Follow your nose
Wednesday was a good day for stir fry, in my opinion. As I was poking around the kitchen, I pulled out bok choy, red cabbage, snap peas, red peppers, onions, garlic, and asparagus spears. The garlic was budding, and I seriously considered planting it somewhere rather than tossing it, but I moving in two weeks, so there was no use in that. Now I needed to figure out some more spices.
In my cabinet, I pulled first EVOO, then soy sauce, then ginger. Hmm, I wonder how lemon juice would go with the ground ginger. Danielle and I sprinkled a dash of ginger on a piece of bok choy and then added a drop of lemon juice. Her face lit up in concert with her happy taste buds. Yes, a new combination!
The stalks of the bok choy soaked up the soy-lemon-ginger concoction, which caused a lovely little explosion of goodness when you tasted it. The key to getting the sauce right, D and I discovered, was to taste it with your scent. If it smelled too salty, add more lemon juice. Can't smell the ginger over the lemon juice? Add more ginger. Soon, the flavors of the veggies mixed in with the sauce to make a perfect harmony. The symphony was completed by laying it over a bed of brown jasmine rice, the purple juices running over. Yum!
Yesterday, I needed a quick bite before I headed out the door to hear Dr. Craig Hazen's kick off for the release of his new book, Five Sacred Crossings (thoughts on this for another post). So I heated up some more lovely brown jasmine rice in the rice cooker with curry powder. For some reason, whenever I do this it gets dry. I even added more water than necessary! After it was finished, I threw some asparagus spears into the pot and closed the lid, leaving it on the warming setting. Five minutes later, the asparagus was steamed as well! To compensate for the dryness of the rice, I added a dollop of hummus, which saved the day!
In my cabinet, I pulled first EVOO, then soy sauce, then ginger. Hmm, I wonder how lemon juice would go with the ground ginger. Danielle and I sprinkled a dash of ginger on a piece of bok choy and then added a drop of lemon juice. Her face lit up in concert with her happy taste buds. Yes, a new combination!
The stalks of the bok choy soaked up the soy-lemon-ginger concoction, which caused a lovely little explosion of goodness when you tasted it. The key to getting the sauce right, D and I discovered, was to taste it with your scent. If it smelled too salty, add more lemon juice. Can't smell the ginger over the lemon juice? Add more ginger. Soon, the flavors of the veggies mixed in with the sauce to make a perfect harmony. The symphony was completed by laying it over a bed of brown jasmine rice, the purple juices running over. Yum!
Yesterday, I needed a quick bite before I headed out the door to hear Dr. Craig Hazen's kick off for the release of his new book, Five Sacred Crossings (thoughts on this for another post). So I heated up some more lovely brown jasmine rice in the rice cooker with curry powder. For some reason, whenever I do this it gets dry. I even added more water than necessary! After it was finished, I threw some asparagus spears into the pot and closed the lid, leaving it on the warming setting. Five minutes later, the asparagus was steamed as well! To compensate for the dryness of the rice, I added a dollop of hummus, which saved the day!