See, now this one is just easy. I was running errands and cooking all day for a family dinner yesterday night and around lunchtime, I was famished. I had some garlic herb butter leftover that I had used to marinate a roast chicken so I put together this quick lunch for myself.

Two handfuls of small pasta
Six shrimp, peeled
One handful of diced tomato
Bit of olive oil
Bit of garlic herb butter
Dash of red pepper flakes
Squirt of lemon juice
Half a handful of peas

Boil some water, cook the pasta. I used farfalle (which, incidentally, means “butterfly” in Italian. Don’t you think the words for “butterfly” are so light and airy in many languages - tittaali (urdu), papillon (french). I like when words sound like what they mean. But I digress.

In a small saucepan, warm the olive oil and the red pepper flakes. Add the garlic herb butter and let it melt. (Garlic herb butter = softened butter + garlic + any dried or fresh herbs you have. You could also just use plain butter and add garlic and herbs to the pan. Same effect). Add the shrimp and sautee until just pink. Add the tomatoes and frozen peas. Add the cooked pasta to the pan and swirl it around in the sauce. Hit it with some lemon juice, salt, black pepper. Eat while watching Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth version, of course).

OH, also - DONE WITH EXAMS! I’m officially a 2L. Well, I don’t have my grades yet, but I’m celebrating all the same.

1. Marinate shrimp in garlic, lemon zest, and olive oil
2. Grill the shrimp
3. While still hot, mix with basil pesto (the one you bought a basil plant to make but now the plant is dead and you’re not sure why, you watered it and kept it in the sun and away from the cold)
4. Slice half of a lemon. Squirt the juice from the other half over the shrimp
5. Grill the sliced lemon. Use as a garnish.
6. Eat warm or cold or stir with pasta

Ugh….Ameir was a bit fluish and allergy-ish today (surprisingly, he got allergies before I did this year) and I was just plain exhausted. We had rice and stuff in the fridge but we both wanted something soupy.

I took out chicken to defrost so I could make chicken noodle soup, but as I looked at the frozen chunk of chicken, I thought, “I can’t do this today.”

I wanted something quick, easy, and flavorful that reminded me of the yummy shrimp dumpling soup I had at Ayesha’s. This soup was born!

The best parts of this soup are the ginger and the chili sauce. These strong spices clear up your blocked sinuses and the hot broth just feels great after a long day. I mixed chicken and vegetable broth for this, but you could really use whatever kind you wanted. The key is simplicity.

By the way, this gingery-spicy-soy broth also makes for a delicious asian risotto. With the leftovers of the broth, I just mixed in some already cooked leftover white rice and let it cook together, stirring, until it turned into risotto. Not authentic, but fast.

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Isn’t it cute?

Yes, you read correctly. This quick and easy appetizer was my husband’s idea. The man who lived on Ramen noodles for years. He can’t cook, but he knows what’s good to eat…..at least now.

We invited some friends over for tea yesterday and I was asking him what I could do with shrimp as a quick little bite. I said that usually people wrapped shrimp in bacon and grilled it, but we weren’t going to use pork, obviously. So I said - what about wrapping it in zuchinni or something?

“Ooh…ooh..” he said. “What about making it like sushi and putting pickled ginger and wasabi on it.” Wow. I was impressed.

So here we go - an incredibly easy appetizer that looks beautiful and tastes great.

Click below for recipe
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Buttermilk Alfredo Pasta
A tangy, creamy pasta with chicken or shrimp, spinach, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes.

I made a pumpkin cake last weekend for my sister-in-law’s birthday [Turned out great - basic pumpkin spice cake recipe and then added half a can of pumpkin into a carton of Betty Crocker cream cheese frosting. Made a pretty orange frosting.]

So anyway - made pumpkin cake, had most of a quart of buttermilk left. I’m not a fan of fried chicken, and plus I think it’s a waste to use a quart of lovely, thick, rich buttermilk just to soak some chicken in. I had baked five things in the past week and a half [2 banana breads, pumpkin cake, banana-coconut muffins, and blueberry muffins] so I wasn’t going to bake anything. What to do, what to do?

My friend Sarah suggested a buttermilk sauce for pasta or chicken. Ayesha suggested mellowing it with spinach so that the potential over-tangy-ness would be a little softer. So during class… I mean during lunch, I did some searching and found another fine service by Google - Google Books! Basic Buttermilk sauce recipe taken from New Laurel Kitchen Cookbook, for which I found a preview on Google Books. Their sauce is thickened with cornstarch instead of the Alfredo’s traditional roux, which is convenient when wanting to make a quick dinner and not stand over the stove stirring flour. I added veggies and cheese to their basic recipe. Success.

Result = a tangy, creamy, cheesy sauce mellowed a little by the veggies that lusciously hugs ever single strand of pasta. It’s stronger than Alfredo and a little less creamy - a good alternative when you want something strongly flavored but not as heavy [buttermilk is surprisingly low in fat, considering its thickness.] Chicken swims happily. Pretty colors. Just all-around yummy.

Another option: Buttermilk Alfredo Mashed Potatoes and Chicken: This sauce is excellent over pasta, here, but it’s also amazing mixed into mashed potatoes with a little chicken broth. Another option - skip the pasta and spoon some directly over grilled or pan-fried chicken.

Another option: Potato and Leek (and Spinach and Mushroom) Soup . Mix this sauce into a batch of mashed potatoes and freeze the whole thing. Keep them on hand to mix with sauteed leeks and chicken broth for a quick, hearty soup.

So many options! Excited? Well done. Onwards! Recipe here: (more…)