin and "chafes easily") and crockpots sitting in the fridge with two tablespoons of beef stew broth sitting in it.

Yet he throws away my Chinese food.  Mine.  Despite that I have tried to explain to him on numerous occasions that I am a fat girl with deep-seeded food possession issues (translation: all the food on the planet is mine, whether it's yours or not, whether I want to eat it or not, it's mine.  You may borrow or ask for it and I will give it to you, as long as I am promised a replacement ASAP.  I know, it's a problem.  I'm working on it).  It would be okay if I could make sense of his mindset at all, but I can't.  Other than to explain it away as:

• He doesn't care because it doesn't directly concern him so fuck it, chuck it.
• He is lazy and does not like to clean, and that far outweighs his need to throw away things that offend him.

Whatever, it was a minor irritation during what was an overall success of a weekend so I'll overlook it...once again.  But that doesn't mean his precious Little Debbie snacks were not threatened.

Back to Batman:  the film is amazing.  Absolutely brilliant, and I love Christopher Nolan, not only for his eloquent and heartfelt statement about the tragedies in Colorado but also because in this film, which could have easily been a testosterone fueled joy-ride, he let the heroines shine.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman is so bad ass Buffy-level fierce, I adore her. And highly recommend seeing this movie if for nothing else, to take some power away from the truly insane and evil events that transpired in our country.

And now for the unnecessary pictures of the Nooge, who is driving me batshit crazy as usual.

Attached to the curtain (note that I am taking pictures, yet offering no assistance):

Watching Maru, because everyone loves Maru:

 

My Mood Ring(tone) Of The Day:

Prophetic Phortune Cookie

Eastern Buffet for dinner.  God, I love that place.  Even more so after tonight.  Despite the poison sushi which made me quite sickly (a rarity, because their sushi is usually quite delicious; I'm putting the blame on my unpredictable digestive system), it was a stellar meal, because I was blessed with not one but two, TWO fortunes in one cookie.

Normally, here is where I would insert a picture of said fortunes.  Unfortunately, they were misplaced on my travel home, which I am also blaming on my illness.  However, I can paraphrase quite nicely:

"Wish upon the first star you see to bring you good luck the next day"

and

"You will take a chance in the near future and have good luck"

Of course, I'm reading anything and everything into these proverbs as I have a very important interview coming up in a few days which could greatly improve my life, so I'm feeling hopeful.  Of course, with my paranoid and over-analytical nature, I'm also worried that the fact that I lost said fortunes means that everything else is negated and the exact opposite of what was said is going to happen.

It doesn't take a Chinese dessert to tell me that I'm insane.  That I already know.

On another food-related note, I was given a free Starbucks iced caramel macchiato to taste test this morning.  Now, I am not normally (read: hardly ever, more like never) a coffee drinker, but something you will come to learn about me is that I never met a free food that I turned down.  My middle name should be sample.  Honestly, you could serve me shit on a shingle, and I would eat it if it were free.

Point is: I fucking loved that cup of coffee, and highly recommend it to coffee and non-coffee drinkers alike.  It was insanely awesome.  Like me.