DISQUS

Eat the shells! Crunchy in, crunchy out, if you know what I mean.

But if you're making a shrimp dish at home, I say peel before cooking, freeze, repeat often, and when your collection is big enough make a nice stock out of the shells and use it as a base for a chowder, bouillabaisse, pho, etc.

Jim Graham, what a clown. I once saw him jaywalk across U Street NW between 15th and 16th. Lawbreaker.

Chavi, regarding the name Baylen Linnekin. Take the first syllable and the last, and what does it sound like? His parents are seers.

Good cocktail = shochu (or soju, which I think is more or less the same thing, only Korean) + dry sake + a cucumber slice served up.

Top-quality salt and smoked paprika. Their Chinese five-spice blend is particularly sharp. It's always fun to pick up items not typically sold elsewhere, like super-fancy canned fish, uncommon mushrooms, rare small birds, a weird cheese, or old cured pork... Perhaps you could do five-spiced squabs stuffed with matsutakes or something like that. For more immediate satisfaction, their little meatloafs (meatloaves?) from the cafe are great.

Taco Bell had a disgusting "Mexican pizza" on the menu when I worked there in the mid-90s. It was more or less all the standard Taco Bell ingredients -- dog food-esque beef product, cheese product, tomato-based sauce product, etc -- arranged to look like a pizza. Hey, if it's round and covered in a melty substance...

I thought for a second there that you were going to puree a Happy Meal. Well done, though you might have upped the booze to shake ratio.

But how does it taste?