Spicy Beer and Butter Shrimp + Cornbread Panzanella Salad.

Oh this Spicy Beer and Butter Shrimp Salad, let’s talk about it.

First of all, it has been sitting on my computer since July 8th. Ok wait, the salad itself has not actually been sitting on my computer for over a month. Oh my gosh, can you imagine what it would look like?

Eww!

Especially, here in Oregon where things are moist and seem to grow mold like a bazillion times faster than Colorado. Honestly, I’ve thrown out so much moldy food here it is insane. Such a waste of money. I swear, NOTHING grows mold where I live in Colorado. I’m not sure if it’s just the dryness or the ten thousand feet of elevation (both), but I never throw food out at home.

Oh, and I have I mentioned how much I hate mold? I hate it.

Did I tell you guys about the moldy sweet potatoes?

Oh so gross, I am not even going to get into it since this is a food blog and I want to make food sound good to you and not make you want to puke your guts out.

Let’s just say they were mushy, fuzzy, black and disgusting. The images will be burned into my brain forever. So gross!

And back to shrimp (sorry for the queasy trip down memory lane).

So yes, the photos of this buttery shrimp salad have been sitting on my computer for over month. As to why I have waited this long to share this amazing salad, that honestly is so much more than a boring salad, I have no idea.

Actually, I do.

I kind of hate the pictures, and when I hate the pictures, even if others don’t, I tend to wait to post the recipe until I have time to make it again and redeem myself.

And it is not even that I don’t like photos or that I think they are that bad, it’s more that, looking at them now, I would have done them differently.

I am highly crazy, I know this.

But I am what I am and I just can’t change it.

But this time, I said screw it.

And only because I basically got yelled at by my family. Especially my dad, who loved this salad more than anyone (FYI, I totally did this with chicken for everyone else. Tons of seafood haters around here). He could not believe I had not even posted this yet. Actually, he was shocked.

Apparently, he really like this one.

Plus, summer is coming to an end soon and I wanted you guys to see this while the summer veggies are still flowing into stores and popping out of gardens like crazy.

Tell me, are you lucky people with gardens just flooding your veggie drawers with produce fresh from your gardens? Because if you are, you are probably going to want to make yesterdays post, simple garden vegetable pizza, as well. I mean the pizza has loads of melty fontina cheese, which in my book you can’t go wrong with, cheese is always good.

Oh, and I should probably start telling you a little bit about this salad now, huh?

Cornbread croutons are the best way to use up leftover cornbread, which during the summer months we have with dinner many a nights. Of course, the day I made this salad we had zero cornbread left. Figures.

So I just made these Sweet Honey Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread Biscuits except I melted the butter and spread the batter out into an 8×8 Pyrex dish. Worked awesome. Stuff’s so good. It was hard not to eat the hot pan of cheesy, spicy cornbread right there and then.

But then there is the main star. The spicy, buttery, beer shrimp. Now these guys are so good. The shrimp is simmered in the butter and the beer and the spices. Wow. So saucy, so spicy, so buttery and so beery.

Shrimp + butter + beer? It really works, in case you were wondering.

August at its tastiest, for sure!