Sarah Insipired Shrimp Risotto

Today's meal is much indebted to Sarah. She made a shrimp risotto and brought her leftovers to work. It looked and smelled delicious and I knew that I needed to try it. I have never made any kind of risotto before so I waited until I had plenty of time for cooking and I read several recipes to get me geared up. Although I knew this meal was going to be delicious, white rice, butter and wine are not healthy ingredients. I consulted Sarah, and she had some great advice ...

1. Don't use so much butter, it's not necessary,
2. Add more vegetables, such as mushrooms and zucchini - some vegetables are delicious.
3. Add a scoop of sour cream and Parmesan, it's better than butter and will make the risotto really creamy.

Well... she was right!

Shrimp Risotto

My husband is a nice guy and he always says my cooking is great, but sometimes he makes a serious face and says "THIS IS FREAKING DELICIOUS!!" and he has second helpings, and he makes sure there's enough for him to take some to work for lunch the next day. This was one of the latter days, and it makes me feel so very good when he reacts this way.

It still wasn't exactly healthy. It was nutritious, there were mushrooms, onions, zucchini, and shrimp not to mention the fresh parsley and garlic, but honestly, the main focus of this meal is white rice. Shrimp are amazing pink balls of protein, unfortunately, they also contain a lot of cholesterol. This is a great edition to my culinary vocabulary, and I'll definitely make it again, but it's just not as healthy as I'd like it to be!


Okay, so now I"m going off-track, possibly because wine was consumed, and if you're only reading this because of food then you should stop reading. Things in my life are very perfect right now, and I can't help but be made anxious by that fact. My son is happy and healthy and performing very well in school, my husband's career is taking off and he's become something of a local celebrity, and all is well with my work, I'm still reasonably young (30), and reasonably thin, and I'm married to the man of my dreams. While we were sharing this meal, we all acknowledged how lucky we all are to have such good fortune. We also listened to music and this song came on... Johnny Cash 'Daddy Sang Bass' and we all sang along. My husband goes "Daddy sang bass" in his really deep voice, I go "Mamma sang tenor"  in my high pitched voice, and my son was supposed to sing "and little Lewis would join right in there", except he couldn't ever seem to fit the words into his part. It was a bit of a shambles, but we all had a good laugh anyway. So then Johnny Cash sings "And the circle, shall not be broken, by-and-by lord by-and-by" about the closeness of his family, despite the poverty and the troubles that his family endured, and I couldn't help but get sentimental about my family. It's easy to be happy together when everything's going great, but I hope that my family will be just as strong if things weren't going so well. I hope that sharing family meals together, and singing dumb songs while we eat, will help to keep us close. <3