Shrimp Scampi Florentine
January 23, 2021 2:01 PM
Remember when I made spring rolls and basil chicken and bought so much mint that I didn't know what to do with it? Well, I looked up things to do with excess mint, and I came across mint pesto. The recipe actually calls for mint and parsley, but parsley is kinda gross, so I went all in on mint.
So, this mint pesto has been sitting in my freezer since Thanksgiving, and I finally have a use for it! My initial thought was to make some sort of pesto pasta, but since I had some leftover spinach and frozen shrimp available, I decided to make one of my go-to's, Shrimp Scampi Florentine.
If I have the time, you might have noticed that I like to write the recipe down in advance. If you're wondering, it's not a recipe book. It's just a journal. But since it's a lazy Saturday, I had even more time, so I went and reorganized my journal to make it easier to find the pages that have recipes. And by that I mean I numbered every page and made a table of contents at the end of the book.
And then I realized I already wrote this recipe down! And then I had another thought. Maybe I should just write down the recipes for all my go-to's. But on index cards because I have a lot of those and they work well for recipes. So I went and marked those recipes with a blue asterisk. There are more, but I'll get to those when I get to those.
I recently gave a lightning talk at work about my meal planning process, and now my coworkers are going to see this and think I'm even more insane than they already thought.
Anyway, I don't really love the mint pesto, but I still love this dish. Shrimp, tomatoes, spinach, pesto, and pasta. What a well balanced meal.
Greek Turkey Rice
February 3, 2019 5:21 PM
More rice dishes!
I still had those olives sitting in my fridge from the Greek Chicken we cooked a few weeks ago, and I wanted to use them up. And I guess olives means another Greek dish.
I really like the skillet rice dishes from Budget Bytes, and I hadn't made the Greek Turkey and Rice Skillet yet so I figured I'd give that a try. This was really easy to make, and all of the flavors worked really well together.
The only modifications we made were using fresh spinach instead of frozen (because frozen spinach doesn't taste as good), and using cilantro instead of parsley (duh).
We may end up making all of the rice dishes in Budget Bytes before my sister leaves.
Odds 'n Ends
January 26, 2019 3:02 PM
Because not every meal has a story. At least not one I can remember.
Sheet Pan Greek Chicken and Vegetables from Budget Bytes
Can't remember all the things I changed in this recipe, but I know I used cilantro instead of parsley.
Shrimp Scampi Florentine from All Recipes
The shrimp in the pan wasn't as aesthetically pleasing, so we only took one type of photo. This is probably my favorite recipe from All Recipes, so I might make a full post about it in the future.
Spanish Chickpeas and Rice from Budget Bytes
We made this the other day since my sister mentioned really wanting some Spanish rice. As you can see in the photos, I replaced the artichokes with green bell peppers because that's what I had on hand. And I used chicken broth instead of vegetable.
And yes, everything in this post is garnished with cilantro.
Seafood Blend: Part 1
January 20, 2019 9:37 AM
I just happened to be at Trader Joe's the other day, and I remembered a Budget Bytes recipe that I really wanted to try: Seafood Rice Skillet. Now this recipe calls for some sort of seafood mix, but Beth used the one in Trader Joes so I figured, why not.
Note to self: never buy Trader Joe's Seafood Blend again. It is tasteless.
I followed the recipe exactly, and the end result was a really beautiful dish. I think it needs some adjustments though:
- Double the seafood. There is a lot of rice in this, and not enough seafood.
- Cook the seafood first, and mix that in with the rice at the end. I always find cooking seafood with other things to be kind of tricky, but if I cook it by itself then I can get it to just the right amount of done-ness.
- Fewer peas. There were also too many peas for my liking, but let's be honest, the next time I use frozen peas in a dish, I'm not going to bother actually measuring them.
Oh, and I also replaced parsley with cilantro. Because parsley smells weird and cilantro makes everything better.
