Kate's Test Kitchen, Episode 3

OK, last night's experiment was supposed to be "quick and easy". Thread skewers with shrimp, pineapple and red onion, then brush on some Teriyaki sauce with some toasted sesame seeds and Bob's your uncle. Broil and go. Serve with mashed sweet potatoes and asparagus. Perhaps a more competent person could handle this. My advice, if you want this to be quick and easy:
1. get shrimp that have already been peeled.
2. buy pineapple that has already been cut into chunks.
3. (this is a big one) buy skewers. Oh, yeah.

The sweet potatoes were easy, though. Just slip the suckers out of their skins when they're done roasting, mash with a little butter, a little salt and a tiny drizzle of maple syrup. Sprinkle with some leftover sesame seeds.

This meal would have been a lot more popular if it had not taken me so long to prepare. I had promised the kids an outing to the park after an early supper, so I was in the motherly dog-house. I only regained my status on the pinnacle of motherhood by asking them if a picnic supper at the park the following night (tonight) would suffice as compensation for my broken promise. After some deliberation, they agreed.

Taste rating: Pretty yummy. Even if you don't like onions much, a red onion wedge roasted with Teriyaki sauce is delicious. The kids were a little weirded-out by hot pineapple. I reminded them that they like it fine when it's on a pizza... The sweet potatoes were a big hit. I like the seeds because I don't handle the texture of mashed sweet potato very well. The crunchy seeds mitigate the mush factor. Oddly, the kids didn't like the seeds,and requested seconds, but seedless.

Hassle rating: That depends. Are you an inefficient kitchen nimrod like me? Or are you organized and with-it? Hopefully, now the world can learn from my mistakes.

Overall: Good, but problematic on several levels. Probably not a keeper. I would end up calling it something like "Lost Playground Skewers".