It gets exhausting being a dumbass all the time, so when our friends R and J offered to come over and make dinner for us, I almost peed my pants with joy (as opposed to peeing my pants because I’m getting old). It’s a little bit sad that our apartment kitchen is the largest of the three, but we didn’t mind a bit playing host to a non-dumbass gourmet … especially since our new pots, pans, and knives, courtesy of The Great Daddoo and my stepmom, were fairly crying out for some attention.

Much better than the five-year-old Wal-Mart pans we were using.

R, the male half of R and J, is the cook in the couple, so he took up residence in the kitchen while J and I talked roller derby in the dining room with the incredible plate of cheese and crackers I prepared:

My cheese and crackers will run circles around your cheese and crackers.

The Husband was in the kitchen, too, monitoring the desserts he’d made earlier that day — creme brulee and angel food cake. In a spectacularly non-dumbass move, he prefers to make them at the same time since one requires egg whites and the other egg yolks. This requires a type of forethought I, unfortunately, do not possess. I’m the one who runs around every morning like a crazy person trying to get everything I need for the day into my purse, while The Husband gathers all his belongings by the door the night before so as to expedite the process. (You’d think I would understand by now, after six or so years in the work force, that I go to work every weekday morning.)

Anyway, R sauteed some garlic and shallots, then added sausage, heavy cream, and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t remember but that tasted incredible. The whole shebang was mixed with penne pasta, which is my favorite kind of pasta despite the fact that it doesn’t taste any different than any other kind. It’s the shape, you see, and how you can both put it on your fingertips like witch nails or blow through it to make noises (see also: rigatoni). He also brought over a block of parmesan cheese, which we grated over the pasta like little curls of awesome:

Yummy!

The pasta would have been excellent otherwise, but it was made even more so by the fact that we got to eat with R and J, whom we love dearly … and the fact that someone else made it, so it was approximately 99% less likely to make you hurl than something I managed to turn out. Soon after dinner the angel food cake came out of the oven and the creme brulee came out of the fridge, so we all crowded into the kitchen to watch The Husband wield a flamethrower in his pursuit of caramelized sugar:

We’re all thinking of Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White here, so go ahead and say it out loud.

I stole this presentation idea from the local tapas bar.

I’m not normally a big fan of angel food cake, but The Husband’s offering was delicious:

Made with real angels!

The evening ended relatively early, as J and I had a scrimmage against the Nashville Rollergirls the next morning. The combination of so much heavy cream and sheer terror at the prospect of having our butts handed to us on the rink wreaked a little havoc on both of us, but we recovered … and I’m proud to say that I earned my very first roller derby bruise courtesy of Nashville’s Showstopper, who rammed her shoulder into me with so much force I hit the floor, bounced, and slid. It isn’t culinary, but feel free to check out the damage:

Please don’t try to guess which body part this is. Unless, of course, you never want to eat again.

I blame it on the USA Network.

See, we had plans today. We were going to check out the beach (although, regretfully, it’s too cold for even a quick wade in the waves) and visit a little seafood place called Slightly Up the Creek. We woke up mid-morning, refreshed from our New Year’s Eve revelry, and settled into the couches to eat breakfast. That’s when we discovered that USA is running an all-day marathon of Law and Order: SVU. Some eight hours later, we’re both still parked where we were this morning, unable to tear ourselves away from this smorgasbord of interrogations and arrests and sick, sick characters. (Aside, of course, from the two hours that Maury Povich was running paternity tests and sending belligerent teenagers to jail for a day.)

Which is why we had to come up with something for dinner that didn’t involve leaving the apartment or the television. Since The Best Friend has been uber-hospitable this past week, I offered to make dinner. There were some leftover shrimp in the freezer, so she suggested shrimp scampi. Perfect! When I was working as a waitress in my aunt and uncle’s restaurant during high school, dinner was always either a patty melt or shrimp scampi, and I haven’t had either one since I went to college and, by default, quit working there. I found a recipe online that called for white wine, butter, garlic, breadcrumbs, and not much else, so I grabbed a slice of bread and set about mashing it into crumbs. That’s actually one of my favorite things to do, right behind mixing dough or meatloaf with my bare hands.

While the angel-hair pasta boiled on the stove, I set about making garlic bread out of some bratwurst buns.

The Virginia humidity claims yet another innocent spice.

After stabbing the garlic until it was powdery enough to sprinkle, I threw a stick of butter and loads of garlic into a saucepan with the shrimp. It. Smelled. Incredible.

Bubbly!

Then it was time to add the white wine, which as you may remember presents a bit of difficulty for me as I am absolutely hopeless with a corkscrew. The Best Friend was out investigating a residence hall issue, so I hunted around until I found a corkscrew and attempted to yoink the cork out of the bottle. It was a good thing TBF came back when she did, because I was about to smash the cursed bottle against the countertop. She extracted the cork for me and everything progressed smoothly from there on out. Some broccoli were steamed, our garlic bread came out of the toaster oven warm and garlicky, and the final product was just incredible:

The perfect complement to eight hours of onscreen depravity.

And so my week of seafood experimentation comes to a close, as I fly back to Kentucky in the morning to resume my regularly scheduled life. I hope everyone had a great holiday season!