August BBQ Recipe Featuring Grilled Shrimp with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette

No better time than NOW to throw some shrimp on the barbecue and enjoy our hot August evenings. This Grilled Shrimp with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette recipe can work as an appetizer or an entrée. It also looks beautifully displayed on a bed of micro greens from your local Farmer’s Market.

Grilled Shrimp with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette

4 strips of bacon, diced

½ cup vegetable oil

4 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

4 Tbsp sugar

2 tsp fresh lime juice

4 Tbsp garlic, minced

2 tsp kosher salt

2 tsp ground black pepper

2 tsp red pepper flakes

2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

~20 jumbo shrimp, peeled, de-veined and tails left on

Preheat grill to high.

Fry bacon for the vinaigrette in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Pour off all drippings, leaving bacon bits in the pan.

Stir in ½ of the oil, vinegar, sugar and lime juice. Turn off heat. Season with salt/pepper.

Toss the shrimp with remaining oil, garlic, salt, pepper and pepper flakes. Thread shrimp onto metal skewers.

Grill shrimp until cooked through, about 2 minutes per side. Remove from skewers and arrange on plates, then drizzle with vinaigrette and sprinkle with cilantro.

Serve with Crostini. Call hungry Conejo Joe to share!

My friend Jill Fisher has a B.S. in Food Science and Nutrition and is a licensed Personal Chef. She teaches cooking classes at Conejo Valley Adult School and Williams Sonoma in Thousand Oaks and has written articles for local food magazines such as 805 Living. To contact Jill, let us know!

Thousand Oaks Police Department Bicycle Safety Enforcement Announcement

What is a “sharrow”? (From City of Thousand Oaks Website)
A sharrow is a road lane marking that shows a stencil of a bicycle with two chevron markings above it. The purpose of a sharrow is to remind residents to share the road when driving or riding in Thousand Oaks. It's designed for use in areas too narrow for a separate bike lane. Sharrows are about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. The California Department of Transportation officially adopted the design in 2005. Thousand Oaks will begin stenciling sharrows in September 2008.

Sharrows have several applications in improving safety for cyclists and motorists:

• Sharrows tend to keep bicyclists from riding too close to parked vehicles,
  which puts them at risk for unexpected opening car doors.
• With sharrows on the road, motorists tend to give more space to bicyclists
  that they pass.
• Sharrows help reduce wrong-way riding by bicyclists.
• They help decrease aggressive bicycle-car interactions.
• They can help reduce the level of pedestrian-to-bicycle conflicts on sidewalks.

Now This is a CUTE Video of the Evian Roller Babies!

I don't think it gets any cuter than this!  And clever. I still drink tap water though. www.evianliveyoung.com

And here's an AP video that shows how this video was made:

FREE eBook "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" by Chris Anderson

This book entitled "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" has been launched as a free eBook by author Chris Anderson.  The book is about launching products for free or less than actual cost while converting some of the customers to additional paid features. Click the rectangle in the upper right hand menu below to enlarge the book.

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Classic Humor With Debbie Downer on Saturday Night Live - 5/1/04

I caught this from Saturday Night Live rerun last night and had to share it.  This initial appearance of Rachel Dratch as "Debbie Downer" is classic because the actors couldn't stop laughing through the skit, which also features Linday Lohan.  According to a Wikipedia article about Debbie Downer (gotta love Wikipedia), part of the reason for uncontrollable laughter was that the actors hadn't rehearsed with the "wah wah" sounds heard after Debbie's cynical, depressing lines.