Barefoot Contessa Parties!: Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Grilled Herb Shrimp

I was leafing through my heavily tabbed copy of Barefoot Contessa Parties!, having a dinner crisis. With a newborn and a preschooler, my modus operandi for grocery shopping is to do it as infrequently as possible. Of course, this sometimes results in having nothing to eat.

But my freezer is jam-packed. How can we have nothing to eat? We did have a half-bag of frozen shrimp. I looked at the recipe for Herb Grilled Shrimp and, miraculously, we had all the other ingredients on hand (except fresh basil, so I used some thyme instead). So easy to throw together, so quick on the grill - and absolutely delicious over couscous. I hacked off some of the mountains of salad greens we got through our CSA for a salad. How resourceful am I? Put this one on your summer grilling list, stat.

The recipe is on the Food Network website. I love the episode summary:

"Just when Ina's friends Frank & Stephen expect a low key supper-Ina has something else in mind- a fun surprise dinner by the ocean. Ina cooks filet of Beef sandwiches, chilled Gazpacho, Endive and Avocado Salad, Grilled herb shrimp and outrageous brownies."

Sounds like fun. Well, take away the filet, gazpacho, endive, avocado, and brownies, and that was our dinner, 3.5 miles from the ocean. No picture - from grill to table to stomachs in five minutes flat!

But wait! I made dessert, too! Also from Barefoot Contessa Parties! is Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies (recipe courtesy of Food Network, again). I chose these so I could use up half a bag of Nestle white chocolate chips (not premium white chocolate - sorry, Ina). And then I threw in a handful of Barry Callebaut white chocolate chunks for good measure (very premium, and much tastier). Between the nice dose of kosher salt (I love that Ina uses this in baking - it's the only basic salt I keep in the kitchen) and the Bensdorp Dutch-Process cocoa, these tasted deep, dark, and just a little bit like the cookie-jar version of the World Peace Cookie. They are also ridiculously easy to make. So make them already!