I made shrimp chowder

It was pretty good.

The recipe I used is from Southern Living's Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites, which somehow showed up at my house several years ago. I brought it back to college with me, hoping to use some of the recipes as I cooked in my on-campus apartment. But most of the time, it was easier for me to eat in the dining hall (or let's be honest, at Taco Bell) than to cook for myself.

Now, Dave and I are making a much more conscious effort to plan our meals ahead and cook for ourselves. It helps that I'm eating meat again (after seven years without red meat and almost four years totally vegetarian), but it really really helps to sit down together and think about what we're going to cook in the upcoming week -- and then we only have to make one trip to Harris Teeter.

This isn't my favorite cookbook. I don't know that I have a favorite cookbook, since most of my cooking up until this month has been baking. The Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites focuses on easy-to-make main dishes, utilizing a lot of shortcut ingredients like prepared biscuit dough or, in this case, easy-peel frozen shrimp. That's how I turned this

into this

into this.

Quick Shrimp Chowder
Recipe from Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites, Southern Living, Oxmoor House 2006.

In the bottom of a medium saucepan, saute half a medium yellow onion in 1 T butter or margarine until translucent (I undercooked my onions--don't do that! Make sure they are thoroughly done as you won't heat the soup long enough to cook the onions farther).

Add a 10 3/4 oz can of cream of potato soup, 1 3/4 C milk, and some ground red pepper (about 1/4 tsp or more to taste) and bring to a boil. Add the peeled, deveined shrimp of a 1 pound bag, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes or until shrimp are pink. (I bought ready-to-eat shrimp; I advise against this, as the shrimp were sort of tough, but if you're as wary about cooking seafood as I am, you may want to follow in my inexperienced footsteps.)

Stir in 1/2 C shredded Monterey jack cheese to melt. Serve with crackers. (The recipe advises a garnish of fresh parsley; I decided not to spend my money on decorative foodstuffs, but it may be nice if you're fancier than me.)

This would serve four to five people.