New Years Resolution No. 1

Have fun with new recipes and experiment with foods and ingredients I wouldn't normally cook with.

To follow through with my first New Years goal, I will make a menu plan for dinners for the week from various cookbooks and Clean Eating magazine. (and also play with my new Nikon D5000!!!)

I found a few great recipes using citrus in each dish from Clean Eating. We made shrimp and orange skewers with a spinach-orange rice pilaf and citrus spinach salad.

Blood Orange Salad

Salad:
1 Cup Spinach
Sections of 1/2 blood orange

Dressing:
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
Juice from 1 blood orange
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Zest from blood orange
salt & pepper

This salad was absolutely delicious. It was very light and would make a great summer salad. I will definitely be making this again and maybe experimenting with different citrus fruits.

Orange and Shrimp Skewer with Brown Rice Pilaf

Marinate for shrimp:
2 cloves garlic
salt
Juice from 1-2 oranges
Orange zest
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

Skewers:
4 jumbo shrimp with 4 orange quarters

Rice Pilaf:
1/2 cup brown rice
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 cup low sodium chicken broth
1 cup spinach & Zest from 1 orange

The recipe called for brown basmati, but I substituted long grain brown. I sauteed the uncooked rice in the olive oil for a few minutes then added the broth, brought to a boil and reduced heat, covered and let simmer for 45 minutes. Once the rice was finished, I removed from heat and added the spinach and zest, re-covered for a bit to let the spinach wilt and serve.

For the shrimp, add marinate and shrimp to a ziplock bag and refrigerate for an hour. I added equal parts of shrimp and oranges to the skewers and stuck under the broiler for a few minutes on each side until they were cooked through.

This meal was pretty amazing and I really liked the citrus theme in each dish...I think I will be making this again in the future!