Recipes: Week 2

I wanted to share the recipes I made for week 2 of my 2011 goal of 2 recipes per week. I am actually making my crock pot recipe right now, so I will post about it when i taste it and make sure its good :)


Last week, I made a Grilled Shrimp with Mom's Avocado-and-Orange Salad that I found in Food & Wine Magazine (link above). It was SO GOOD! Walter and I made it on Tuesday, and then ate the leftovers on Wednesday. 

The shrimp had a marinade that included ornage juice, hot sauce, and mint, and it was delicious!

 The side salad consisted of avocado, orange slice, tomato, onion, hot sauce, cilantro, olive oil, and lime juice. It was also delicious! Here it is all together:

 Here are the leftovers we saved for the next day. The trick was cutting enough avocado for dinner the first night, and when we brought it our the next day, we cut up the rest of the avocado to make sure it was fresh!

We both agreed it was more of a summer dish, since it was so light and refreshing. I will definately make this again when it gets warmer!

Another dish Walter and I made this week was the Spicy Shrimp and Vegetable Stir-fry I found on Self.com. We wanted to make a quick and easy dinner with whatever we had in the kitchen, so we used the above recipe as a guide and used our own veggies. Here are the ingredients for the recipe:

• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup sake
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon dark (toasted) sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped or grated ginger
• 1 cup large-diced red bell pepper
• 1 cup large-diced green bell pepper
• 1 cup large-diced onion
• 1 cup cubed cabbage
• 1 cup sliced carrot
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 24 large shrimp, shelled and deveined
• 
  

Substitutions: For the stir fry sauce, we used all of the ingredients exactly but omitted the sake. It tasted great! For veggies, we used 1 1/2 cups of green pepper instead of a cup of red and a cup of green. We substituted the cabbage for broccoli, and still used the onion and carrot. we only had about 10 shrimp, so we just used what we had. It turned out to be medium spicy to me (probably mild for most people). You can vary the spice level by using more or less of the red pepper flakes. We ate it with a side of jasmine rice. I forgot to take a picture of it though :(

Finally, I guess I created my OWN recipe!!!! (Insert your shock here) I absolutely LOVE the quesadilla explosion salad from chilis, but it is one of the most unhealthy meals out there. It has a whopping 1400 calories and 88 grams of fat if you order it as is. Check out all of Chilis nutrition facts here. I used to order this salad ALL the time, which is why i need to loose weight! The other night, i was playing around not knowing what I really wanted to make for dinner, and out came a salad that tasted just like the quesadilla explosion! Here is what I used (I don't have exact measurements, because i just eyeballed everything):


First, combine the following in a pan (makes 2 servings):

• Chopped pepper and green onion (about 1 cup total)
• 2 servings ground turkey (i used a pre-packaged jennie-o turkey burger and chopped it up as i cooked).
• Chili powder
• 1 serrano pepper
• 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

For the salad (makes ONE salad):

• 2 cups romaine lettuce (or whatever you prefer)
• Diced tomatoes
• chopped fresh cilantro
• 2-3 tablespoons of salsa
• drizzle of ranch dressing
• 2 tablespoons of Ken's Creamy Balsamic Vinaigrette with Honey salad dressing

I think it was the mixture of the salsa, ranch, and balsamic, but it tasted just like the real quesadilla explosion dressing! I ended up eating this for 3 meals! (Once with Shrimp) Of course, I forgot to take a picture of this too. I need to get better about that!

Right now, there is adobo chicken cooking away in the crock pot, and I am off to *attempt* to bake some beer bread!