Sunday, January 3, 2010

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!

5 comments:

  1. That looks so good and a combination I would of never thought of on my own, thanks for sharing!
    Oh and Happy New year Gina!

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  2. Looks totally YUMMY. Thanks for the good idea.

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  3. Both recipe's look delish. Whenever I am organized and plan my meals ahead I feel so good . . . one less thing to "think" about during the day. Since the meals are already planned and assuming you picked up the ingredients it makes life so much easier.
    Enjoy and keep up the good work.

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  4. WOW! That looks amazing! I wish you lived closer and I would invite myself over while you cook the amazing looking food for me :-) Way to go on working on your resolution!

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  5. Oh my goodness! That looks sooo yummy! I love your menu board! :)

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