Fishy Fridays!

OK, I'm back from spring break and ready to hit the blog-o-sphere! Well lent is now upon us and as I'm always attempting to live my faith, I'm trying to come up with good, cheap non-meat dishes. I take lent as a time to do without a few of life's luxuries. Some may say that not eating meat on Fridays is not necessarily giving up luxuries. In the ancient times when the tradition was started, meat was a luxury. Now it takes a little effort to make seafood not a luxury. I'm not talking about eating badly. I mean if you're going to eat, make sure it tastes good. But one shouldn't "break the bank" as this is a time for alms-giving as well. I can't exactly afford to eat expensive meals AND give to the needy. For example on Ash Wednesday I had tuna fish for dinner. I don't especially like traditional tuna salad. A roommate of mine taught me to think about it differently. So here's what I put in my tuna salad these days.

Canned Tuna
Hellmann's Mayo
Lemon Juice
Dill Pickles - fine dice
Carrots - diced
Celery - diced

Truly the carrots and the dill pickles make all the difference in the world. Red pepper and cucumber are nice also but weren't on hand.

Friday night I made Tom Yum Kung (spicy Thai shrimp soup). This is usually an appetizer so in order to make it a meal I added some rice noodles. A friend of mine took me to a Thai market on Buford Highway with her Thai housekeeper. Noi told me what brands to buy. If you have the ingredients, this is really fast and easy!

Tom Yum Kung
(3 servings)
5 cups water
5 Tbsp Maesri tom yum paste
3/4 pounds shrimp pealed & deveined
6 button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 package of rice noodles (I've thrown away the package and have no idea how big it is. Sorry!!)
juice of 1 key lime (or 1/2 a regular)
chopped fresh cilantro

Bring the water to a boil and add the paste. Reduce heat to low and let simmer. (I didn't have lemongrass or a kafir lime leaf on hand. If I did I would let it simmer in there also. It was quite tasty anyway!) Bring another pot of water to boil. Turn off the heat and sprinkle in a few drops of fish sauce and soy sauce if you have it on hand. Put the noodles in the pot and let them sit for the low end of the time indicated on the package directions. Raise the heat on the soup to bring back to a boil. Add the mushrooms to the soup and cook for 1/2 minute. Add the shrimp and cook for 1 - 2 minutes or until bright pink. Put the noodles in a bowl and top with the soup, a squeeze of lime and some chopped cilantro.

Let me give a shout out to the Ansley Kroger which I love! Imagine my delight when I sat down to peel and devein the shrimp only to discover that the shrimp was already deveined! That made peeling them so much easier! They were small previously frozen shrimp for $5.99/lb - now that's a bargain and they had a great flavor!