My friend Jenn came to town for business, and a quick visit, and while she was here we tackled the following:

First you have to clean the shrimp, which to me was grosser than stuffing a turkey and killing a chicken combined. But I persevered.

All nice and clean!

Then, obviously, you put them in some butter…

Tomatoes, onion, butter,what could be better?

Oh yea, cream! That is what could be better. Cream shaped like a turkey!

We think that PW got a little frazzled by this recipe, because no where does it say to cut the shrimp up. But we inferred, by her pictures…and stalked her website and found this.

And in they go!

Add some fresh basil, some fresh parsley.

Now add some Al Dente pasta (we used wheat pasta!)

Realize your pan is too small. Transfer to a sauce pot.

Devour.

Jennie and I are sitting in her dining room looking through the book and planning our cooking schedule for this coming Saturday, when we will be finishing up our PW challenge by cooking our last 4 recipes.

One of these recipes will be the Angel Sugar Cookies. Please listen to what Jennie just read to me aloud from the book.

“Smear a dab of butter on the bottom of a glass and dip it in granulated sugar”

That’s what you use as a cookie cutter.

The Pioneer Woman even coats her cookie cutters in butter and sugar.

I just needed to share.

Step one. Meat. Lots of meat. I am not normally a meat lasagna eater, but alas, here we were. And we were too far in to make moderations now. So we went on, meat in hand. Or, in skillet.

Now, I don’t usually use fresh basil either, so this addition to the recipe was superb.

Someone is excited about lasagna…

Delicious! This baby was gone in no-time flat! Surprisingly, I loved it, meat and all! It made a filling meal, and reheated well, too! So, if I am to make a meat lasagna, I’ll choose this one again. And I think Cor would agree!

This is the beginning of some very delicious artichoke dip.

Meanwhile, make some bacon for your potato skins. After the twice baked potato fiasco of 2010, we were wary of potato skins, but it ended OK.

Also, cut up 18 jalapenos for jalapeno poppers. Please use caution when cutting them! When we made them, there was so much jalapeno oil in the air we had to take a break. Twice.

M helped us for this challenge, and we made all three gluten free!

Now put some delicious mixture into each of the jalapenos.

These took FOREVER and they were gone in less than five minutes. But, everyone agreed they were worth it.

Now you have to wrap your jalapeno poppers in bacon. We made some veggie ones, but they just weren’t as good. Sad, really.

Now you’re going to coat them with some BBQ sauce. Delicious.

Look how sad the vegetarian jalapeno poppers look! So sad.

Now, the finished products:

We invited some ladies over for apps and a salad night. We laughed a LOT. We did not take very many photos. But I took some of the morning after:

We’ve only got 8 recipes left folks! We’re in the home stretch, now! This Saturday, we’ll knock out two more by making The Pioneer Woman’s braised beef brisket and the burgundy mushrooms. Both recipes will require an entire day of cooking because they need to cook for so many hours. Naturally, I am mentally preparing and getting my shopping list together two days ahead.

In researching the ingredients for Beef Brisket, I noticed it called for Liquid Smoke. This seemed a completely reasonable ingredient for a brisket recipe and, being a southern girl, I’m more than familiar with this concoction. My dad uses it all the time. I believe the Coates family keeps it on hand as part of a stocked kitchen.

Jennie, however, thinks I am crazy.

Corelyn:  didn’t we buy liquid smoke for something?

Jennie:  what?

Corelyn:  haha, I guess. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.