Easy Recipe, Big News

First off, the news. Luke and I started quietly looking for houses online early this year, and we recently just purchased our first home in north Austin! The big move is this Friday, and I hope to share some kitchen photos soon. Our first home improvement project will be building a couple large garden boxes to go in our big back yard, so hoping we share a post on that soon too!

With all this moving business (not to mention some unexpected travel last week), my cooking schedule has been a bit wonky. That said, I wanted to get a few more cooking sessions in while still in my bright blue kitchen, so I've been making some easy-to-cook-then-repurpose meals. Case in point, I prepared the Curried Chicken with Coconut Rice from Everyday Food's May issue on  Saturday (subbing in some beautiful bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts that were on sale at Whole Foods Market instead of a whole chicken cut up), and made a little more rice than the recipe called for. We had a good 2 cups of coconut rice leftover in addition to what I portioned for our leftover chicken, so a new recipe was born. 

Curried Shrimp, Mango and Coconut Rice

3/4 pound peeled and deveined shrimp

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 lime, halved and divided 

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 semi-ripe or ripe mango, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 green bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces

2 cups leftover rice

2 cups spinach

Place the shrimp in a bowl or baggie. Add curry powder, cayenne, juice from 1/2 lime and salt and pepper to taste and toss/shake to combine. Heat a large nonstick skillet on medium heat and warm olive oil. Add mango and bell pepper to pan and saute until beginning to lightly brown, 4-5 minutes. Add shrimp to pan and cook one minute, then turn over until shrimp is cooked through.

Meanwhile, warm up rice. Place rice in 2 serving bowls and add 1 cup spinach to each bowl, then toss to combine. Top each rice mixture with 1/2 of shrimp and vegetable mixture, then squeeze remaining lime half over it. Enjoy!

Don't want to make the Curried Chicken recipe first for the rice leftovers? Here's a few other coconut rice recipes I've found that look tasty:

Toasted Coconut Rice from Cooking Light

Coconut Rice from Bon Appetit

Toasted Coconut Rice from Everyday Food

Easter ham remix

This year the Lehfelds celebrated Easter one week early. That means I get to reap the benefits of delicious leftover ham a whole week earlier than most (I can hear the jealous sighs now!) This meal came togtether out of necessity - I had no time to go to the store and we had been out of town all weekend. An avid menu planner, recipe reader and writer, this was totally against my better nature, but the results were so satisfying! Unfortunately, I have no photo since this was a thrown-together lunch, so let your imagination run wild... :)

Ham, Eggs and Apple Pita

1 large pita
3-4 ounces spira-cut ham, cut in bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 hard boiled egg, sliced
1/2 apple, cut in bite-sized pieces
1 ounce sharp white cheddar cheese, shredded (optional)

Preheat toaster oven (I said this was a work recipe right?!) to 375. Place ham on pita and spread mustard over. If you're using the cheese, sprinkle it on now. Place in the toaster oven and heat about 3 minutes, until pita and ham are warm, and cheese begins to melt if using. Take it out and place egg and apple slices on, wrap and eat!