Shrimp du Lac

More on bugs. Sea bugs, leetle arthropods that eat on the bottom. Well, I love 'em. Growing up on the Gulf coast, you eat 'em, you love 'em, you eat some more, all your life if you can.

At some point, I had had my fill. A tolerance level dose. I had been a vegetarian, was just transitioning to no being a vegetarian, and on a trip back home I had a crab poboy at a local dive with my aunt and mom. Man, was it good!

Then, less than an hour later the little blisters began to appear. All around my mouth. A ring of blisters, red and oozy, that lasted nearly a week.

A fluke? In trying things later, all seafoods gave me the same reaction, and not just around my mouth, but in my mouth, between my teeth, and even the fake crabmeat stuff, surimi, which is what, one percent cod? gave me a reaction. When I got the same reaction from wheat roast, I stopped eating high protein stuff of all sorts. Time for a detox.

It wasn't for another three years that I tried to eat anything out of the ocean. It was my birthday and my folks took me to a place called the Aquarium. I got the seafood platter, and damn the consequences.

No blisters! And since then it looks like I can eat seafood again. Now, the moral and environmental ramifications, you'll just have to look back to Wisdom of the Deep for that.

Needless to say, my cooking of seafood though, is as a result in it's infancy. Here is my first attempt, at the age of 41, cooking my own shrimp. Why even try, when you have a dad who once said, "I took them shrimps and I thew em on the grill!"

Nearly a pound of jumbo brown shrim, peeled. About half a cup of coconut milk and a quarter cup of lime juice and a splash of Tecate. Shakes of Tony Chachere's. That's the marinade, now put it in the cooler and go windboard and hula hooop til you're hungry. Be sure to clean the grill well if you are using a public one at the park!

They cooked much quicker than I thought, and some were kinda tough. LM doesn't mind that, but I hate to overcook fish and seafood. The cococut milk flavor really absorbed into the shrimp, and the lime juice pretty much pre-cooked them a la ceviche. Next time I would add the lime juice at the very end of the marinade session.

Grilled summer squash were mild and juicy as sides. Perfect veggie complement to those little seabugs. Yum Yum!