ANTIQUE COOKIE JAR

This was soooo yummy! I'm actually getting good at making chinese flavored meals. :o) As far as I know this meal is dairy-free...the soy sauce does have carmel color...not sure if that contains lactose or not.

I did not use a recipe (as usual...haha), I read the ingredients of a package of a frozen shrimp dinner in the grocery store to see what they used and I created my own version from it without the chemical junk, msg, or lactose. =o)

I thawed the pre-cooked shrimp (about 24 shrimp). I boiled the jasmine rice (I boil in water like spaghetti...it makes the perfect rice!). While the rice was cooking I put a few tablespoons of soy sauce in a frying pan, 1 teaspoon of brown sugar, and added a few tablespoons of water, next I mixed about 1 tablespoon of corn starch. After the corn starch was blended in I turned the heat on medium. I mixed in a teaspoon of minced garlic and some chopped green pepper and then threw in the frozen beans and peas and waited for it to start boiling.

I drained the rice when it was done and then added the shrimp to the sauce / veggie mixture and then dropped in a small squirt of sesame oil and a teeny bit of vinegar. I should have just turned the shrimp over a few times and placed it on the rice but instead I was busy doing something else so it sat a few minutes and cooked a tad too long. That's it! Pretty quick and easy. Oh, and I garnished with a few slices of avocado (I wasn't sure how they would taste together but it was a fabulous combination with the avocado!).

This made one dinner and enough for lunch tomorrow. :o)

Gentle Jim Jowdy came over for dinner tonight. We started with two key words: Pork and Quinoa. I googled a recipe that we agreed upon and picked up some stuff at Bi-Rite.

Pork & Quinoa

1/4 head cabbage
1/2 pound pork tenderloin, thinly sliced
1 tbl sp minced fresh ginger
1 tbl sp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sambal oelek (we couldn't find this, and so used a combination of habanaro pepper spice, cayenne pepper and chile flake)
1 tbl sp rice vinegar
1 tsp. olive oil
2 tbl sp butter
1 cup cooked quinoa

1. prep cabbage. cut pork into strips, whisk together ginger, soy sauce, sambal, & rice vinegar
2. heat oil and butter in paan over med-high heat. when butter's foam has subsided, add pork & brown for 2 minutes. Stir and brown for another 2-4 minutes. remove pork.
3.add cabbage to pan and cook until soft, 2-4 minutes. add pork with soy sauce mixture. 2 more minutes. Stir in quinoa- cook for 2-4 minutes.

This dish was really really great. We both agreed that it needed some salt. Perhaps some garlic would have been nice, and more of the spices. The flavors were just a bit too sublte, though nice. It would have also benefited from some color, maybe a red pepper or something. Roomie Tyson also suggested some green onions...

All in all, this might be a staple dish of mine. Super easy and tasty and filling!
We both ate everything- not a drop left.