Dear Readers,

Let’s just say I’m starting to finally come up for air. It’s been a busy couple of months, but now, with a couple large events almost behind me, I can start to resurface and spend a little more time on writing something more than, “New Recipe! Enjoy!” That’s not really helpful to those who read this to also find out a little about what’s going on in Chi-town. Fun fact: Frankie & I have been obsessively playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt recently – him on his Playstation, me on my Switch. If you’re a gamer, it’s like a beautiful union between Skyrim Elder Scrolls and Red Dead Redemption. It’s complicated and challenging, but incredibly addictive (Gwent anybody?). And if you enjoyed the Netflix series like I did—though to also be fair, I did NOT enjoy all the time jumps since I went into the series with NO background knowledge and was VERY confused until I did a quick Googling on how the show timelines work together—you might also enjoy reading the book series. I am almost done with “Last Wish” and have realized how talkative book and game Geralt is compared to the show. Not mad at it though!

It’s also been really delightful to have a full month of cookie orders. No joke, my shop was open for 2 days, and I was booked for February. I’m also going to be booked all June for my very first wedding order (Corgi cookies for a corgi owning couple) and I couldn’t be more excited to really test my abilities. I even went ahead and bought 2 more baking sheets so I could just crank out dozen after dozen after dozen. If you don’t hear from me in June, I’m on a cookie making binge and they have to be PERFECT. It’ll be intense, but getting to practice icing some little tuxedos onto some Pembrokes is going to be a blast!

I promise to get better at updating moving forward, but also as promised, the color blocks are below, and I really like how this can contains the few photos I’ll include with each recipe. Saves room in my blog storage too! (If you notice some photos are missing, my blog is on an auto cleanse and will remove photos that are 2 years and older.) Sometimes, keeping it simple makes everything just easier. I’m prepping for my event in Boston, and have of course made plans to see my sister-in-law and her girlfriend, which means LOBSTAH ROLLS!!! Cannot wait! 

— Cooking Maggie

Cilantro Lime Shrimp

Ingredients

• 1lb large shrimp – thawed, peeled, deveined (keep the tails for beauty effect)
• 4 tablespoons good olive oil
• 1 cup cilantro – packed
• Juice from 2 limes
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 2 shallots
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions

• In a blender, add in all the marinade ingredients and blend together till well mixed.
• Marinade the shrimp in half of the mixture, making sure they’re coated well, for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
• Cook the shrimp over high heat in a large pan or on a griddle, about 1-2 minutes on each side.
• Serve shrimp with the other half of the marinade mixture.