Feb
23
I was still feeling hungry after snacking on an orange so I found the occasion to be a good excuse to try some of that new food that I bought. Not in the mood to cook, I scanned the items in my refrigerator and saw some mushrooms and some basil and tomato feta cheese. Feta cheese and mushrooms sounded perfect.
Now, I could have just stuffed the mushrooms with feta cheese but then I would no longer have any feta nor would I have any mushrooms left. I would still like to have some throughout the next month. Also, I have some lettuce in the fridge that probably only has a shelf life of a couple weeks at most. Maybe I should use some of that lettuce, I thought to myself.
Looking at the lettuce, I noticed the green onions and figured that green onions would not only add flavor, but help add some body to the salad so that I could get full. Some of the yellow onion I had left over would provide the same purpose.
I rinsed off about three or four leaves of lettuce along with four mushrooms and two stalks of green onion. Remember that all of this food comes out of the ground so it never hurts to give things a quick rinse.
- 3 leaves red leaf lettuce (these are quite large)
- 4 button mushrooms
- 2 stalks green onion
- 1 small palm full of sliced onions
- 3 tablespoons basil and tomato feta cheese
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
All I did after that was tear the lettuce into pieces with my hands, slice the mushrooms to make them go farther, cut the green onion into pieces, add a few slices of yellow onion, top with feta cheese and then splash a little bit of red wine vinegar into the bowl. Not all salads need dressing. The flavor of each piece of food in the salad should be enough to make your mouth water. Heck, my mouth is watering right now just remembering it.
Variations could include replacing the vinegar with juice from one-half of a lemon, sprinkling with fresh ground black pepper, adding 1/4 cup parsley or adding one-half of a diced roma tomato. This recipe can easily be doubled to feed two. Total cost is about one dollar per serving.
Feb
03
Visiting my parent’s house I found some frozen chicken. They shop at Costco a lot. This bag of breaded chicken weighed several pounds. The chicken pieces ranged from the size of popcorn chicken to the size of chicken tenders. Earlier I learned that this wasn’t just any breaded chicken, this chicken was seasoned with sesame seeds.
Because of the sesame seeds I figured that not just any ol’ barbecue sauce or other dipping sauce would be appropriate. I wanted to be adventurous once again. I saw some green leafy stuff in the fridge and some horseradish mustard. Remembering how much I enjoyed some Salsa Verde (parsley, garlic, olive oil, lemon zest), I thought that I could make a variation to match the ‘asian’ theme of the chicken.
I have always felt that mustard and horseradish always go well with Asian dishes. My first attempt was to finely chop the greens and mix with the horseradish mustard. This didn’t quite accomplish the flavor that I needed. Something tasted off. Then I realized that this was not parsley, I had chopped up cilantro. No problem there. Cilantro tastes yummy with chicken.
I had to take off the bite somehow and compliment the cilantro and sweeten things up. I saw an orange sitting in the corner and found this an appropriate time to molest the orange with a steak knife. After I mixed in the orange zest, the sauce still had a bite to it that wasn’t all that pleasant. I mixed in maybe a cap-full of virgin olive oil and the rest of the night I was begging to make more because I could not have enough.
I loved it so much that I am planning a trip to my visit my family once more just so that I can make it again and eat it.
Jan
31
Going along with the theme that I am just eating what happens to be left over in my pantry we will make a quick snack. I’d love to spend more than a couple paragraphs on this topic but I will start writing more later about methods and strategies for eating and planning your budget for food.
I made this snack because I was not in the mood to wash dishes and because I was hungry. Using one can of tuna, we can distribute the meat evenly over three large leaves of lettuce. Each leaf of lettuce was seasoned with a thin spread of prepared Wasabi. After the tuna, all I needed to do was sprinkle with sesame seed oil and onion powder. If you want a little more flavor from your tuna wrap, just dash some sea salt and garlic powder or black pepper.
Roll, wrap, eat and enjoy.
