What to make for dinner?

Tags

dinner, paella, pantry, postaday2013, shrimp

I have to confess that after driving for most of the week, this weekend I really didn’t feel like going down the mountain into town to go grocery shopping, The problem with that is what do you do when your larder is dwindling down in reserves? Well, you have to look and cross your fingers that you have something or a combination of things that can come together to make dinner.

I lucked out, in the freezer I had a 2lb of easy-peel raw shrimp, in the refrigerator I had chorizo sausage, the pantry had rice, saffron threads, diced tomatoes, and I always have onions, garlic and chicken stock. This combination of ingredients gives me what I need to make a cheap version of paella. I made enough for at least two days, leftovers are the best and this only gets better the following day anyway.

It is pretty easy to make, prepping isn’t so bad either, I diced three onions and minced about six cloves of garlic, the baby boy loves onion and garlic a lot, the diced tomatoes came from the pantry, slicing the chorizo sausage takes all of two minutes and the shrimp shells slide off being easy peel. The first thing is to sauté the shrimp, put them aside and then sauté the chorizo slices and put them along with the shrimp. In the same pan, you sauté the onions until they are translucent, then the garlic, then add the tomatoes. This lovely mixture that you sauté until caramelized, is called a sofrito. I added four cups of rice and stirred everything together, I then added six cups of warmed chicken stock and let the rice absorb the stock. It takes around 15 to 20 minutes. When the rice is ready, I put the saffron threads in, a huge pinch, along with salt and pepper, after stirring it all together, I threw the shrimp and the chorizo back in and viola, dinner for us and leftovers for the baby boy during the beginning of the week.

Ooo, scary!

What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

I think that what scares me the most remains anything to do with heights and falling, I can't think of anything that would make me, in my sane frame of mind, go against keeping myself as far away from anything height related and falling.

Note that I said sane frame of mind. The only scenario that I can imagine that would make me eschew my own personal safety or what I perceive to be my safety in terms of my phobia would be to save my children. Those two would be the only bargaining chip that would succeed in getting me onto a ledge, near the edge of a cliff or anything like that. I can't even imagine situations too realistically without giving myself the sensation of vertigo.

It is hard to describe how powerful a phobia is, there doesn't seem to be any logic to it or even common sense, it just is. But I do have to say that there is a good reason for my phobia, I have fallen off garage roofs, fallen out of trees and fallen out of ceiling height cabinets when I was young and fearless, so I am way too familiar with that horrible sensation of falling, I am convinced that my phobia is my subconscious standing up to my waking mind and saying enough is enough with the falling out of things, it hurts!

The human mind has a wonderful gift for self-preservation, doesn't it?