Another Fabulous Dinner

Hey. So I feel fat today but whatever.

I made a delicious dinner tonight. I'd give the recipe but I don't use recipes really. Recipes are for baking, not cooking. Therefore I don't bake. I toss in, shake, smidge, pour, etc ingredients and I am somewhat sure of the quantity of each. I'm cooking a meal - a unique meal for me and whoever. I'm not following a restaurant menu that must be the same everytime. Recipes are for uncreative, rigid, and cognitively inflexible people who walk a straight line. I am none of those things. I'm creative, flexible, cognitively flexible (for the most part) and I walk my own line that I make.

Here's my best attempt at telling how I made this so it can be duplicated.

10 oz of shrimp - cooked, peeled, deveined, tail off (Arctic Shores brand you can buy at Hornies in the frozen seafood section) - thawed. Of this measurement I am SURE. ;)

One yellow zuchinni, sliced
about a cup of fresh, raw broccoli florets, bite sized
maybe a tablespoon of grapeseed oil.
A big ass shake of salt & a few grinds of pepper
a few good shakes of Pampered Chef Smoked Applewood Rub
*saute until the zuchinni starts looking a little cooked.
*season the shrimp (which should be draining in a colandar) with the applewood rub stuff & let it sit
Then add one red onion sliced & cut in half (half onion rings) and about 1/2 head of cabbage (smallish head). Season the same and saute.
*make sure you toss everything in the pan more than you touch the stuff with utensils. Shaking and/or tossing the frying pan keeps the stuff all mixed up and not bruised
cook a bit then add the shrimp. (DO NOT COOK long before the shrimp...the onions should be JUST getting warm
Salt again
Shake some italian seasoning in it too....toss, season again. You can also add a bit more oil if you want. I use an oil atomizer -one full pumping and spray. Not quite a teaspoon, but all gets a nice even & very light coat.

Cook it up a while, tossing once in a while. BUT not too much. Cabbage & onions should still have their shapes intact and aren't fully translucent or wilty. Add more salt if you're unsure on if there's enough or not (I'm never sure of course, plus you ALWAYS have to put some extra seasoning in "for the angels", you know).

THEN EAT IT. EAT IT ALL. The entire meal is about 300-350 calories, depending upon the amount of oil you use -and it is A LOT of food. Shrimp is a good bet for low calorie/high protein (but chicken is ALWAYS best for low cal/high protein) and ounce per ounce is very very low on calories. It's only about 45 grams of protein (if this was chicken the protein content would be about 80grams for that many ounces!!) and all together is about 15 grams of carbs, 5 of those as fiber. It is quite filling and very tastey. Experiment with whatever seasoning you want - just use dry seasoning because sauces often have hidden sugars and are usually more processed. I'm a bit concerned because the smoked applewood rub from pampered chef has its first ingredient as sugar (and you can tell), but gram for gram I did not use too much and I don't use this seasoning much in my cooking. This would have been delicious too with a fajita seasoning or just straight italian seasoning.

I've decided to get my chicken from the Spring Prairie Hutterite community in Hawley, MN (my aunt/uncle sell it through their store a few towns away) because it's VERY good quality and reasonably priced. Think free-range organically fed (but I don't think they are certified at all and I don't doubt they use some kind of GMOs...who doesn't these days! -but I'll check that out). I'd pay and arm and a leg for that kind of "clean" meat in a grocery store or butcher in town, so I'm ok ordering that in bulk and driving almost 90mns to pick it up (almost 3 hrs round trip). I get my first batch on Friday so I'm pretty excited to eat chicken every single day now. Or until I have a craving for a nice steak or burger! :)