A Good Ole Fashion Shrimp Boil

This post should have been written a while ago (about four weeks, to be exact), but we've been a little busy around the Parks' house.  Oh well, here it goes.

For a while now, Sam has been wanting to host a shrimp boil.  We finally decided to go for it, ordered a hundred pounds of shrimp, and invited a bunch of friends over.  To all my Cajun friends, please ignore the Okies as we try to recreate one of your traditions.

Shrimp ~ check

Seasonings ~ check

Beverages ~ check

Friends ~ check (I don't have a picture of everyone as people were coming and going all day)

Many of our friends had never been to an event like this and were a little surprised when they learned that we would be dumping the food on the table we had set up in the yard. 

Luckily, they were able to overcome the "unusual" dining conditions and enjoy.

After dinner, the guys moved inside to watch a UFC fight.

While the women folk stayed outside for pony rides,

fun with the water hose,

and begging dogs.

In all, we only ate 20 pounds!  You read that right, we only ate 20 of the 100 pounds of shrimp we ordered.  Luckily, we had a back up plan to help us get rid of a little more and we enjoy eating shrimp.

So, what do you do when your friends don't eat enough shrimp?  Call in the professionals... football players that is!  The guys on either side of Sam are signed to play with the Washington Redskins this fall and happened to come home the Sunday after the boil on a training camp break.  We fired everything up and cooked another 20 pounds.  Can you believe the six of us ate pretty much as much as everyone on Saturday combined!

Brownie Covered Oreos - Yeah, They Were Good

I've had this recipe from Picky Palate bookmarked for a while now and decided to finally try it out.  They are very simple and only require a few ingredients.

All it takes is a brownie mix and it's additional ingredients (water, oil, eggs) and oreo cookies (double stuf if you know what's good).  They suggested melting white candy melts and drizzling them over the top, I decided not to do that (because I'm lazy).

I didn't take step-by-step pictures, so here is the finished project.

I thought they would be great right out of the oven, but they are actually better after they cool.  Don't worry, Amber, since it was close to 9 p.m. before they were ready, I made your daughters split one instead of each getting their own (yup, friend of the year right here). 

Sorry for the grainy phone photo, she was loving her treat and I was afraid she would be finished before I got the good camera out.