On my way home last night, I thought I'd stop by the Supremo for some much-needed groceries, but being that it was a little after 9pm when I arrived there, I wasn't surprised to see that they were closed. So I thought to myself that I would place an order at the Chinese place down the street, though that could have been a frivolity considering how I can't seem to stop when selecting things from the menu.
When I got home, I took a look inside the fridge to see what I could nibble on in the meantime. All I saw was the last quarter of a head of romaine lettuce and three carrot sticks. My first intention was to crunch on the carrot sticks as a snack, then I realized I could make a very simple salad with the carrots and lettuce by tossing them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Too bad I didn't have any onions, but I saw some garlic and it occurred to me that I could mince it up and fry it in olive oil as a nice accompaniment to the salad.
As I started chopping up the garlic I figured I'd just throw in the carrots with it and serve it over rice, as I had the Minute brand in the cupboard. So I set a bowl of rice in the microwave while I got the frying pan heated up. I thought it would sure be nice to have some meat with this little stir fry, but found nothing in the fridge except an almost empty jar of bacon bits. Good enough for me!
Once the frying pan was heated up, I poured in some olive oil and threw in a nice dollop of butter. As the ingredients sizzled, I thought what kind of aromatics I could add. I looked in the spice rack and didn't want to mess it up with anything too distinct, but I did find some ground mustard and dried minced onion to sprinkle into the mix. And then I realized I had some ginger paste in the fridge to add a bit of Eastern flare.
Things were coming together into a substantial dinner. Since I had the smokiness of the bacon and the sweetness of the ginger, all I needed was a little nuttiness to round it off - Thai style. So back to the cupboard I went and scraped out the remaining contents of the peanut butter jar and threw that in. Then I took the rice and mixed that in as well, making it nice and dirty. I chopped up the lettuce, tossed it with a little balsamic, ginger paste and olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, and topped it off with the rice and had myself a nice meal. MacGyver might have been proud :^)
