Caveman Sam

This is probably the recipe I’ve been looking forward to making the most out of the big old stack of recipes on the drawing board. First of all, it’s called BLAST… which means it blasts off in your mouth to taste sensations you’ve never experienced… ever. Yeah.

So BLAST stands for Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado, Shrimp and Tomato. It’s like a BLT with a little A and some S thrown in. I found the original sandwich recipe I based this on a few months ago at SoupBelly.com. One of the sites I used to frequent before I became (duhdadaDAAAAA! ) Caveman Sam! I loved the photos (they’re way better than mine) and it just looked like an incredible sandwich. So after I began my primal journey I went back to see if I could lose the bread and still come up with something delicious. Turns out I could.

Here’s the recipe:

BLAST (Bacon, lettuce, avocado, shrimp and tomato salad)

Servings: 4

Prep time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 16-20 shrimp, thawed and deveined (I used 18)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne red pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 5-6 slices of bacon, cut into little bits
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 1 tomato, sliced (I used half of a ginormous beefsteak tomato)
• 4 large leaves of lettuce (I used romaine)

Lime infused Mayo:

• 4 tbsp. mayonnaise
• 1/4 lime, juiced
• salt
• pepper

Directions:

1) Combine the first 6 ingredients and mix them all up. Stick the shrimp in the fridge while you prep the rest of the food

2) As shrimp are marinating cook bacon in skillet until crispy. Keep some of the grease in the pan to grill the shrimp in.

3) In a small bowl, squeeze lime juice into 4 tbsp. of mayo. Mix thoroughly. Salt and pepper to taste.

4) Chop up tomatoes and avocado.

5) In a skillet on medium high, cook shrimp until they turn opaque (approx. 2-3 minutes). Place cooked shrimp in bowl.

6) Mix the shrimp, tomatoe, avocado, bacon and limified mayo in a bowl. There’s your salad. Take about a quarter of it and scoop it into a lettuce leaf.

7) Eat.

Here’s all the ingredients for the salad… except for the stuff for the limey mayo which I forgot. But wait… here it is:

So take your shrimp which you’ve shelled and deviened and put them spices and olive oil on.

I love the yellow color the turmeric imparts on everything it touches. Like my counter top.

I used to fry the bacon and then crumble it but I tried it this way a few years back and it’s so much easier. You get much more uniform bits of bacon.

This is shortly after I learned that it’s a bit more than difficult to chop tomatoes while attempting to take a photo of chopping tomatoes. So I just chopped them up and took a photo. Tada!

I thought about just putting the lime juice and mayo in with the rest of the ingredients and stirring but I wanted to mix this up separately so I could try it by itself. It was good. Eventually I’ll be making my own mayo from scratch but we bought a bunch of mayo on sale a few months ago… so we use it til it’s gone.

Grilling shrimp in fresh bacon grease is incredibly satisfying.

Just needs the mayo and a stir.

There it is. Pure deliciousness. Where’s that lettuce?

I have leftovers. I can’t wait until tomorrow.