Spicing it Up a Bit

Tons of fresh veggies and fruits
available at all the local fruit stands.

Living for so long in a place with an oven-less kitchen meant my meals were becoming quite mundane.  Cooking for one every day certainly didn't help, either.  My menu, give or take the occasional spaghetti or soup dish, more or less boiled down to stir-fry.  Vegetable stir fry and chicken stir fry (thanks to the bag of frozen chicken breast in my freezer) comprised the majority of my diet.  

Needless to say, I miss having an oven!  I am a baker.  A baker of desserts and chicken dishes and pizzas, oh my!  

Also, beef is EXPENSIVE here.  And turkey is literally nowhere to be found.  Hence, the monotonous frequency of chicken in my diet.  

Gorgeous Garlic Shrimp

In light of having a vitamin deficiency, and a lack of excitement every time dinner rolled around, I decided to splurge a little on my grocery trips and make Tuesday nights my night to cook a new stove-top recipe I would find online.  A lot of stir fry options abounded on Google, but I pushed beyond them and found some dishes that went just a step out of my normal range.

Week #1) "Gorgeous Garlic Shrimp" aka shrimp with lots of butter, garlic, pepper, and onions - with a microwaved potato on the side!  (Again, I miss having an oven!)

Over-Easy Salad

Week #2) "Raspberry Ginger Chicken" which tasted a bit like oriental chicken due to the amount of soy sauce included in the recipe. [Not pictured.]

Jeff's Smoked Salmon 

Week #3) "Peppercorn Tuna Steak" was the intention, but as I realized I picked up the wrong cut of fish and was cooking for a friend, I decided to fall back on the shrimp dish I still had the ingredients for.  It was just as good the second time around!  (We used the reduced orange mayonnaise mixture I had pre-made for the tuna dish to use as a dipping sauce for a baguette I picked up from a  

local bakery.) [Also, not pictured.]

Week #4) "Korean-Style Salad"  I'm not sure this is technically Korean style, but the egg-over-easy on top reminded me of the way many traditional Korean dishes are prepared.

Week #5) Jeff's special treat: "AMAZING Smoked Salmon Dish" with homemade garlic aoili sauce, garlic and mushroom pasta, and a baguette to top it all off.  We ate EVERY last drop.  His cooking is by far the best thing to have ever happened to my kitchen!