Spanish Rice
8:27 PMIt's Monday and I was the first one home from work, which means dinner duty. Because the OCD was in high gear today, I knew I was going to be home first and so called The Beloved at work to ask what he wanted to eat. Shrimp and chorizo and yellow rice. Since I had never actually made this dish before, I got to make it up as I went along. It was actually quite tasty, extremely easy, involved very little cleanup and has left us with plenty of leftovers, so I won't have to cook tomorrow night, either--unless Resident Sibling clears us out before then.
Here's what you need:
- Chorizo (I used one package containing two sausage)
- 1 onion
- 1 bell pepper (I used red, only because the green ones looked icky at the supermarket today)
- 2 packages Vigo Yellow Rice (really, if there are only two of you, one package would probably be sufficient, but The Beloved has always made Spanish rice dishes with the "family sized" package, or 2 regular-sized packages)
- 2 servings of shrimp--cleaned, deveined, etc. (I used 10 large ready-to-use frozen shrimp)
- Decorative peas
Chop up the chorizo, onion and bell pepper. Saute in a frying pan until the onions are soft and mostly translucent.
In the same pan, prepare the rice according to instructions on package. I boiled the water in a kettle while I was sauteing the other ingredients so that I didn't have to boil my vegetables along with the water. After adding the boiling water to the stuff in the pan, I added the 2 packages of rice, allowed everything to boil for a minute or two, covered the mixture and turned the heat down to "simmer." I allowed it to simmer for about 10 minutes and then threw the shrimp in. The mixture simmered for another 15 minutes or so, until the rice was ready and the shrimp was no longer frozen.Serve up and use decorative peas as necessary.
This is nice with a tossed salad and some red wine--however, in my opinion most meals are enhanced by a nice bottle of red.I love dishes like this because they use only one pan. Clean-up is a snap, which leaves more time for knitting.
Unfortunately, I had to spend a lot of time picking up before I could sit down and knit. The baby cardigan is still languishing:
But I'm now ready to add another ball of yarn, which makes me feel moderately accomplished. I hope to finish knitting and blocking the mystery project tonight and do the finishing work on it tomorrow. We'll see.... I went to buy notions for it today and it was like the search for the Holy Grail. I could not find matching ribbon to save my life--in complementary or contrasting colors. Nothing looked good. I'm pretty sure the ribbon I ended up with will work OK, but, man--I was ready to try and make my own out of fabric scraps!And yarn porn as promised:
Isn't it great? Are you drooling? This is the yarn for my cardigan--50% Alpaca and 50% Silk equals 100% Yummy. The color is "Ginger," but it may actually be closer to a "Lemongrass;" it's a darker gold with some greeny undertones. It's a sportweight yarn and so the sweater will be knit on US 4 needles--I should be finished with it sometime before I die. But I'm not going to let myself finish it until the Baby Cardigan and the Mystery Project are finished. The Beloved's afghan will be worked on sporadically until it's done and the afghan for my friend is, well, I'm afraid it's a Cursed Project. Again--I will finish it someday, but I'm really not happy with it. I need to solicit second and third opinions on what I'm doing wrong to see if there's any hope or if I should just throw in the towel and start over...To leave you all on a happier note, ask yourself if life gets any better than this:
Doesn't she look cozy? I want to come back as a cat owned by people like The Beloved and me. Now, somebody please take my camera away before I hurt someone...
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