A Monday Mélange

Happy Monday Friends! 

What better way to start off the week than a nice post chock full of randomness!  But really, these are my favorite types of posts :)

So the weekend:

I had two Birthday’s to celebrate this past weekend…and exactly 29 years apart!

My friend’s daughter turned 1!!

There’s nothing better than watching a 1 year old go at it with her very own birthday cake!

She was particularly fond of the frosting…my kind of girl!

Later that night it was back into Boston to celebrate a friend’s 30th! 

I swear 30th birthday’s are the new “wedding” of 2012 for me…I have 30th birthday parties the next 2 weekends as well!

Saturday the party started with dinner at Marliave in downtown Boston.  I’ve never been before but it had some great reviews and it turned out to be a great spot!

It’s in a very old building downtown and they like to play up the old 1920’s speakeasy vibe.

I ordered the Tres Curieux and it was one of the best drinks I think I’ve EVER had!!  Perfect “Bridget” cocktail…tart, citrusy, not too sweet, refreshing, and best of all can’t taste the alcohol ;)

I had 2.

I’d go back just for this drink!  After dinner we headed over to Ned Devine’s for some drinks, music, and dancing!  I haven’t been there in a while…and still not my favorite place.  I felt slightly old too haha…but man the people watching was top notch!  And why are so many girls wearing like super tight super short black skirts!?  Like SOOO short, I was wondering if they were shorts or skirts?!  Ok, now I just sound old.

Side note:

I hung my super cute new kitchen-theme calendar my bff got me for Christmas

It’s from Anthropologie, and each month has an adorable water color image!  

Speaking of Anthro…I was LOVING my outfit today, unfortunately I had no luck with a photo.  I was too busy this morning, and Brian wasn’t home when I got home, then I had to run off to Crossfit.

So it was this Anthro dress I got 50% off after Christmas

Gold belt, red cardigan (Banana Republic)

(my sad attempt at the photo)

Fun off-white knit tights and navy wedges (Nine West)

New hair do!  Got my 12-week cut and color this weekend too!

Love that “new hair” smell and feel!

Some Food?

How about super fast, super convenient stir fry!!

I know I’ve mentioned it before but keeping a bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer is a great staple to have in the house.

Then to make your life even easier, once in a while it’s ok to cheat it and have the lovely folks at Whole Foods chop your veggies.  I admit this is the first time I’ve ever bought their pre-cut “stir fry” veggies, but it was nice for a change. 

Add in 60 second Brown Rice…and dinner is served in NO time!

We did a quick stir fry with the following:

• chop 2-3 cloves garlic and sauté over med/high heat
• Add your veggies 
• start to season:  I used soy sauce, ground ginger, juice from 1/2 of a large orange, plus some zest, siracha sauce.
• Cook for 4-5 minutes, then add in shrimp.
• Add any more seasonings and sauces that you want.
• Cook until shrimp are done, if I don’t have a lot of liquid in my pan I’ll throw on the cover for a few minutes too.
• serve over brown rice

Boom!  Dinner.

As I said in my last post, usually on Sundays I cook a longer, more thought out meal, but that just doesn’t always happen.  Then nights like tonight where I go to Crossfit from 7-8pm, these fast dinners are REALLY helpful. 

Well I think that about does it for 1 post.  Have a great night!!

What’s your favorite seasonings/sauces to use in stir-fry's??  I always go right to the soy sauce, but it would be nice to switch it up!

Blogspiration

First a word of advice: 
WEAR GLOVES WHEN CHOPPING HOT PEPPERS

I’m sure most of you already knew this, and you’d think I would of thought of this as I’ve experienced this “problem” in the past, once.  However, I don’t use hot peppers often and so it just slipped my mind.

I chopped 2 jalapeños Monday night for chili, and 24 hours later my fingers still taste spicy…and lets just say I finally DID put on gloves to put my contacts in my eyes.  Oh the burn.  After a little googling, sounds like it can get a lot worse for some people, when their hands just start burning on their own luckily mine is only if i put my finger in my mouth (or eye)…yeah. 

GLOVES people.  gloves. 

Blogspiration = Blog Inspiration.

One of the best things about the blog world and keeping up with SO many blogs out there is all the great ideas you get!  As much as I love cooking magazines and cookbooks, I find I get ideas for dinners, desserts, snacks…products, ANYTHING from other bloggers!

Even better when I can take ideas from more than 1 blog and combine them to create my own version of dinner…

Crispy Shrimp Tacos with Mango Slaw

You want to prep the slaw first.  I read about this slaw on Cara’s blog when she made her slow cooker buffalo chicken.

She didn’t give a recipe, but I used her description as a starting point.

My slaw contained:

• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 mango, chopped
• 1/2 head of purple cabbage sliced
• cilantro
• juice from 2 limes
• splash of red wine vinegar
• 1-2 tsp granulated sugar

Adjust the dressing quantities to your taste. 

Let the slaw hang out while you make the shrimp!

The crispy shrimp taco idea came from How Sweet It Is blog.  I used Jessica’s recipe for the preparation of the shrimp.

Crispy Shrimp
from How Sweet It Is

• raw de-veined shrimp, tails removed – I used about 3/4lb
• 1 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Clean and dry shrimp with some paper towels. Combine salt, pepper, garlic and cumin and sprinkle it over the shrimp. Add the flour to a small bowl, and dredge the shrimp through the flour to get a very light coating on it. Heat a skillet on medium high heat and add the olive oil. Once hot, add the shrimp and brown on each side, about 2-3 minutes per side. Remove the shrimp and let drain on a paper towel.

Brian and I loved how the shrimp came out!  Must use this method again.

I went back to Cara’s recipe and used her method for making the tortilla shells…however, I guess the brand of tortilla’s I use like to “puff” up 

Hard to see (and this was the better of the two) but they puffed up so much in the oven it was hard to get them off the rack without breaking them!!  Next time I’d poke holes in them first.

We topped our tacos with grated Cojita cheese (which reminds me of a saltier, drier feta!), and an Avocado cream:

• 1/2 avocado, mashed
• add sour cream until you’ve reached your desired mix…mine was a very light green.  It was delicious!!

A little hard to eat, but these were incredibly flavorful and we both loved them.

Thanks bloggers!

Food Loves + Ellie Returns

Do you ever…

• Sit down at the computer to write a post only to get completely side-tracked looking at other blogs, facebook,..etc?? I am so guilty of this A LOT! Like right now…I should of done this an HOUR ago, and would love to be in bed now.
  
• Have pictures of yummy food, and just want to post them but don’t have much to say? Yeah, me too and here are a few from the past week!

My weekend pictures are always my favorite…so much more sunlight and I have time to make things like Breakfast Sandwiches!! LOVE!

• WW Sandwich Thin
• 1 egg
• 1 slice cheddar
• 1 slice ham
• Fresh Strawberries

Veggies + Sunlight: about to get grilled! Major LOVE!

Ok, I confess the grilling was brought about by Brian wanting a grilled hotdog last weekend. So I threw together all the veggies we had and asked him to grilll those too :)

and yes, I had a grilled hot dog too. Doesn’t happen often (and I don’t like to think about exactly what I’m eating), but there’s nothing like a grilled hotdog when the weather gets warm!

Ellie Time

I think I should start getting a cut from Food Network or something. I LOVE her recipes and frequently head to her cookbook or recipes online for dinner ideas.

This recipe is one I made before and LOVED.

Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta

I love frozen shrimp. I love shrimp scampi. We eat it a lot.

This recipe is almost like a baked shrimp scampi…with tomatoes and feta. I find the shrimp come out much more tender this way! This recipe is AMAZING (with my couple of additions of course)

The fresh dill and parsley are KEY to the fresh flavors of this dish.

After sautéing the garlic + onions, you add the canned tomatoes and simmer. When I add the tomatoes I also add some white wine (maybe 3-4T?) and juice from half of a lemon.

After that simmers, you take it off the heat and THEN add the shrimp and fresh herbs. This prevents the shrimp and herbs from being overcooked.

Top with Feta and bake!

We ate this over a bed of baby spinach and TJ’s Harvest Grains.

I cook the grains in chicken broth for extra flavor…I think this is another key element to the deliciousness of this dinner!

Love this dish!

More loves? How about I obviously finished my dinner first (a combination of a smaller portion and eating much faster…I gotta work on that!), so I decided to snap photos…

stop playing with your food!

Goodnight! Early Body Combat tomorrow morning :) LOVE Combat!

~B

Shrimp!

Lunch did not make the camera today...no good opportunity. I did have, whats becoming a favorite cold weather lunch, soup from a carton. Today's was TJ's creamy tomato and roasted red pepper with added soycuttash! Along with a turkey and cheese sammy on Arnold's sandwich thins!

I had a great workout at the gym, I'm happy that running is becoming easier for me :) Now maybe by the spring I'll be all set for my first race.

I had ideas for dinner, but I needed food in my mouth within 30 seconds of walking in the door...the victim: a carrot and hummus

And I actually cooked dinner! I've had some frozen shrimp in the freezer for a while, and after my earlier post about PF Chang's I wanted some soy sauce in my life. I had recently bought a bag of broccoli and remembered about these in the freezer:I started the shrimp with some garlic, ginger, and soy sauceThen added the broccoli slaw while I tossed one of those veggie cakes in the microwave
The slaw cooked in like 2 min, and the veggie cake done in 1min 10sec...perfect timing.

The veggie cake didn't look too promising on its own but I put all the shrimp and veggies on top along with a few more shakes of soy sauce...for a delicious dinner!


There were a LOT of shrimp, I definitely got my protein for the day in this meal...along with a healthy portion for lunch tomorrow.

For a nice warm dessert I made some WF's organic hot cocoa, to which I added a splash of egg nog!! DELICIOUS combo! With 2 mini TJ's cranberry pistachio biscotti on the sideNow it's time for some Gossip Girl and catch up on an episode of 90210.