Day Forty-Six: Sexy Shrimp?

Quite a while ago, my husband bought a packet of Fusion Flavors shrimp dip base after tasting it at a gourmet food store. I tried it, too, and couldn't taste the shrimp in there, so it came home with us for future use. At last, it's met its destiny atop linguini and shrimp for lunch.

That's right, I had shrimp again. And I still can't say that I love them. I loved my shrimp fra diavolo, but those were better masked than the shrimp in this dish, which had only pasta, olive oil, and a few dried spices to contend with. Again, my reaction to shrimp is that it's fine. But I do find myself twirling pasta around each piece of shrimp, hiding it from myself. I find that I don't like to eat the shrimp without a heavy cloak of sauce and preferably pasta as well. I don't think I'll be able to count this one conquered until shrimp seems appealing unto itself, without lots of hoopla to get me interested. I should see those little sea-bugs and get hungry, right? I should smell them (on their own) and salivate. As of yet, that just isn't happening.

It probably didn't help that this morning, I watched Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, an episode in which Chef Anne shelled and de-veined some gargantuan, head-on shrimp. Their little eyes and legs remained intact. While my shrimp were tiny, headless, and legless, that image stayed with me. She said they were sexy. Sexy, I said? Absolutely not! Slimy, perhaps. And then I wondered if she intended to eat their brains, too. Some people like to suck the gunk out of shrimp heads, apparently. I saw it on Iron Chef America. Is that sexy? I think it's nauseating. But, I suppose, to each his or her own.