Lobster and Honey Roasted Potatoes

     I'm back!!  I took a leave of absence as I became a new mom to a beautiful little girl, but, she's 6 weeks old now and it's time for me to juggle in these blog posts again!  On August 14 my husband and I celebrated our one year anniversary.  Do you know what that means?  It means my one year cooking challenge ended!  Successfully, if i might add.  I know there aren't 365 posts on here but I did do it.  :)  And it was a blast.  I loved this past year of cooking.  And, surprisingly my life is a lot easier in the kitchen because of this challenge.  I've created habits of planning a menu each week, which means I have a shopping list and rarely have to go back to the store because I've forgotten something.  It's nice to always have what I need on hand and it's been so fun to eat something different every day and to learn so much in the kitchen!  I've had so much fun that I'm continuing.  Not necessarily as a challenge, because I'm not going to stress about it at all and there are quite a few recipes from this past year that I would like to make again, but I do plan on continuing to make new recipes, probably as much as 6 days out of the week.  

     So, here's a meal that I made recently... lobster was on sale at Sprouts so I splurged a bit and bought some.  I had no idea how to prepare lobster, especially how to get to the meat under the hard shell, so I used this tutorial on ehow.  I highly recommend it, it's short and sweet and very informative.  And who knew kitchen shears can cut through lobster shells?  I was skeptical but it worked just like the video said it would.  Here's the recipe I used from allrecipes.com 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 whole lobster tails
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon ground paprika
• salt to taste
• ground white pepper, to taste
• 1 lemon - cut into wedges, for garnish

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the broiler.
2. Place lobster tails on a baking sheet. With a sharp knifeI or kitchen shears, carefully cut top side of lobster shells lengthwise. Pull apart shells slightly, and season meat with equal amounts butter, paprika, salt, and white pepper.
3. Broil lobster tails until lightly browned and lobster meat is opaque, about 5 to 10 minutes. Garnish with lemon wedges to serve.  ( I ended up having to broil it for about 8 1/2 minutes) 

     Lobster is always yummy but I need a bit more practice, it wasn't quite restaurant quality and I'd like it to be closer.  I also made Honey Roasted Potatoes which had the perfect amount of sweetness and was quite the hit with my husband.  

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound red potatoes, quartered
• 2 tablespoons diced onion
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 teaspoons dry mustard
• salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly coat an 11x7 inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Place potatoes in a single layer in prepared dish, and top with onion. In a small bowl, combine melted butter, honey, mustard, salt and pepper; drizzle over potatoes and onion.
3. Bake in the preheated 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) oven for 35 minutes or until tender, stirring halfway through the cooking time.

Enjoy!