Once upon a time there was a girl who ate out at fine restaurants, wore fancy dresses and heels, and drove a fancy car.  One day she found her prince charming and traded in her dresses for jeans and her heels for a pair of boots, her fancy car for a motorcycle and her days of dining in fine restaurants for her own pots and pans. And she lived happily ever after ever since! However, every now and then she gets a craving for a certain dish that she remembered eating at one of those fine restaurants. So she learned how to make it herself!

Yep, true story. Even down to the heels if you can imagine that! Seriously though, there was this restaurant I would eat at, at least twice a month. They had this dish with a big long fancy name and a big fancy price to go with it, but basically what it was, was Honey Walnut Shrimp served with a few veggies on top of rice. Talk about heavenly. Well, I did get a craving for it so every time shrimp would go on sale I would buy it and try to recreate it. Fortunately nothing I did to it made it just totally inedible, but it took many tries to finally get it right. Actually, when I did get it right, I made it even better and I didn't think that was possible!

If you buy the shrimp on sale, (I got a 14 ounce bag of cooked, deveined, extra large shrimp for $5.00) it's still going to generously feed a family of four for under $10.00. If you went to that restaurant and got four dishes, you'd get smaller portions and it would cost you over $100.00! Allright, are you ready for it, here's how to do it like I do it...

First, I went ahead and started my rice. If you need help cooking rice, see this post. I added 2 chicken and herb bouillon cubes and 2 tablespoons of butter to 2 cups of water and 1 cup of rice. I could eat rice like this by itself!

In a small pan I put 1 cup of water and 2/3 cup of sugar and brought it to a boil. Once the water started boiling I poured in 1/2 cup of walnut pieces and let them boil for 2 minutes.

I drained the water off the walnuts and put them on a cookie sheet covered with foil so they could dry. I kind of stretched the foil over the cookie sheet and poked holes in it with a fork so some of the excess water could drain off.


I put the shrimp in a colander in the sink and ran cold water over them for a few minutes to thaw them out.


Once they weren't rock solid anymore, I pinched off their tails like this:


Make sure you pinch on the flat sides, right above the fins and not the bony top cause it hurts if you get ahold of one that's not quite thawed! If you do it right, they'll slide right out of the shell.

Next I heated up about a cup of oil in a skillet on the stove on medium-high heat. You're not cooking french fries so it doesn't need to be real deep.


While the oil was heating up, I cracked 4 eggs and put them in a bowl and beat the heck out of them.


Cooking has to be therapeutic. I remember my mom telling me once that because times have changed, people don't use their hands as much as they used to and it messes with them mentally. It's something about the connection between your mind and your hands when you feel the way the soil crumbles when you plant seeds or the way bread squishes when you knead it. Well, I have a food chopper, but I rarely use it because I like the way it feels to chop up things with a knife. I have an electric mixer, but it just doesn't feel the same as beating your eggs with a wire whisk! I guess that and riding a motorcycle keeps me mentally balanced :)

After beating my eggs, I added 1 cup of cornstarch and mixed it until it was smooth and kind of like pancake batter.


Then I dumped the shrimp into the bowl and stirred them around to coat them with batter.


By this time the oil was heated up and I used a spoon to drop the shrimp into the hot oil a few at a time. As soon as the shrimp hit the oil I made sure to use the spoon to separate them so they didn't stick together. A few of them ended up stuck together, but I just used the spoon to cut them apart, no biggie.


Once they were a golden brown on one side, I flipped them over and let them get golden brown on the other side. My skillet is pretty big, but not all the shrimp would fit so I ended up frying half of them and then frying the other half. They cook pretty quick so this didn't take very long.


Once they were golden brown on both sides, I put them on a rack to drain. I'm not really a "green" kind of girl, I just never buy paper towels so I use a rack and put it on top of a cookie sheet for the grease to drain off. This also keeps them from getting soggy.


Next, I poured a can of sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 cup of sour cream and 3 tablespoons of honey into a bowl and mixed it all up.


When you measure honey, carefully fill the measuring spoon with oil and pour it back in the container and then measure your honey. The honey will slide right out!

Then I heated up 1/2 of a package of Sugarsnap Stir Fry frozen vegetables in the microwave for about 2 minutes and drained off the water really well.


Then I realized my bowl wasn't big enough to stir everything together so I just dumped the sauce, the shrimp and the veggies in a bigger bowl with a lid and shook it to coat everything.


I put rice on plates and spooned the shrimp and veggies on top. Then I sprinkled the walnuts on top of everything.