Hey All,
I hope the holidays treated you well. Work was full of anxiety with the painful process of budgeting, having budget after budget slashed, etc, et al...carry on, one cross and out the door on the left. Despite having a super tight budget, 2011 is looking like a good year. Unfortunately for me, that meant severing a few ties (OK, a lot of ties) and regaining my confidence that I'm an OK dude. But enough about me already....you're reading this because you want FOOD!
So tonight I was without any amazing ideas. I scrounged the pantry and decided I was in the mood for some sort of chinese affair. I only had half a bunch of celery, about half an onion, and some frozen spinach. Hrm, sounds to me like the start of a really simple stir fry. OK, so I had to ask the husbear, "Do you want chicken, shrimp, or veg?". The answer came back, "Shrimp!". Lo and behold, I had a few holdover tortillas from tacos the other night. Good, local, tortillas, you know those kind that are almost see through....
So the pain of thawing, deveining, and shelling the shrimp. Then they went into a bowl that had:
2 Tblsp soy sauce
2 Tblsp cooking sherry
2 Tblsp soybean oil (check the label on your oil, likely your vegetable oil is soybean)
1/2 tsp diced garlic from the jar
1 Tblsp honey
2 drops ginger essential oil
2 drops orange essential oil
I need to go on aside here and remind you that essential oils are potent stuff! Be careful with them! They are also amazing companions in the kitchen....orange, peppermint, lemon, lime, lavender, almost any oil that is GRAS (generally regarded as safe). If you do decide to start cooking with essential oils, get a good reference book. I got my start with The Complete Book of Essential Oils & Aromatherapy. Also, don't be afraid to take your time and get to know the oils, their origins, and what does and doesn't work. I'm a huge fan of Liberty Natural for lots of variety in oils. For cooking, I use a high altitude brazillian orange oil, much better flavor in my opinion. For soapmaking, I use a distilled orange oil that is basically a waste product of the juice industry....smells great, tastes like hell!
I let that sit for about an hour....nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more. OK, we're a houseful of bears, food makes us hot, get over it! Anyway, I drained the shrimp, letting the sauce drip into the bowl of veggies and added a bit of salt and pepper to the veggie bowl. Then I heated up some oil in a skillet until it started to smoke, turned the heat down just a tiche and then flash cooked the shrimp. Shrimp out of the skillet and back into the original marinading bowl (probably not cool in a proper kitchen, but my house, my rules!). Let the pan cool down a bit and then threw in the veggies, stirred them a bit until they stopped searing and a nice simmer was to be had. Covered that for a bit until the celery had just that little bit of crisp left.
Heated the tortillas up in the microwave....put a few shrimp on, a smattering of the veggies, rolled it up and viola! YUM! I think this would be amazing with a proper duck sauce.
Also, its that time of year. Everyone at work is sick from spending the holidays with their favorite bioligical warfare units (children, grandchildren, etc.). So far, I've escaped the dreaded weapons of mass destruction (flu)....but started getting that tickle in my throat this evening and my sinuses have been cranky all day. I'm hoping its just this crap city air, but better safe than sorry.
So, time for tea, nothing fancy, a couple of tea bags of a green tea that was given to me as a gift a while back, and a small handful of dried ginger. Dried ginger (and most herbs in general), at least in the this part of the world, is obtained for cheaps at the local asian markets....so I'm always checking for what might make a good tea.
HAPPY 2011 to you all. I'm going to try to continue to keep my spirits high and my inspired cooking going.
Got any great "love" stories about food to share? I'd love to hear them.
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