Woke up this morning feeling sicker than hell – this is a very bad time to be getting sick. Who has time for that? Unfortunately after being awake for most of the night coughing I didn’t have the energy for the gym. It has been two weeks since I have lifted and I can feel it. I feel all crabby and out of it because I haven’t been working out. I’m hoping that I feel better when I wake up tomorrow so I can get back on track with my work outs.
So because of this stupid cold that caught me – I spent the day being as lazy as possible watching girly movies while prepping meals for the week. I made meals that had long cook times so that I only had to expend minimal effort standing and prepping veggies and got to spend most of the time sitting on the couch!
Today, I cooked with shrimp for the first time! I have been meaning to cook with shrimp for a while but the only other time I tried, I accidentally bought cooked shrimp instead of uncooked. There were very serious warnings on the bag not to try to re-cook the cooked shrimp so there just wasn’t a way for me to make it work for the shrimp scampi w/ zucchini noodles that I wanted to try. It is ok though because had I made it with zucchini noodles, it would have been okay but when I had the idea to make it with spaghetti squash noodles, it turned out even better! I googled spaghetti squash shrimp scampi to see if I could come up with a recipe to follow and sure enough, there it was! Thank you to Paleogrub.com and their recipe (which I followed, mostly) I finally got to make it happen!
I learned a few things today during my first experiment with cooking shrimp.
- Uncooked shrimp is gray. Who knew?
- The shrimp’s legs are connected to the shell… weird? Ok, I have seen shrimp with the tail on before – that is nothing new. But never have I seen shrimp with the shell that goes all the way up past their creepy little legs. I was a little grossed out when peeling the shrimp. Not even going to lie. It isn’t hard to gross me out though…. Have you ever cut open a bell pepper to find another bell pepper growing inside it? Something about the mutated pepper fetus seriously makes me cringe and my luck has it that almost EVERY time I cut open a bell pepper, there is another one inside it. Yuck.
- There are a lot of scary websites out there that tell you not to reheat shrimp. What am I supposed to do with my leftovers? Live dangerously I guess because I am not willing to discard shrimp scampi! According to Livestrong.com and my lovely pal, Dawn Bryant – it is a-okay to reheat shrimp so we will go with that!
So now, back to the task at hand – sharing with you all this amazing recipe that I found for Spaghetti Squash Shrimp Scampi.
Seriously, does that not look delicious?
What you need
For the pasta
1 Medium spaghetti squash
Olive oil
Salt + pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
For the shrimp
1 LB deveined shrimp
3 tbsp butter or ghee
1 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
Salt + pepper
To garnish
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp lemon zest
Fresh parsley
What to do
Make your pasta!
- Preheat the oven to 400◦
- Cut the spaghetti squash in ½ and remove the seeds. (If your spaghetti squash is hard to cut, poke it with a fork a few times then microwave it for 3 minutes.)
- Place your spaghetti squash cut side up on a baking sheet.
- Drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle on your oregano, basil, salt and pepper
- Bake it for 45 – 50 minutes until you can pierce it easily with a fork
- Remove the spaghetti squash from the oven and set it aside to cool
- Once cool, take a fork and drag it down the spaghetti squash to pull out your “noodles.”
Make your shrimp!
- Melt butter or ghee in a medium skillet with olive oil over medium heat.
- Add garlic and saute 2-3 minutes, until fragrant.
- Add in your shrimp, salt and pepper.
- Cook for about 5 minutes until shrimp is cooked through (it will turn pink and curl into the shape of a “c”.)
- Remove the shrimp from heat and combine with squash noodles, toss to combine and then top with lemon juice, zest and parsley.
- ENJOY!
This one takes the cake for my new favorite recipe and the most delicious thing I have ever cooked.
