Spiced Shrimp and Clementine Salsa

Now is the time to buy a box of clementines before they go out of season and before the price of citrus sky-rockets. If your clementines are getting old and you need to use them up, why not make a meal out of them? This recipe for spiced shrimp and clementine salsa is light and satisfying. It's a great way to get use out of all of those spices in your spice rack that you haven't touched in a while.

I added some olive oil to my bag of spiced shrimp before grilling them. Also, I didn't follow the salsa amounts exactly since I was only making enough for my husband and I. So I eyeballed the measurements. As far as I could tell from the recipe they wanted you to have whole sections of the clementines in the salsa. That would make the salsa too dry and chunky in my opinion so I essentially supremed my clementines. Instead of using a knife I just used my hands to peel off the skin and I separated the flesh with my fingers. When I tasted the final salsa it was a little sour for my taste so I added a little sugar. The final product was delicious and the shrimp would work well with many salsas, sauces, and side dishes. I served the meal with an orzo salad but couscous would go really well with the shrimp.

Southern Biscuits

Biscuits are my favorite easy-to-make breakfast item. Recently I've been trying new recipes and found 2 that I really like. The first one is the Buttermilk Biscuit recipe from Baking Illustrated (recipes from the magazine Cook's Illustrated). The second recipe also uses buttermilk and is from my mom's huge pile of family recipes. These biscuits are light, fluffy, and flaky.

SOUTHERN BISCUITS

2 cups flour*
2 t. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1/3 c. shortening (or butter)
2/3 c. buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda into a bowl. Cut in shortening thoroughly until mixture looks like meal.
3. Stir in almost all the buttermilk. If dough is not pliable, add just enough milk to make a soft, puffy, easy-to-roll dough.
4. Round up dough on a lightly floured board. Knead lightly 20-25 times, about 1/2 minute. Roll a little less than 1/2" thick. Cut with floured biscuit cutter. Place on ungreased baking sheet or pizza stone. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

*note: if you're using self-rising flour omit the baking powder and salt.

Turtle Bars

In the mood for something sweet? You can't get much sweeter than these Turtle Bars...

TURTLE BARS

2 cups flour

2 cups oats

1/2 t. salt

1 t. baking soda

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 cups melted butter

1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

1/2-3/4 tub of caramel dip

Preheat oven to 350. Set aside an ungreased cookie/jelly pan sheet (with sides). I used a 13x9x2 pyrex baking dish which makes thicker bars.

Mix together the flour, oats, salt, brown sugar, and melted butter. Pat half of the mixture into the pan an bake 10 minutes. While the base is baking begin to melt the caramel (I took off the foil and microwaved it for a few seconds at a time until it was pourable). Remove the base from the oven and sprinkle with the chocolate chips and pecans. Pour caramel over chips and nuts and spread the remaining half of the cookie mixture over the top.

Bake 15-20 minutes more. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. The bars last for a while in an airtight container but I prefered to heat up the bars before eating.