One fish, two fish, red fish... blue shrimp?

I may have mentioned before that I'm not much of a cook... Not that I can't cook - I just don't. When you live in New York City and anything you could possibly want can be at your house faster (and usually better) than if you made it yourself, it's hard not to do take-out.

But I'm turning over a new leaf, so tonight I decided to make dinner... I figured I'd start with something easy - shrimp scampi over linguini. (Not too challenging if you can manage to sautee a couple of crustaceans and not overcook the pasta...)

I had olive oil and garlic simmering in a saucepan with a little butter, some lemon juice, and salt and pepper... Then I added some parsley and the shrimp. Everything looked fine - for a few moments... Until the garlic turned an alarming shade of aqua blue that looked decidedly un-shrimpish...

Had plastic fallen into my dinner? Had the shrimp gone bad? (I shuddered to imagine how bad it would have to be to produce that neon hue.) Was it because I had been too lazy to go to the fish store and had bought the pre-frozen shrimp from the supermarket?

As it turns out it was a chemical reaction between the garlic and the acid of the lemon juice. (Apparently if garlic is still green when it's picked, and not properly dried, this can happen.)

In the end dinner turned out fine. Blue, but fine. At least I cooked it myself...