QUARANTINE LIFE: EATS

It’s sad when quality diminishes. 

I won’t name the establishment, because they DO prepare tasty, whole wings that look like they came from an actual, non-Jurassic Era chicken, and their garden salad is always plentiful and fresh. 

My first three DoorDash orders of shrimp from them, were divine. (If you know me, you know that shrimp and popcorn run neck and neck in my favorite foods race.) Those height-of-the-pandemic shrimp looked and tasted like somebody went down the bayou, sat on a bucket on the levee, sang a Negro spiritual, hauled them out, then rushed them to Brown’s in Brusly, where they were cleaned, deveined, christened with some Tony Chachere’s, and dropped in hot, fresh grease.

I really wanted to relive that experience this evening.

Today’s order, sadly, however, looked like they came out of a freezer-burned SeaPak box. (No disrespect to SeaPak. They’re okay in a pinch.) They were heavily breaded as if to hide that they weren’t shrimp— they were just shaped like shrimp. No tail is a dead giveaway. 

“What happened?”, I wondered.

I hope whoever fried those first three orders is okay. Perhaps they took their outstanding skills elsewhere.

*sigh*

There’s not a thing stopping me from making them myself— except the recent heatwave. I can almost hear my mother daring me to turn on the stove. “I wish you would turn on that stove, as hot as it is. You’d better open a can of tuna, or make a sandwich and a salad.”

I just had to have shrimp. I’m glad I only ordered 5 this time.