thoughtful consumption

Shrimp Fried Rice

This week’s fried rice was some of the best yet.  Here’s the prep.

• diced celery, onions, and baby turnips
• minced garlic, chopped watercress stems, and chopped turnip green stems
• watercress leaves and turnip green leaves
• crunchy bean sprouts and eggs
• half-dozen shrimp, chopped

I was very excited to use up all the watercress and half of my turnips and greens. I split the leaves from the stems so I could add the stems sooner and have them cook a little more.

Here’s the result…

Very, very tasty! If you look closely, you’ll notice that the rice is actually rice grits. These worked just as well if not better than regular rice.

Also, I’m now a big believer in shrimp fried rice. It makes plain old fried rice into something much better. I used half a dozen shrimp chopped up with one cup of rice grits. (For reference, this makes three or four servings.) I usually have some frozen shrimp in the fridge (sometimes CSA shrimp, sometimes Kroger). It’s easy enough to pull out 6 of them and defrost them in the fridge overnight. You have to make the rice ahead, too, so you have a reason to think ahead.

Tonight’s supper

Tonight we had kale with raisins and pinenuts, pasta salad, and a sweet potato. We’re actually beginning to like this kale recipe. And it’s a good thing, too, because we got a double helping of kale this week!

The pasta salad is one of Chris’ favorites. It’s really easy to make. (Don’t tell him.) Here are the ingredients and instructions:

• Four Seasons Italian dressing or the generic equivalent (made according to directions)
• a bag of tricolor rotini
• feta cheese (I freeze feta, so I stock up when Kroger marks it down. Works fine for this recipe.)
• finely minced onion (Ideally, I’d use green onions, but these work okay.)
• chopped celery and leaves or parsley or whatever salad-like herbs you have around

1. Cook and cool the pasta according to the directions.
2. Make up the salad dressing. (If you want to make your own instead, try ¼ cup vinegar, 3 T of water, ½ cup of oil, and lots of herbs and seasonings.)
3. Once the pasta is cool, put it in a big bowl, add the veggies, and crumble the feta on top. Mix it all up with the dressing and chill for a while.

So here’s our supper.

Delicious, if blurry. It had me considering becoming vegetarian again. Must be time to order more sausage.