Summer means shells. No, not those ones.

So the month of May was a blogging wash. Thank you health problems, but I've been out of the kitchen and off of the blogosphere for the past few weeks. However, I do have a few old sets of photos that I can post from my couch while I'm recovering from surgery and getting back up to my former cooking prowess (or lack there of, depends how good of a cook the judge is).

With some HOT weather over the past few days, I decided to bring you a tasty and quick summer meal, shrimp tacos.

I'll start with toppings. We happened to have a lot of taco fixings in the fridge so it was an easy meal to put together. I whipped up a quick guacamole (avocado, lemon juice, cumin, salt and pepper) to add to some tomato, black beans and sour cream.

Of course, no taco is complete without cheese! I put some shredded cheese on the shells and put them in the oven to get all warm and melty.

I'm a huge seafood girl, specifically shell fish, and we all know how I feel about Mexican, so this was a no-brainer for me. I started with some pretty basic seasonings on the shrimp, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper.

Standard pantry items

I melted some butter in a frying pan with a little lemon juice and tossed in the shrimp. Shrimp cooks pretty fast, so I probably only cooked these guys for about 6 or 7 minutes until they were this nice pink color.

Now here's where I admit to some serious stupidity. When you buy fresh shrimp at the supermarket, it frequently is not shelled which means you need to take the shells off before you cook. I did not do this. It was a BIG mistake.

......oops

Once I took the shells off the shrimp lost a LOT of flavor. I added some more of the spices, but adding after the fact doesn't get into the food the way it does when it's cooked so these definitely could've been a way better base to the taco. But, alas, c'est la vie, or perhaps more fitting for this meal, está la vida.

As always, top with fresh cilantro