Quick Fix

I was running around like a crazy person yesterday, trying to do all the things I hadn't done while out in Arizona.  I didn't have time to do a whole elaborate dinner for myself, so I improvised with things I found at the market.  I had about ten minutes to spare at the vegetable stand, where I bought things that inspired me: a carton of persimmons, a Texas scallion (looks like a cross between an onion and a scallion, with a large white bulb at the end), a few kirby cucumbers, a jalapeno, a red pepper, Boston lettuce, and some cilantro.  Large shrimp at the fish market actually lived up to their name, so I took home a quarter pound, plenty of shrimp for one person to stretch over the course of two days.  

I assembled the framework for my dinner in the afternoon.  It took less than 20 minutes, proof that even the most time-pressed career person can get a home-cooked meal on the table.  I poached the shrimp in boiling water until they turned pink (roughly five minutes).  In the meantime, I chopped my purchased veggies, with the exception of the lettuce and with the addition of some celery I found hanging out in my vegetable compartment. 

Cooked shrimp was drained and cut into thirds.  I added it to the container housing my chopped vegetables.  Next, some canned pineapple--minus the juice--two heaping tablespoons of light sour cream (more than enough, trust me), one tablespoon of sriracha, some kosher salt and, of course, fresh ground pepper.  When I came home from the gym later at night, I picked some lettuce leaves and rolled the creamy mixture up into it, using the lettuce like a wrap.  Actually, iceberg would have worked a little better, but I really hate the watery taste of iceberg lettuce, with one notable exception: as lining for a good old traditional BLT. 

Really, the greatest thing about doing something like this for dinner (apart from the convenience factor) is that it's the easiest possible way to integrate a wide variety of vegetables into one's dinner.  And really, you could sub in or out any fruit or veg.  Grapefruit could have easily replaced the persimmon.  Red cabbage could have provided color instead of red pepper (I grew up surrounded by pepper-haters).  Shredded carrot would have offered a beta-carotene kick.  

So there you have it: dinner for one very busy individual, done quickly and healthily.  And did I mention that the final product was creamy, spicy, crunchy, and completely delicious?  Or maybe that goes without saying. 

Game Night

My all-girls Superbowl party, held at the house of a friend, included some activities that probably would have faced ridicule had there been men around. In the afternoon, we played Hearts and drank Malbec. My friend cooked up fresh sausages, nabbed from her downtown restaurant. We wrapped them in biscuits and topped them with mustard, relish, sauerkraut, and ketchup.

Phase two involved a Mexican dip, courtesy of another friend. It seems my red meat-free diet was torn to shreds in the face of one whopping pound of ground beef, topped with melted cheese, sour cream, taco seasoning, black olives, tomatoes, and scallions.

Luckily, we had the whole afternoon. Next up was a mean game of Taboo accompanied by shrimp lettuce wraps, host's courtesy. She poached a pound of fresh shrimp in hot water and chopped them into bite-sized pieces. She then added a can of drained, crushed pineapple, one chopped scallion, red bell pepper, a few tablespoons of light sour cream, sriracha, cilantro, lime juice and tossed the mixture together with a few ripe and sliced avocado. We put the spicy shrimp mixture on wide leaves of iceberg lettuce and rolled them into miniature burritos.

My chili was a hit, as was the end product of project healthy cookie. When those chocolate chip monstrosities failed to meet my admittedly high standards, I decided to convert them into a bread pudding. I whisked together one egg, a cup of skim milk, some ground nutmeg, and ground cloves. I crumbled the cookies and put them in a glass baking dish and poured the egg mixture over them. At 350, I let the cookies re-bake for about 20 minutes, until I was sure the egg had cooked through. I then added sugar-free vanilla pudding to the dish, mixing the whole thing together in the pan once it cooled. It came together nicely and the whole-wheat flour actually offered nice textural integrity to the dish. My one complaint was that the chocolate chips melted on the second bake, which meant that the desired crunch of chocolate was absent from the final product.

We were all rooting for Arizona, but they lost. Of course, the entire day was nothing more than an excuse to hang around in sweatpants and eat our faces off, which, in my estimation, was a resounding success.