Guilt-Free Shrimp "Fried Rice"

I really enjoy a blog called The Londoner.  It's sort of a guilty pleasure.  It is one of the top lifestyle blogs in the UK and it features a young woman named Rosie who flits about town in super short dresses eating lots of things you might not believe she really consumes.  She presents a good balance of city glamour and country charm, as well as a good crop of super yummy recipes with tantalizing photos.  (Hello, Slutty Brownies...)

Girls today get a lot of terrible messages from social media about food.  Supermodels on Instagram seem to live only on homemade vegetable juice and the occasional bite of raw fish and we praise them for setting such healthy examples.  I greatly prefer the message of a beautiful woman who balances indulgences with smart, vegetable heavy meals while telling her readers to drink tons of water and get out and move.

The Londoner posted this recipe a few months back and I've fallen completely in love with it.  It's a regular in our house and just doesn't seem to get old.  I used to swear up and down that I hated cauliflower, but since falling in love with it in this recipe I've been eating it in quite a few dishes.  For now, I will swear that I hate beets.  Maybe then Rosie will change my mind about those too.

Rosemary & Walnut Oven-Fried Chicken

It's always a weird experience to make something a few times and then go back to the recipe and find you've been doing it wrong, or have been missing a big step each time.  I'm having that experience right now, except that every time I have made this recipe it's been delicious!

This is a super busy time of year and like a lot of people, I like having recipes on hand that are totally delicious, crowd pleasing, easy, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about.  This one is awesome.  

Yes, this is another recipe from Cooking Light Magazine.  More specifically, it's by a woman named Laraine Perri, who when googled turns up all kinds of delicious results from some pretty major publications.  I plan to really explore some of her recipes later because if this one dish can be so good when I leave out steps, I'm excited to see what else of hers I can cook incorrectly yet deliciously.

Chickpea Curry

When I'm away, Paul eats more fast food.  When Paul is away, I eat more delicious vegetarian dishes.  He's out tonight and we all know what that means:  Pajama pants, Love Actually, and a delicious vegetarian dinner.

Two weeks ago, my bestie Eleanor caught me looking at her Cooking Light magazine.  To our mutual happiness, she sent me home with a massive stack of Cooking Light magazines.  Once in my possession, I knew that if I opened one I would lose at least half a day to the stack and I had too much to do with Thanksgiving and the Advent Workshop approaching.  Both are now successfully behind me and as a reward I spent half of yesterday with magazines all over my floor, armed with sticky notes and a pen, blissful in recipe heaven.

I have a lot of food magazines that I've collected over the years, most of which have been read cover to cover but their recipes remain untested.  

It ends tonight!  

For my first magazine dinner, I decided to go with a gorgeous curry that was insanely fast to make.  It literally takes less than 10 minutes.  It's mild, creamy, and incredibly satisfying.