Upside-Down Pear

Last night, I made broiled head-on chili shrimp, Chinese noodles, and vegetable stir-fry for dinner. The stir-fry was simple — just onions, bok choy, oyster mushrooms, and some seasonings — but delicious. We had noodles and some stir-fry left over, and it occurred to me that it might make a good breakfast, paired with an egg somehow.

Scramble the egg and go frittata-style? Scramble it and fry up like pad thai? Egg on the side? Egg over top?

I settled on a variant of the Greek fried egg: 1/4 c. olive oil in my big skillet, and an egg for each of us in that. It seemed to me that the crisp brown edges and silky-smooth middles of these eggs would compliment the leftovers well.

As for the leftovers themselves, I warmed them in the microwave, then added them to a pan where I’d sauteed some extra onion in chili oil, and tossed to coat. Once they were thoroughly warmed, I divided them into two shallow bowls, popped the fried eggs on top, and dressed them with a sprinkle of soy sauce and a dash of chili oil.

They were hot and crisp and fresh-tasting, with just enough spice to be interesting.

Nat rated it “A+! Would eat again!” — and that’s good enough for me.

One of my pets has been ill, and had to be hospitalized somewhere quite a ways from my home. On the upside, I got to see what it would be like to commute from a suburb every day. On the downside, we ate out a lot.

Which meant that we both ended up craving some decent vegetables — we tend to eat a lot of veggies, and restaurants generally don’t cut it in that area.

So, tonight, I made a nice light salad for dinner.

Highly Modifiable Green Bean Salad

• about 3-4 handfuls fresh green beans, cut up & blanched
• about 1/4 to 1/3 red onion, sliced thin
• some sweet or hot pickled peppers (I used Peppadews), chopped
• salt & pepper, to taste
• extra virgin olive oil, to taste
• red wine vinegar
• 1 regular-size can tuna

Mix together.

It’s one of those recipes easily modified for taste: take out the peppers, add olives. Throw some mustard in there, if you like. Don’t eat fish? Put in hard-boiled egg or white beans or thoroughly cooked French lentils instead. Sliced fennel? Crumbled crisp bacon? Why the heck not? Put some good-quality cheese chunks on the side (I highly recommend this). Hate green beans? Well…once you replace those, it’s just a Highly Modifiable Salad, not a Highly Modifiable Green Bean Salad. But I suppose you could put some lettuce in there, if you’ve got your heart set on it.