Shrimp, tomatoes, quinoa, and greens

Intense flavor, healthy, scarf scarf:

Here, I took a bag of mustard greens (from Trader Joe's, with the boring old bagged lettuces) and simmered them with a little garlic, oil, and water (chicken broth would have been better but I'm not gonna lie to you, dearest reader). Kept them simmering while I cooked the rest.

Boiled the quinoa per instructions. Usually I doctor it up while cooking with onions, garlic, spices, chicken broth, but not this time--I thought the toppings would be enough.

Then, I took shrimp, and added a ton of butter, white wine, onions, garlic, and fresh chopped tomatoes. Cooked them up fast and quick on a high heat. Then I threw in more butter. Then I kind of laughed to myself like a maniac.

Plated the shrimp stuff on top of the quinoa, added to the greens. Thumbs up were had all around.

Lunch the first.

I'm generally the kind of person who enjoys spending Sunday afternoon/night cooking a batch of something to portion out and bring to work as tiny little lunches for Monday through Friday. Sometimes though, I think I have too much leftover food from the weekend and will throw together something totally random for Monday. Such is this Monday. We have a salad of leftover veggies and lettuce and a lone avocado I found:

You'll notice the two stalks of hearts of palm--courtesy of a glass jar from Trader Joes. Some capers, tomatoes, avocado, spinach, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and............

Leftover tender delicious chicken from a chicken I roasted. We've been having leftovers for days from this guy--also from Trader Joe's. You'll notice the Trader Joe's obsession eventually, and I'm not on their payroll or anything (but wish I was--sigh). Anyway, this is lunch for Monday. I think it looks exciting.

I wish I had taken a picture of the chicken I roasted as it came out of the oven--browned and pretty with its skin and the such. Instead, I have a before picture of it looking pinkish and peppery and probably nervous. I have an after shot of it right before we started eating, but after I attacked it with a knife:

That's my before. It's so easy, everyone (who eats chicken anyway) should be roasting one of these at least once a month. I took it out of its plastic, rinsed it off, removed the giblet package, put it in this dish, covered in a little olive oil, salt, pepper, italian herb mix, lemon, and that's it. Leftovers for days.

And now for the poor guy after I took a knife to him:

This is after probably 1 and a half hours on 400 degrees. I will get better at making these recipes exact for everyone too, I promise.

Finally, the first nights dinner. We had a leg each from the chicken, plus zucchini, roasted. I chopped the zucchini into fourths, covered in the usual--olive oil, salt, pepper, and baked for an hour. Also cooked up some quinoa that I brought to a boil and covered and let sit for 15ish minutes. I usually do a quick saute of onions and garlic and add that to the quinoa at the end for extra flavor. Compared to rice and potatoes, I think quinoa tastes so much better, and is just so much better for you. I'll do a whole post soon on why it's so amazing: