Jeremy and I have been talking about trying new foods and eating healthier so we went to the library and checked out a bunch of cookbooks, Cuban, Thai, Indian, Italian, Vegetarian, American etc.. We are going to try and cook a meal together once a week and so yesterday we cooked our first meal. We decided to try a few recipes from the Cuban cookbook "Cooking the Cuban Way" for our first meal. As most of my friends know, I am a vegetarian (although I break the rules occasionally for certain types of fish), but Jer is a meat eater so I frequently include a meat dish in our meals. I am proud to announce that while he wont go completely vegi with me, Jer has given up pork and cut back on other red meats in an effort to eat healthier. So, for our recipes last night we choose: garbanzo bean salad (ensalada de garbanzos), Cuban white rice (arroz de Cubano), and garlicky shrimp (I don't know the Spanish for that one :D).
The rice was really just long grain white rice cooked w/olive oil and sauteed fresh garlic, the garbanzo bean salad was fairly simple as well: a mixture of peppers, red onions, home-made dressing and of course garbanzos. The shrimp was a little more complicated however since neither one of use had ever cooked shrimp before. We had no idea how to "peel and de-vein" shrimp, lol. At first we thought maybe they were already peeled but soon discovered that was not the case! Thankfully there was some written instructions in the cookbook and how to perform the "procedure". It is a gross process as shrimp are ugly little things and the vein that you cut out looks like a string of fish poop....I'm not making this meal sound very good am I? Haha! I was surprised that they didn't smell too bad, as I hate the smell of seafood, but we decided that the fact that they were fresh wild-caught had a lot to do with it.
After the shrimp were all prepared we sauteed them in a pan with 6 cloves of garlic, fresh lime juice and various seasonings to taste. Then we spooned them over the rice and served them with the chilled garbanzo salad on the side; and it was time to eat. I did nibble a little bite of the shrimp but found it to be just as awful as I remembered seafood being (the last time I hate seafood was over 10 years ago), but I thought the rice was pretty good and I loved the garbanzo bean salad. Being the opposites that we are, Jeramie of course liked the shrimp and rice but didn't care for the salad. All in all we thought the meal was okay, but I don't think we will be adding it to our recipe box.
Note to self: the whole house did end up stinking like rotten seafood for hours after we cooked.....no more cooking of seafood indoors!!
On Sunday we (Jeramie, Pekoe and I) all went down to Petsmart to get some fish for the tank that Jeramie gave me for Valentines day. I already have a few fish in it but we are buying them a little at time. I already knew what type of fish I wanted so it was just a matter of locating them and waiting our turn in line so that someone could "fish" them out for us. I ended up getting 3 Gouramies, one red, one powder blue, and one non-hybrid coloration. They are only about 2 inches long at maturaty but so far will be the biggest fish in my tank.
We brought our new little beardie home right away since they are dessert dwellers and cant be out of the heat for too long. He looked so tiny in his terrarium (its 75 gals.) but at an adult size of 18 - 22 in. he will grow into it quick! It was amusing to watch him check out his new habitat and especially cool to watch him chase down and eat the little baby crickets that we brought home for him. Boy can the little fella eat; he ate 6 crickets in one evening! Pekoe and Wookie were especially interested in the latest addition and sat peering into his cage for hours. I am sure that they both think he would be a great play thing and or tasty snack so we will have to keep him safe until he is a little bigger :) 
