To the person who hacked my site and installed the malicious code that ate nearly 3 years’ worth of content when removal was attempted:
Fuck you. Fuck you very much.
Of course, fuck me too for not having a backup.* But mostly, fuck YOU.
To everyone reading this that has a blog: leave this post, right now, and go back your shit up. Twice. Then come back.
Okay, wait, I need to say it one more time: FUCK YOU.
*Dear Media Temple Hosting,
If your emergency backup successfully restores my content, I will have ten thousand million of your babies, and I mean that wholeheartedly.
Love,
Me
All right, the time for mourning is now over. We must move forward not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom! That is to say, no pouting.
Dinner tonight: honey-lime shrimp with jalapeño and coconut rice. A bunch of ingredients you probably already have (minus the shrimp, perhaps), easy as pie and damn tasty.
The shrimp marinate in lime juice, honey, soy and cayenne for about an hour. The marinade recipe is remarkably simple to remember because everything comes in fours: four tablespoons of lime, four teaspoons each of honey and soy and four large pinches of cayenne. I call it The Law of Fours, which is also the name of my forthcoming, poorly-researched book about Illuminati conspiracies in the Catholic Church. (Super-secret twist: Jesus is the son of Xenu and Angelina Jolie!)
While some jasmine rice simmered in a mixture of coconut milk and water, scorched and stuck to the bottom of the pot, I seared the shrimp off quickly in a cast-iron pan.
I also diced a chile to sprinkle over the top for an extra fresh burst of heat. Then I washed my hands thoroughly. Then I rubbed my left eye. Then I roundly cursed the soap I used as my eye started burning. FLAMES, FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE.
I skimmed some non-burned rice off the top of the pot, added a couple of skewers and the jalapeños, and dinner was served after a photo shoot that lasted scant seconds but was still long enough for everything to cool down completely. See? Food blogging life goes on!
The dish was flavorful and satisfying, and light enough for a steamy summer’s day. The honey picked up the shrimp’s own natural sweetness, with the lime as counterpoint. The small amount of cayenne lent a gentle heat, while the jalapeño brought a fruitier, more direct burn. The rice was just coconutty enough to have an identifiable flavor without being cloying.
Ain’t no hackers gonna stop TNS.
Honey-Lime Shrimp
serves 2
1/2 pound shrimp
4 tbsp. fresh lime juice
4 tsp. honey
4 tsp. soy sauce
4 large pinches cayenne
1 tbsp. canola/vegetable oil
1 jalapeño, seeded and diced finely
Mix the lime, honey, soy and cayenne well. I put everything in a jar and shook like hell; it dissolved the honey easily. Pour the marinade over the shrimp and toss to coat. Marinate at room temperature for one hour.
Heat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shrimp – skewered or not – and cook until just done, a minute or two per side, depending on the size of your shrimp. (You could also do this on the grill.)
Remove to a plate. Sprinkle the diced chiles over the top. Serve immediately.
For the coconut rice, just replace 1/2 the liquid you use to cook rice with coconut milk. If you want an extra coconut punch, mix in a few tablespoons of unsweetened dried coconut into the finished product.
Thursday Night Smackdown 
I’m still sorry about the hack. And I echo your sentiments. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for quoting two of my favorite quotes in your grief: the aliens running for president on The Simpson’s and Clue.
I would like to add that why someone WANTS to hack a site, especially one that means so much to me, boggles the mind. Eh? Eh???
Love you, beeyatch!
AAaggghhh. That is awful. I am so sorry. PS these shrimp look pretty awesome.
“abortions for some, miniature american flags for others!”
and “how to cook forty humans” for the jerkwad who destroyed your site. he’s human #1 in the cooking.
LOVE. and want the shrimp.
“The honey picked up the shrimp’s own natural sweetness, with the lime as counterpoint.”
that line cracked me up and see? you weren’t even trying to be funny and still, funny!
it looks like all your past posta are on the blog, so i am confused as to what was lost. but i am easily confused…
why do hackers hack? this is my question.
Wow. If my computer was hacked and I lost data, I’d be ordering in, too p.o. to cook. I’m impressed, share your sentiments and that shrimp looks amazing. Amazingly like what I (now) plan on making tomorrow, too.
i subscribe to your RSS and it seems like i can still see all of your old posts. perhaps you can recover all of your old content by pulling from an RSS feed?
Grr. I’m muttering angrily on your behalf. May your hacker have the government’s largest proctoscope shined up his evil ass.
Lovely shrimp.
hackers suck donkey dick.
the recipe looks yummy, though i’d have to leave the honey out (diabetic in the house). curried rice would be delicious with this as well as some nice sautéed greens with a bit of hoisin sauce and ginger.
Oh…I just came over to look up the recipe in Rip Torn—With Peanuts so I could make it for dinner tomorrow, and now it seems it has disappeared into the ether. Stupid me for never actually writing it down. And a big-ass curse on the dick who f*ed up your site. May s/he never know the joy that is peanut-sauce soba. I *hope hope hope* you are somehow able to restore all your old posts! Good luck, my dinner depends on it!
Fuck those fucking father-stabbing motherfuckers.
My site isn’t backed up, I have no idea how to do *that*, but all my content is written first as text and then uploaded.
Shrimp look good, I’ll remember the 4/4/4 thing.
I’ve gotten in the habit of throwing 2 whole limes and a liter of water into the blender and hit Liquify. Then I add that and 1/2 cup of sugar into a liter of water and let it come to a boil, then simmer for about 40 minutes. Then I strain it into a liter bottle (which is why I use a damn liter and not a damn quart) and let cool. Whenever I need lime juice, for cooking or a cocktail or a limeade, I have it.
grrr….sorry girl
I’m wondering if this recipe would work with scallops (since that’s what I’ve got in the freezer)…
I’m really sorry about the hack – I’m hoping the emergency backup thingy works out.
Oh girl, I have MT and I know what that hack is (the spam insertion, right?). We wrangled that a few months ago… MT was not especially helpful (other friend of mine also hosted on MT got hit with it too) and the hack was let in partly b/c of their crap security. Email me if you have questions. We do nightly backups, but… Jeremy may have some thoughts on how to help out. xo
Hey – I have a couple of your old posts saved in my bloglines reader, complete with photos and everything, that I don’t see in your recipe index anymore (bacon cake and empanadas). If there’s some way I can cut and paste these to you, let me know. It’s only 2 posts though.
you quoted CLUE and made my day.
I’m so glad you got all your archives back, so that my priceless, timeless contributions to your site haven’t been lost for future generations to read and learn from.
Seriously, what does a hacker want with a food blog? It doesn’t have nuclear codes or anything. Having access to it isn’t going to make their e-dick bigger. There was a little bit of malicious code bullshit with my site recently, although nothing this serious, and I had the same thoughts then to the 10th power – I mean, at least with a well-known food blog, they can be the special guy who messed up a site that people have heard of. Insofar as that counts for anything. Congrats, dicknose, I guess.
We must move forward not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom!
Did you really just quote alien Bill Clinton? You are a madman Billy Ray, I want to party with you cowboy.
I say we use the Twilight Zone episode cookbook “To Serve Man” on malicious code writers. All of them. This shrimp looks incredibly delish and I bet it smelled devine.