Edible Delights from Friday Night

First off, let me start out by saying that I'm not a cook; I don't want you to get that impression. I'm just a girl, wanting to give sustenance to those I love. Fortunately, those I love are those that are willing to deal with my experiments. And I haven't made anyone sick yet! That's an accomplishment, right? Kind of? Okay, maybe not really, but can we just pretend that it is?

Anyway, last Friday one of my lovely friends came over for dinner, and I served up items from this menu. The shrimp-lemon kebabs and zucchini skewers browned nicely in the broiler. See, shrimp and lemons and vegetables can all play well together!

I wish I would have chopped up the cilantro closer to the time I was going to serve it so that the cilantro-lime vinaigrette would have retained it's bright green color. I didn't really use a recipe for this. I just chopped up a big handful of cilantro and added the following items in "about" these proportions: juice from half a lime, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/8 red wine vinegar, 2 garlic cloves and salt and pepper to taste.

I enjoyed the green and cannellini bean salad as a modified version of this Food & Wine recipe, but I forgot the basil. Other than that, I stayed pretty true to the recipe with just two substitutions: green beans for yellow wax beans and canned Great Northern beans for the cannellini beans. The original recipe was for 10 servings (which was way too much), but that's way too much math for a Friday evening to make all the conversions, so I didn't measure everything and instead just sort of eyeballed it. That's okay, right?

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!