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My new address here is cook.onthis.net

Stay tuned…

lunch @ work, and hot vs. cold

As a teacher, I find it difficult to find snack breaks, so by the time I get to my lunch time, I'm starving! But what can I bring for lunch that won't weigh me down after snarfing it down in under 20 minutes? That's exactly what I was thinking about when I saw this post last week from The Kitchn. I liked reading the ideas from The Kitchn's readers, but to be honest, most of them didn't seem all that new to me. One thing, however, caught my attention - the post from Our Semi Organic Life - she had posted something mysterious, just interesting enough that I had to check it out... It's something called "disappearing zucchini orzo" and the recipe comes from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

I appreciate the value of recipes, but sometimes, they're just SO hard to follow! I don't measure, and then I don't have one ingredient so I add something new, and then I get a bright idea about making it a hybrid with some other recipe, and pretty soon, it's no longer the food the author had intended.

Anyway, I loved the idea about grating the zucchini and making that the sauce for the pasta, so off I went... I roasted some chopped garlic in olive oil with Adobo and Vegeta, then grated in the zucchini. I cooked it really slowly and then the zucchini seemed to melt away - what was left was a silky green/yellow sauce with tiny strips of dark green. I cooked the pasta (not orzo - I was trying a low-carb pasta) and tossed it all together.

Ok..... I'll admit it. I added feta.

...and lemon juice.

The result? REALLY zesty pasta salad... OR really zesty hot pasta.

... which brings me to my next topic. I have been making cold salad leftovers into hot food! We had a really (and I mean really) limited supply of foods that we could mix together last week, and so we started this mystery dish with chicken chorizo... At this point, I began walking around the kitchen asking myself what on earth I could add to it. My other half grabbed the leftover bulgar salad with feta and asparagus and asked if it was "still good" - smelled good, so I tossed it in! It had a light vinaigrette on it, so it stayed moist in the pan and made a little tiny bit of sauce, and then a wonderful thing happened...

...the feta melted. What a great accidental "we have almost no food to work with" dish. =)

I feel I will be doing something like that again soon. That is, if I can remember how I did it in the first place.

shrimp summer rolls

What do I crave when the weather gets warm? Food that doesn't weigh me down! I convinced my man to try summer rolls from a store a few weeks back, and my obsession with these rolls became contagious... I don't know which he likes more - the crisp, refreshing veggies inside (which I love), the succulent shrimp (which I also love), or the fact that he gets to dip them into sweet chili sauce.

It doesn't really matter which he likes more, because it means I get to eat these delicious rolls more often now! After a few searches at local stores, I found the rice paper wraps, and made the rolls as an appetizer for a recent dinner. I put lettuce, ribbons of cucumber, skinny carrot sticks, and sweet shrimp. Delicious!
P.S. Now I know what I need to have for an appetizer tonight. =)

Stir-fried Chicken Paprikash

Steamed the chicken with salt, pepper, and sherry vinegar, then combined it with sauteed peppers and onions, sour cream and chopped flatleaf parsley. It's our new chicken obsession!
We served it over couscous here, but it wasn't a great compliment to the chicken, so maybe rice next time...


Two years ago today: beef stew over mashed potatoes