Friday, December 2, 2011

Season ALL, literally everything, seriously

I've been feeling quite uninspired the last few weeks. Lets see, I had 2.5 Thanksgiving celebrations, ate Thanksgiving leftovers about 4 times, and have been hungover from too much turkey for the past week. I don't ever want to eat Thanksgiving food AGAIN!!!!*

*true for about 355 more days

I went grocery shopping this week, the first time I've been since my T-day shopping extravaganza to get all my T-day ingredients. Its true what they say, you know, you should never go shopping hungry. All I could think about the entire day was all my favorite food items. So I decided you know what? I'm going to put all my favorite things together and it has to taste good because they're all my favorite things. Right? Right. Sort of.

Dinner was...interesting. But so good, so so good.

My favorite things? Artichoke hearts. Roasted peppers. Cauliflower. Noodles. Sriracha. Whats that? You don't know what Sriracha is? Oh man. Sit down. We're gonna talk.

Sriracha is like heaven on earth. And I feel like for me to say that is a big deal. I'm very against seasonings that I can't buy raw. Examples: Mrs. Dash, Seasoned Salt, Lawrys (although I do love Lawrys, holy smokes). Every time I reach to buy a mixed seasoning I have this inner war between the angels and demons.

You know your steak will be amazing if you buy that spicy honey mesquite seasoning.
But what if i don't like it.
You know you'll like it.
But then i can only use it on steak, and only if I'm in the mood for spicey honey mesquite flavor.
Who cares, its worth it.
But what if I love it SOO much, that i use it on everything, and it becomes my go to seasoning, and then it goes off the market and every dish I make from then on tastes like crap because I can't get my secret ingredient anymore.
You know you can always buy some on Ebay or something.
But what if someone says Hmm, is this SPICY HONEY MESQUITE BLENDED SEASONING!? Busted. Totally busted. They'll know I'm a fraud and a weak person because I can't make a spice concoction on my own.

My hovering hand in front of the pre-blended spice rack quickly drops and I keep walking. But Sriracha? Wow. Wow. WOW! I put this in everything. "Hmmm, SOMEthing is missing and I can't figure out what it is, lets just add sriracha. OMG Perfecto!" Spaghetti sauce, the meatballs that go into the spaghetti, baked chicken, ground beef, on and on and on. Its like this spicy amazing flavor. I can't explain it. Just go get some for heaven's sake.


ANYWAY, back to my din-din of faves. Here goes.

1 Baked chicken with a little Ragu parmesan sauce, nothing special (except Sriracha, duh).
2 Sauteed and seasoned cauliflower, artichoke hearts, and roasted peppers (I put capers back on the shelf because my conglomeration was getting out of hand).
3 Pasta with a little Ragu (and Sriracha)
4 and Brussel Sprouts. What? Yep. I've only had them once in my life and I loved them. Then the entire rest of my life everytime they came up in conversation and I admited to such, the other person would say "no, you don't love brussel sprouts, trust me. You must have been eating something else." But this was MY DINNER so I did what I wanted.

I stumbled on THIS recipe last week, and did it, and I was RIGHT!!! I do love brussel sprouts. And in case you don't want to check the recipe out, I'll just go ahead and tell you what it is. Bsprouts covered in honey, lime, and.............SRIRACHAAAAAAAAA!!!!

*pronounced sir-raw-cha (say it with me)