Rice Dish

Oh Rice Dish, I love you so. You're a versatile and delicious way to use the spinach that's been in the freezer just a smidge too long and the can of artichoke hearts I've been storing on the counter because I have crap cupboard space. Not enough spaghetti sauce in the jar for a whole bowl of spaghetti? Rice Dish, you welcome the spaghetti sauce. Slightly freezer-burned veggie burgers? Rice Dish says bring 'em on.

Here's today's Rice Dish:



It included:

3 cups (cooked) Trader Joe's Rice Medley (Brown rice, black barley, & daikon radish seeds. Trader Joe, can we talk for a sec? Please come to the Quad Cities. I love you as much as I love Rice Dish. I'm not in Chicago often enough to satisfy the Trader Joe's jones. Please, please, we need you.)
1 can petite diced tomatoes
1 can artichoke hearts, chopped
1 box frozen spinach, thawed & drained
1 package Morningstar Farms Chik'n Strips

I love dishes where you get all your essential food groups in one bowl. And Rice Dish is so kickass. Pretty much any vegetable is going to work, and you can add pretty much any protein (various fake meats, chopped hardboiled eggs, tofu, cheese, seitan, etc.). I usually season with Lemon Pepper (I did with this one), but sometimes I go for vegetable broth powder (sparingly) instead.

Oh yeah, the instructions are: mix them all up in a big bowl. Yay!

Rice Dish, I'm inviting you over again soon.

Experimental Fruit Salad

This fruit salad came to me in a dream....

I had a dream that I made a fruit salad & used the dressing I like to use on bean salad - mayo, lime & cayenne pepper. I woke up and said, wow, that sounds good. Except I'm not sure about mayo on fruit salad. And I overuse mayo as a dressing as it is. How about yogurt instead?

It worked!



(Do my food pictures look OK? I think the food generally looks better in person. Believe me though, I would not post it here if it didn't taste awesome.)

Anyway, here's what I used:

1 mini watermelon (or a few cups of regular watermelon)
2 mangoes
1 peach
some red seedless grapes
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1 large or 2 small limes
cayenne pepper to taste

My favorite kind of instructions apply: mix them up!

You might want to lower the dressing-to-fruit ratio a smidge; it was kind of soupy (I actually used 2 largeish limes), but the dressing was really good so I didn't mind. Add cayenne carefully: the heat increases as it sits, especially in liquid. I was pretty generous with it and the salad ended up very hot, but I love spicy so it was all good.

I'm sure the spicy-tangy-sweet thing is not for everyone. You could leave out the cayenne if you don't like spicy or if it doesn't seem like the thing for you. But it's what really makes the salad unique. Yum!!

Avocado Bagel

Ooh, hooray! One of the avocados I bought on Saturday was ripe today. So I got to make one of my very favorite lunches, Avocado Bagel!



This here is one Everything Bagel, toasted, with fresh avo smooshed on. You just cut your avocado in half lengthwise, remove the pit, and scoop out the good stuff with a spoon. Then put half on each half of the bagel & smoosh it with the back of the spoon so it's kind of spready. Sprinkle some salt and pepper, and ta-da, delicious lunch! I LOVE IT!

Hardest part: Choosing a good avocado. I never buy ripe ones at the store, because they're too likely to be bad when you need them. I buy them in advance of when I'll need them & let them ripen at home. I also always buy more avocados than I need - right now I have 2 bagels in my fridge, so I bought 3 avocados because you never know when one won't be good - they are so mysterious with their opaque rinds! If I end up with an extra good avocado, I mash it with some lemon juice, salt & pepper for a quick guacamole snack.

AAA Pasta

I don't usually give my food cutsey names, but this one was just asking for it. It's a pasta dish based on asparagus, artichoke hearts, and asiago cheese. It's not all that pretty:



But DAMN is it delicious, and it's super easy, which is important, because I'm lazy.

You need:
1 box pasta, cooked
1 can cut asparagus, drained
1 can artichoke hearts, drained & chopped
4-5 oz. asiago cheese, grated (oh, just get the pre-grated kind, it doesn't cost that much more)
mayo (Hellman's, not that sweet stuff, and low fat is good)
garlic (the minced kind that comes in a jar)
cayenne pepper
salt

Instructions: mix them up.

Seriously. I'm lazy, so I like recipes where you just mix a bunch of stuff in a bowl. Put the veggies and cheese in with the pasta, add enough mayo so it's kind of like a light sauce, and put in garlic, cayenne and salt to taste.

YUM!

This is such a super combination of flavors. Mellow, spicy, a little tang from the arrtichokes. If you can't find asiago, you could use parmesan or Swiss.

Hardest part: There is no hard part. Unless you count chopping the artichoke hearts without eating all of them straight from the can.