Stuffed Calamari

Joel and I are totally into the show "Worst Cooks in America". One of their challenges was to make this stuffed calamari dish. Since whole squids are easy to come by around these parts, we knew we had to try it.

Fresh calamari and shrimp! Not bad prices really...

Ewwwwww!!!

The stuffing was comprised of shrimp (I made a "paste" out of it in the food processor - nasty texture but it had to be done), spinach, garlic, panko bread crumbs, crushed red pepper and salt.

Joel stuffed the very well cleaned calamari "tubes" and used toothpicks to hold them closed.

I put together a fresh, spicy tomato sauce.

We had leftover filling, so we made shrimp cakes that were oh so delish!

The stuffed calamari cooked in the tomato sauce for about 30 minutes.

The finished product was SO GOOD. Not chewy at all and full of flavor!! This is definitely a keeper recipe!

Seabees Birthday Bash

Joel and I had the opportunity to attend the Seabees Birthday bash!! It was so much fun and we learned about a part of the Navy we didn't even know existed. The Seabees are a construction batallion - basically the "land" side of the Navy. They have a history of building bases, paving roadways and airstrips, and many other construction projects worldwide, dating back to WWII. Come to find out, there was a John Wayne movie in 1944 called "The Fighting Seabees"!! Who knew?! They're a super important part of the military and we were glad to have the opportunity to celebrate their birthday with them.

It's normally a "ball" but this year they made it a costume party. Since the Seabees have been in existence since the 1940's, you could dress up in any decade since then. We chose the 1960's, based on our admiration for the show "Mad Men". We did some research on hair, makeup, clothes, etc. Thank you YouTube for tutorials!! Unfortunately, our camera was on some weird setting so the pictures didn't turn out that great, but hopefully you'll get a 60's vibe...

We tried to look "serious". Don and Betty Draper have a love/hate relationship on "Mad Men". Unfortunately, I think we just look scary.

Smiling, much better.

We went with our friends Eric and Michelle who dressed up 1950's style. They are SO cute!

Awwwwww!

Btw, the cigarettes are fake. Joel made a deck of cards box look like "Lucky Stripe" cigarettes and rolled some paper, stuffed it with cotton, and used color pencil to shade in a filter. LOL. They were a big hit! Everything thought we special ordered Lucky Stripes... we weren't that hard core into being authentic, ha ha.

Serious ladies.

I was DD that night, so I borrowed my friend's glass of wine to pose for the role of Betty Draper who was a big fan of red wine... and lots and lots of cigarettes!

Our friends Jason and Sheila totally had the best costumes! Sheila's wig is actually a "Napoleon Dynamite" style!! They originally ordered it for Jason, but it looked better on Sheila. :-p

Kissing the Seabee... a bee with a gun... interesting.

Joel thought the Seabee would like a smoke...

Tearing up the dance floor! They played all kinds of music from every decade. It was a great night!

Miyajima Oyster Festival

The weekend of February 11th was the Miyajima Oyster festival. Huge crowds of people made their way over to Miyajima Island to get a wide variety of oyster dishes from the street vendors.

We took a 10 minute ferry ride from the main land over to Miyajima Island. In the background you can see another ferry leaving the island to return people to the main land.

A view of the Torii Gate from the ferry boat.

Another view of the Torii gate - some of these pictures may look familiar as we also went to Miyajima last fall.

There was a samurai production going on up on a stage near the oyster vendors.

There was a band playing while the two samurai's took on the yellow dragon man. 

Oyster soup.

A close-up of the oyster.

We got a gift bag with a number of different sauces, dressings and rice dishes.

Street vendors preparing bags of fried oysters.

The long line of people waiting for fried oysters.

A close up of the fried oysters - 1 bag cost 200 Yen.

Kirk says "fried oysters are oishii (delicious)!"

 

This was the long line we waited in for grilled oysters.

One plate of grilled oysters had 2 shelled oysters and cost 200 Yen.

Once you pull open the shell to get at the oyster, you can eat it plain or add an oyster sauce to it. The festival had a number of tables set up where you could try different sauces.

Here is a view of Miyajimaguchi (mainland Miyajima) on our return ride from the island.

From the boat you can also see Hiroshima city off in the distance.