Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes & Feta, or "Someday, We'll Look Back at that Time that I Dumped the Entire Pan of Baked Shrimp With Tomatoes & Feta onto the Floor, and We'll Laugh and Laugh. But not this day."
Yeah, that's right. Here is what happened to my beautiful, delicious shrimp with tomatoes & feta:
I took the skillet out of the oven by grabbing the handle with one hand (I had an oven mitt on). The skillet was too heavy, or too awkward, or too in the hands of an easily distracted clumsy moron, or something, but I clearly needed to have my other hand on the other side of the skillet and did not. It started wobbling, I couldn't steady it, and it dumped.
To add insult to injury, some of it landed on the corner of the oven door and slid down into the nether regions of my oven, where no sponge, dishtowel, toothbrush or baby bottle scrubber will reach. You know that dinner hasn't gone well when you find yourself standing over the oven door with your hubby saying "I think an Allen wrench will take that door panel right off."
I am not a happy camper.
Funny, when I first started making this, my biggest worry was that David wasn't going to get home from the Cub Scouts meeting with the camera in time for me to take pictures of this. Yeah, a couple of successful efforts with meringue and I get all cocky and assume there will actually be a dinner to photograph. Well, consider me permanently humbled. From here on out, you won't catch me taking one thing for granted in the kitchen.
The good news is that shrimp was on sale at Publix, so I only paid $3 something for half a pound of it. All told, I am only in this about $5 something in ingredients, plus whatever it is going to cost for the appliance repair man to come out and disassemble my oven so that I can clean the tomato and feta off of the inside part of the glass window.
As I was cleaning it up, I tasted some. To paraphrase George "It wasn't IN the garbage, it was ON the garbage" Costanza, the shrimp, tomatoes & feta that I tried were not ON the floor, they were on OTHER shrimp, tomatoes & feta that were on the floor. And it was all un-freaking-believably delicious. After I cleaned it up, David asked me in an upbeat tone what I wanted for dinner, and I barked "NOTHING!!" and stormed downstairs. Because I have an unfortunate tendency to get into "lash out at those I love the most" mode in the minutes immediately following a kitchen disaster. I am now memorializing the incident, i.e. writing this post, which I hope will help me cool down a bit. Then I will go make a couple of nice bowls of cereal for us for dinner.
My great bloggy buddy Pamela of Cookies With Boys chose this dish. I KNOW that it is fabulous because I ate some of it off the floor, and it blew me away, even in my irate state. It's Wednesday night, so I don't have time for a do-over before this needs to get posted. I am definitely going to try this again in the next few nights, and if it tastes anything like my floor sample, it is destined to assume a regular spot in our weeknight dinner rotation.
Great pick, Pamela! I'll make you proud on my next go-round, I just know it!
