Anniversary Dinner

Colossal butterflied shrimp, linguine in clam sauce, and garlic parmesan bread

     I cooked a nice dinner at home last night for Matt and I's anniversary.  I love seafood, as I have said many times before, and almost every time I want to cook something nice for dinner, the first thought in my mind is always shrimp.  Anytime we go out for dinner, I almost always order something with shrimp - scampi, in pasta, batter fried, I pretty much love it all.

Everything I made was from Trader Joe's grocery store

    
     Everything I cooked in this meal came from Trader Joe's which is the coolest grocery store in town.  I have only been there a couple times, but each time I do, I find new and fun things that I'm excited to try.  I love a lot of stuff that I get from that place, and the prices are decent too.  I ended up with a box of 15 colossal butterflied shrimp marinated in garlic and herbs, frozen linguini and clam sauce, and garlic and parmesan french bread.
    

Shrimp cooking in the oven

     The shrimp were incredibly easy to cook and tasted like something you'd get at a nice Italian restaurant.  They come with the shell on, and I have never cooked shelled shrimp before, but there are very simple instructions included on the box.  All you have to do is place the shrimp on a baking sheet and pop them in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes.  When they come out, the shells will have turned red and the insides will be white.  I put a little butter on mine before I ate them and they were great.
    



Linguine "nests"

   
      The linguine came as a frozen package (one of my favorite things!) with the pasta and sauce together.  One nice thing about this package is that the noodles are frozen in little birds-nest looking things, which are separate from the sauce.  This allows it to cook more evenly, since all the noodles and sauce are not frozen into one giant clump.  It cooked really quickly too, about 7 or 8 minutes total.  Once again, all I did was follow the instructions on the bag.
     I served both of these with slices of a fresh garlic parmesan baguette, which went really well with the Italian seafood theme I went with.  Also served with a bottle of White Zinfindel which went so well with the food too.  All in all, the meal was great, and we had an amazing night for our anniversary.