A Smoothie Love Story

When green smoothies hit Pinterest, I was skeptical. It wasn't until a friend posted a photo on FB raving about how her children were TOTALLY cool with sipping spinach through a straw. So, I gave it a try. I whipped one up, called it the neato "Hulk Smoothie" moniker and set it in front of Josh. It wasn't until he was halfway through that I bravely asked him "Sooooo... ya wanna know what's in it?"

Why not leave well enough alone?! Right?! I know. But, it miraculously worked in my favor because homeboy did not care that there was spinach in there. These days he asks me to put the spinach in there and when I tell him we're out, he's the one that adds it to the grocery list. I shit you not. If you know Josh, you know the amount of insanity that this situation holds. 

Anyways, I still usually don't put spinach in them anymore because often when I buy it, it gets slimey before we can use it; the two recipes I'm about to share don't have it either. You could easily add it - just add maybe 1/4 or 1/3 cup more liquid (water, juice, almond milk, lake water, whatever. Don't add lake water.) 

I have the recipe saved in my notes on my phone & I'm totally taking the easy way out and just posting a screenshot of the note.

Thai'ng one on at Litchfield Beach

Do you see what I did there... in the title... clever bitch, huh? (it'll actually make sense in a minute)

It's been a few days but the family "just" returned from vacationing in Pawley's Island, SC @ Litchfield Beach. Stephen's uncle is generous enough to let all 14 of us shack up for a week and get ourselves as waterlogged as humanly possible. ...waterlogged? sounds dangerous - and gory - if Mr. M. Knight Shamalamanalan got his hands on a rough plot base...

doin hoodrat stuff at Brookgreen Gardens

loitering.

Anyways, I'm here to share a few photos, and a recipe for the Thai inspired dinner that Stephen and I made whilst there.

A while ago Q (his street name. literally) revealed his lust for some red curry something or other. So I searched MyRecipes.com and found this, originally from from Cooking Light mag: Thai Coconut Curry Shrimp. First go was easy, fast, and quite enjoyable - who doesn't prefer that, anyways? ;) The second time we made it we added a few more ingredients: red bell pepper, snow peas, and mushrooms. Again - it was scrumptious.

It's common for us to sit and talk about what we'd do differently with the recipe the next time we make the dish(hence the addition of veggies) and after this particular time, we decided next time we would simmer the veggies in the coconut milk longer and we would add pineapple! Well, we remembered to do both at the beach house (albeit in the process forgetting to add the snow peas and omitted 'shrooms) and it rocked! Like, for real, rocked!

We served the thai shrimp with jasmine rice, chicken sate with homemade peanut dipping sauces, and some purchased dumplings from The Fresh Market (y'all - this place is straight dope.)

Now, for the main event, just as it was served last, minus the quantities for serving 6ish adults:

Thai Coconut Curry Shrimp
serves 2 (easily doubled, or for us tripled!)

1 tsp canola oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 red bell pepper, sliced and then cut crossways
some pineapple, eye ball it.
1/2 tsp red curry paste
1 tsp sugar
12 oz large shrimp, de-nastified
1/3 c lite coconut milk
1 tsp fish sauce
1/4 c chopped green onion
1 tbsp chopped (fresh) basil

Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet (one with tall sides) over med-high heat. Add onion, bell pepper, & red curry paste and saute for a minute. Turn the heat down and stir in sugar, saute for 15 seconds. Slowly pour in the coconut milk and fish sauce and let your veggies cook until crisp-tender, or to your crispy preferences. Add shrimp and saute for 3 to 5 minutes - you know, until these shrimp look like the shrimp you normally eat. Remove from heat and stir in green onion and basil. (*side note - i served this green mix as a "topper" for the dish and really enjoyed it - it intensified the fresh to def'ness!)

That's it.

I mean, unless you were awesome enough to take the jasmine rice challenge, too.

Or you were lucky enough to have someone grill the chicken sticks for you AND fix the accompanying sauce you messed up for said chick'sticks. AND make another peanut sauce that suited his desire for fiiiyaaahhhh!

Shrimp Sandwich, Shrimp Salad, Shrimp Kabobs... KABOBS!

A blog that I follow, That's What We Said, does a meal-plan helper thingy at the start of each week. They're always interesting but this week's really piqued my taste bud-y interests! Specifically: crock pot chicken tacos, fancy beefaroni, & shrimps...  With the holiday week, upcoming quickie vaca, and our schedule with the 2/3rds a little altered, these three recipes I knew would work really well for us.

Tuesday night I made the Grilled Jalapeno & Lime Shrimp skewers, as found here, on Ezra's Pound Cake blog. I didn't alter her recipe in regards to ingredients, but because I'm lazy I skipped a step ... maybe two. Who cares? Neither of us, I'm sure. ...did we just become best friends?

Well, theys all sortsa things you can do wit shreemp...

I'm trying to stay low carb so I can kick some intraoffice biggest loser competition ass, so I decided to dice up a few veggies & a mangoooo to go with the shrimp. I cut up 1 each of zucchini, squash, red bell pepper, mango, and 1/2 a Vidalia onion. Assuming you're into this sort of thing... I chopped the veggies & mango, threw in some of the other stuff, stared at it, put it in a grill pan thing and then hoped for the best. I mean really, you can't go wrong with grilled veggies, especially ESPECIALLY! when you add delicious sweet fruit. I've never cooked with a mango before, or even tried to cut one up. I really only guessed that I was supposed to peel the skin off. Turns out I was right. Woot!

Unless you have the metal kind, go ahead and start soaking your skewers. Otherwise, here's the 'pe.

Marinade:

1 to 2 jalapeño chiles, seeded and chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

6 cloves garlic, minced (1 to 2 tablespoons)

Zest of 1 lime, plus 5 tablespoons juice 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

Measure the marinade ingredients into the food processor, and process until smooth. Set aside 2 tablespoons of marinade. Transfer the rest to a large bowl.



While the shrimp were marinating I chopped the aforementioned veggies, drank another beer, and cranked up the grill; perhaps not in that exact order.



Shrimp:

1 1/2 pounds extra-large shrimp (21 to 25 per pound), peeled and deveined

1 teaspoon sugar

Directions

Pat the shrimp dry with paper towels, and butterfly them. (Make a shallow cut along the outside curve of the shrimp to open them up a little.) Or just buy them deheaded, deveined and flayed and have a beer to celebrate your time-savings.

Toss the shrimp into the large bowl with the marinade, cover, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Thread the marinated shrimp onto skewers, alternating the direction of each shrimp. (You should get 10 to 12 shrimp on each skewer.)

Sprinkle sugar on one side of the shrimp skewers.

Grill the shrimp sugar-side down over the hot part of the grill until lightly charred, 3 to 4 minutes.

Flip skewers, and move them to cool side of grill. Close lid and let rest until other side of shrimp is no longer translucent, 1 to 2 minutes.

Using tongs, slide shrimp into a clean bowl, and toss with the 2 tablespoons of reserved marinade. (Or, if you want to serve the shrimp on the skewers, brush on the marinade.)

Serve immediately.

Chopped Veggies:

1 Zucchini

1 Squash

1/2 Onion

1 Red Bell pepper

1 Mango

Sesame Seeds

Sea Salt

Balsamic Vinegar

EVOO

I considered skewering this stuff, too, but I was about 3 drinks deep so instead I just tossed them into a grill pan and I put them on the grill while I skewered le'skrimp. Total time on grill was probably 12ish minutes. This is also dependent upon how thick & evenly you chop your stuff. I watch Food Network. I know these things.

The veggies made a great "bed" for the shrimp and the previously zested lime wedge was the perfect fresh zing on each bite. And that's all I have to say about tha-at.

A stand-over-the-stove-for-your-third-portion kind of meal

Really.

Healthy? Nope.

But it is sort of low-carb friendly; so for me, right now - it is "healthy"! YAAY!

I first made this right after mother's day. I'd bought three packages of cream cheese with intentions of making a low(er) carb cheesecake but things just didn't pan out (har har) but literally - Stephen, nor the neighbors, had a springform pan and I couldn't bring myself to use the storebought graham crust (even though I did buy it - I'm not proud of at-some-point considering using it).

So I was left with lots of cream cheese and some chicken breast I'd bought at the same time as the cheese. I cannot specifically remember how I ended up on the Kraft Foods website, but there I was, checking out a recipe that I actually had plennnnty of ingredients with which to make the dish!

Here's a link to original recipe, although I made minor changes to mine: Creamy Lemon-Chicken Pasta.

And here is what I did to make it low-carb diet friendly, sort of.

2 cups of Dreamfield rotini pasta, uncooked
1 tbsp oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-1/2 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips (or smaller)
6 oz Philadelphia cream cheese, softened
1 packet of Swanson Flavor Boost concentrated broth (chchchcheck it out)
Some squirts of lemon
A few shakes of parsley (I've never found it to lend much flavor, anyways)
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
3/4 of a bag of steamfresh peas

1. Toss the bag of frozen peas in the microwave to get them started while you do the important stuff.
2. Cook pasta in large saucepan as directed on package. For Dreamfields, it's 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, heat oil in large skillet on medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic; cook 1 min. Add half the chicken; cook 2 min. or until lightly browned, stirring frequently. Remove from skillet; cover to keep warm. Repeat with remaining chicken; return all chicken to skillet.  (**Editor's note: my skillet was big enough to cook two breasts that'd been cut into strips)
4. Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water. Mix reserved water with cream cheese and flavor boost chicken packet until well blended. Add to chicken and mix well. Cover; cook on low heat 5 min. or until chicken is done. Stir in pasta, lemon juice and parsley; cook; uncovered, 1 min. or until heated through, stirring frequently. Stir in cheese and peas.
5. Stand over stove and eat, no point in dirtying a bowl and getting up and down for seconds and thirds - waste of energy. Just stand there and try not to eat it all because you're going to want this goodness again reeeealllll soon.

I loved this so much I made it again last night. I mean, I had alll that cream cheese - what else was I going to do with it since my craving for cheesecake disappeared?

Rhetorical question. I just gave you the answer.

She's a Pro

Today! (small pause)

I'm a professional.

An "administrative professional" - to be precise. I had a free lunch @ Laura Albert's to prove it.



Greek Veggie Wrap (hummus, mixed greens, cucumber, tomato, red onion,
feta, and balsamic vinaigrette on a whole wheat tortilla) made way more
cool with chicken. & a side of veggie cous cous

 Twas nom. And free. FREE FREE FREE. the best kind of anything there is - unless it requires a dr's visit and an uncomfortable conversation with a loved one...

Laura Albert's Tasteful Options on Daniel Island is legit. Get there early (before 12) though, they're always busy at lunch!! They also do this "dinner to go" thing which I'd like to try. It's reasonably priced considering the level of effort to get myself unhungry.

Last night I had a pint of ice cream. No, not the whole thing - I saved a 1/2 serving for Stephen to try and that was really the only reason I didn't race across that finish line to Fat Town. The worst thing about this ice cream is the entire pint is only 400 calories. Seriously, I would use it as a meal replacement. Stonyfield - the maker of delicious Oikos Greek yogurt - makes this magically slammin frozen yogurt. I grabbed the After Dark Chocolate flavor which really just tasted like regular chocolate but had the texture and flavor of some of the best REAL chocolate ice cream I've ever had. I think next time I'll swirl in some peanut butter - and perhaps I'll serve it to myself from a non-cardboard product bowl that cannot contain an entire pint. Portion control FTW.

Yes, I realize the picture of a cow above the phrase "organic" is quite off-putting, particularly since chocolate resembles the color of shit - yeah, I get z'joke. However, I can assure you the ingredients didn't list, nor the did the entire container taste, like shit.

I know Publix carries this. I can only hope Harris Teeter does as well since that will soon be my new neighborhood g-store. Fingers crossies.

Rainy Weekend

Stephen and I took what would have been a crappy rainy weekend inside and made it less crappy by incorporating porch-side margaritas and going to the pool when it wasn't raining that badly. We only included the boys in one of those activities; don't guess which and show your opinion of me ;) While we took the easy road for Saturday night dinner ("hello, Papa John's - yeah, it's us. again.") we did whip up a fantastic version of last weekend's Thai coconut curry shrimp dish.

The original link: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/thai-coconut-curry-shrimp-10000001835298/

The flavor was admirable but the shrimp was giant in comparison to its roommates in the pan. This time we boiled chicken, shredded it, added new veggies - based on a dish Stephen had a few days prior - snow peas, red bell pepper, and asparagus. I also tossed in some mushrooms and we omitted the fish sauce. The shredded chicken was on-point in regards to not dwarfing the other ingredients. Next time we're tossing in pineapple and red pepper flakes.

I managed to sneak in 30 minutes of cycling on Sunday. Nothing strenuous, just 4 miles. I was pretty indifferent about the ride altogether - my ass hurt but I felt better about myself for actually going. Also, I picked up the new issue of Self magazine - new love! - and it mentioned HIIT training, or running or something like that. It's High Interval something Training where basically you sprint for a minute, then walk for a minute. Repeat until you feel like you're about to die. or 8x. or until your shoe rubs the skin off your Achilles tendon. whichever comes first. Mine were the first and 3rd options combined. But I felt great and was a little sad that it was wiser to stop than to continue to punish my lungs (and feet) for merely existing.

Only the boys went to the pool on Sunday, I went grocery shopping for the aforementioned curry dish for dinner. 

Russ in his new shark bike helmet.

Josh