Fun Friday: Shrimp and Beer

For the first time in forever, I almost forgot today was Friday. I was so busy all day that it somehow felt like a Monday. When I actually remembered it was the start of the weekend, I felt like I'd won the damn lottery.

 As for the eats, I had some shrimp I'd frozen from last week when I had that cruddy cold and couldn't eat much. I also have some clams, but it was so hot and humid all day that my appetite wasn't the greatest. Rather than prepare a bunch of food I wasn't going to eat, I opted for the shrimp. Seafood is absolutely my favorite, so there's not a whole lot I haven't tried when it comes to shrimp, but I managed to find a Szechwan shrimp recipe to try out. And I decided to make some coconut shrimp as well, just in case I didn't love the Szechwan dish.

 Here are the recipes I tried:

Szechwan Shrimp
This one was pretty easy and didn't require a million ingredients. It included ketchup, which surprised me for some reason. I used raw shrimp, though the recipe calls for them to be pre-cooked. I was told that cooked shrimp might become rubbery when I added them to the sauce, and who needs that?

Coconut Shrimp
The coconut shrimp was pretty easy, except that it lead to a bit of ducking and weaving as I tried to avoid the popping cooking oil. Yeah, I'm afraid of the hot oil in the pan, and I'm only a little embarrassed to admit that. This recipe includes beer, which inspired my choice of beverage for the night.

The Drink:

I opted for a couple of ice-cold Coronas, which is totally cheating since beer is not at all new to me. I'll do better next week!