Crispy Chicken Skin Wrapped Shrimp

During last Saturday's Activa class we created these crispy chicken skin wrapped shrimp balls. They were small enough to consist of one or two bites, depending upon the size of your mouth, with intense flavors and contrasting textures. In retrospect they are the perfect crispy, chewy bar snack.

The chicken skin has been blanched, chilled, and then wrapped around a seasoned filling of shrimp and parsley.  The Activa helps it all come together.  A brief poaching allows the Activa and shrimp to set, enabling us to deep fry these tasty little balls.  (I know the first picture is misleading, but they're not that kind of balls.)

Meanwhile, the saga of our basement continues. For those of you just joining us, there was major flooding on our block during the freak storm last August, causing substantial damage in the finished basement of our home in Queens. The basement has been under construction, so to speak since last October. What began as a two week project stretched out over almost six months. Last weekend we parted ways with the "gentleman" in charge of the project. On the bright side, the majority of the work had been finished, although we will have to bring in someone else to complete the work, we should finally be able to use the basement again relatively soon. This is a very good thing since it has been a wasteland since August.

Anyway, because of this recent parting of the ways Alex and I have been painting. The rooms were basically primed, top to bottom, and there was one coat of paint on most of the walls.  We needed to finish the entire job, including three doors. The baseboard and trim have not been installed yet so there will be more painting in our future once we get through this part. Painting is a lot of fun in the beginning. As the day goes on you realize that you are discovering lots of dormant muscles and that trying to run a roller across the ceiling in a straight line when you're under five feet tall can be challenging. At the end of the day we were paint spattered and feeling pretty good about our progress. We had gotten a lot of painting and cleaning done without killing each other. Now we were looking for a cold beer and quick sustenance.

Let me tell you, there's nothing like an ice cold Molson XXX and some chicken skin wrapped shrimp  to take the edge off. Now we're off to the showers.