I get to attend a ladies night out at a friend’s house tonight. We were told to bring some “nibbles”, which makes me laugh. I love that word; “Nibbles”. There, I said it one more time. Anyway, I decided to make something fun and special for the other moms whom I know don’t get this opportunity very frequently either. However, I decided to use my creativity to make fancy shrimp appetizers that taste divine, but cost little. Furthermore, they were really easy to make.

First, locate your cheapest loaf of bread, a mini muffin pan, your rolling pin, and some margarine or butter. Trim the four edges of the bread off (I saved the trimmings and made stuffing for supper). Next, use your rolling pin to roll each piece of bread as thin as you can. Lightly butter one side and place it butter-side-down into the muffin tin. You have to squish it in and make sure the bottom is flat. Repeat this for all dozen pieces, and place in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes, then reduce to a low temp for about another 10 minutes. Watch very closely though, as every oven is different, and you don’t want them to burn. You do want them to dry out and be light and flaky. You’ve now made your own, very simple (and cheap) pastries.

I happened to have spinach leaves for color and garnish, but you could you bits of lemon, orange, lime, green onions,chives, parsley, etc.

On the bottom is a layer of cream cheese that I mixed with a little grated onion, mayo, salt, pepper, sugar, and wasabi powder. You could leave the cream cheese plain too.

The next layer is a couple shrimp, followed by a dab of cocktail sauce, the spinach leaf, and a couple more shrimp. I opted for a small frozen bag of shrimp that were about $3 which isn’t bad. There was just enough for this recipe.