Shrimp Cocktail Saturday

You know you have good friends when you can say to them, "Hey, listen, we're going to come over for dinner on Saturday night and here's what I want you to make for us..." That's essentially what we did.

I have been craving-with-a-capital-C Chef Campo's shrimp cocktail and the only - only - upside to the stress of selling the house is that we can use it as leverage, a pity card, to make our friends do whatever we want.

Hence the shrimp cocktail.

To me, shrimp cocktail means a few shrimp and some cocktail sauce. Right?

But Chef Campo has refined my palate. He makes a cold soup of all kinds of chopped veggies in a tomato base. It includes glorious bits of shrimp and avocado, too. Served with some chilled shrimp, it is the perfect summer food. We ate it on the back deck under the spray misters.

I want All The Shrimp Cocktail

As usual, it was awesome to catch up over some wine. The thing that I love about Nat King Cole and Chef Campo is that they are foodies to the core. Eating dinner at their house is an experience. It's like you're in Europe or something. The first couple of hours are all about cocktails and hors d'ouvres. Around 8:30 there is a light, delicious dinner with a new wine, followed by an incredible dessert and a different kind of wine. This is what is considered "dropping by for dinner" at their place. Dropping by for dinner at our place includes our friend, Papa John. On paper plates. Just sayin.

The one and only non-foodie among us, as you all know, is G. He gets his fix in other ways. Like talking about space craft until I want to curl up and sleep for a thousand years. Luckily, Chef Campo has worked on many types of space craft/programs (for realz!) and has commemorative posters of some of his projects. G was googley-eyed for half the evening. I know he secretly wants to move in with them but I refuse to be left alone with Lucyfer.

All the space posters

But! If you need a photographer, G is your guy. I forced them into a picture of the glorious shrimp cocktail and G was shouting directions like something from a reality show on the Bravo channel.

G yells, "SMILE LIKE YOU MEAN IT" --

Then G yells, "HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE THE STUPID SHRIMP COCKTAIL?" -- 

Then G yells, "OK, EVERYONE, LOOK SERIOUS" --

After he snapped the picture and saw my expression, he goes "Serious! You're supposed to look serious!" I was like, "This is my serious face for food! It's intense! Look into my eyes!"

I don't know why Nat King Cole looks more sad than serious. Obviously none of us can follow G's instructions...

As I say most of the time when we hang out with them, it was a much-needed night of chilling out. They have lowered our blood pressure many, many times over the last few months.

OK, peeps, it's an exciting Sunday around here. G is nerding it up all day and I have big plans to clean up the library and get all my stuff organized for the new semester. Big plans. But first, I'm going to drink some coffee and stare into space. Then there may be some reading...Then I may have to call Gama and chat for a while. And take a walk. And drink water and stare into space some more...