Saucy clams and shrimp with wild mushrooms

I asked Dave to pick out a few recipes I've saved over the years to try. This one came from Food & Wine.

I thought this would be okay because Dave loves shrimp and he likes clam chowder (although he prefers the weird tomato-based clam chowder to the correct New England clam chowder).

I liked it. After trying it, Dave said, eh, I don't know if I'm a fan of clams. Yep.

More Plated

Another box from Plated brought two more yummy meals. First I made spicy calamari linguine.

Dave said this was the best Plated meal yet. It was delicious. Next was blackened tilapia with tomato rice and a creamy sauce.

Also good. The tilapia was excellent, and the rice was fine. I left the cilantro out of the sauce because I don't like cilantro.

YUM!

Color Me Mine

Dave and I checked out the Lehigh Valley Color Me Mine recently. In case you aren't familiar, you pick a piece of pottery and paint it. Then they fire it in a kiln and you come back later to pick up the finished product. It was hard to decide what to paint! Dave and I went with Christmas pieces so we could put them out every year as decorations.

Before...

Mine is the odd colored reindeer. Dave's is a gingerbread house that has an opening in the back so you can put a light inside. The colors you see aren't the colors as they appear after they've been fired. The finished pieces are much darker.

After!

They turned out so cool! They ended up being much better than I expected. Dave and I are both very excited about how they look.

It was fun! It took a lot longer than I expected. We were there for over three hours. The people who work there were very friendly. They suggested at least three coats of paint for the pieces not to turn out streaky.

We wrote the date on the bottom, and Dave suggested coming back every year to paint more Christmas decorations.