Quinoa Recipe with Summer Vegetable Stir-Fry

Delicious quinoa stir-fry with summer vegetables.

Trying to find a Los Angeles sublet for the summer- within our budget- is as slippery and twisted as charting Madonna's romantic liaisons post Guy Ritchie. It's a serpentine endeavor, this whole reading between the lines thing, deciphering what is true and what is only mostly true. It's all those key buzz words peppering Craig's List and Westside Rentals. "Convenient to the 10" can mean the eastern bedroom window sucks in freeway exhaust during rush hour. "Pet friendly" might translate to everyone in the building works all day and leaves their poor pooches to yap and woof until the cows come home. Which, as we all know, in LA is after sushi and mojitos.

"Cozy studio" can mean cute and comfy or it can mean as cramped and tight as a walk-in closet. Not Madonna's closet(s). I'm sure hers are bi-coastal and coordinated by era, each epoch's collection larger than our entire casita. We're talking my closet here. The five foot black hole currently crammed with winter parkas, too many mismatched socks to count, and the book-filled boxes I'm storing for this alleged, yet-to-materialize summer getaway.

And the price for the privilege of said 150 square feet of space in Venice Beach?

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Quick and Easy Sesame Shrimp Stir-Fry

A quick sesame stir-fry recipe with wild caught shrimp.

 

For those of you following me on Twitter (thanks to Susan at FatFree Vegan Kitchen for igniting the follow-through on getting myself Twittered), you knew I was stir-frying last night. What you didn't know? That despite the hefty gusts of pollen thickened wind battering the casita (hefty gusts of pollen thickened wind makes me downright prickly if not certifiable) I managed to gather my throbbing wits long enough to create a new stir-fry sauce.

JUNIPER ASSAULTED GODDESS
(chewing)

So. What do you think? On a scale of one to ten?

PATIENT KIND HUSBAND
(scraping bowl spotless)

Um. Really, really tasty. Eleven. And a half.

JUNIPER ASSAULTED GODDESS
(blowing pollen thickened nose)

Really? Wow. Wait.
(pause)
It's not a twelve?

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Shrimp Fried Rice

My favorite quick dinner recipe- shrimp fried rice with crisp veggies.

First, let us stop and take a humble moment to thank our lucky celiac stars that  brown rice is gluten-free. Yes, it's true, we all mourn the loss of some fabulous decadent thing we can no longer sink our teeth into- the tender flaky chocolate croissant, the finger licking stickiness of a honey glazed Dunkin Donut, or the crusty, chewy simplicity of a freshly baked baguette, hand torn and shared with love and a gleaming plate of extra virgin olive oil. Heavy sigh.

But (and you just knew a but was coming, didn't you?) after the craving passes and you find yourself back on planet earth, hungry, tired, staring into the open cupboard with a familiar pang that cries out for real food, a bag of organic brown rice can make your night. There's nothing else quite like the satisfying earthy goodness of it.

So let us appreciate this humble, nutty grain (actually a grass) and stir up something quick and rice-tastic.

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Vegetarian Stir-Fry Bliss

Retro veg yum.

This is a post about old school bliss- an easy  budget-friendly stir-fry for a weeknight. The recipe stems from my art school past. Why do I bring this up? Because last night we waxed nostalgic.

Over olives, a wedge of Parmesan, and a bottle of Chianti, Steve and I talked about our unencumbered days at art school. The late nights painting. The crazed friends. Midnight movies at the Rialto. Jean Luc Godard. Truffaut. Fellini. 

And the loft parties- the drama of almost meeting Warhol (he never showed up; he was famous for it).

We talked about all that longing and envy and art student poverty mingling in a passionate virtual eddy of sensing we were a part of something big, a tidal push toward consciousness, toward peace and equality.

Sounds almost quaint, doesn't it?

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