That’s all I have to say about shrimp

4/26/15

It’s been a little while since my last post. Sometimes I just feel like I don’t have anything to share. Sometimes, I don’t want to sound like a broken record…

But I do have news of Al Hasa today. And it’s all about food! I did a food challenge that my sister in law organized, or invited people to join. It involved posting photos of what we were eating on a private Facebook page, and exercising every day for seven days. Clean eating was the focus, and while it was a little bit of a challenge, it was also easy, if that makes sense. My husband and I eat pretty well here. Food is generally inexpensive aside from some high dollar import stuff. The main thing we did was try to eat very little processed food. So we had lots of salads, and or dishes with a lot of veggies. I didn’t use ranch dressing for a whole week, and I was okay with that. In fact, I might just continue to just use a little EVOO from now on. It still tastes good. And flavor is a huge factor. I also was able to experiment with cooking some new foods. It was fun and I only had one fail, not because of my cooking, but because buying frozen shrimp is just a mistake in general. It’s gross. Don’t try it. That’s all I have to say about shrimp.

 Here is one of the salads I made. it has some delicious goat cheese on top. That is one thing that is not on short supply here. Cheese! Love it.

The salmon here isn’t really cheap, but I really wanted to try my hand at baking some fish. Not eating it out of a can. The salmon dinner was really good. No bread crumbs in the topping, and instead of using Mayonaise, I used yogurt. Lots of lemon juice, and lots of garlic, gave this just the right amount of kick. And the roasted broccoli was great with it. http://www.cookingclassy.com/2015/04/one-sheet-pan-parmesan-crusted-salmon-with-roasted-broccoli/ The nice thing is that it looked just like this recipe, only I pretty much doubled and tripled the lemon and garlic measurements. I just wish I had taken a photo of my own plate that night.

Green peppers are cheap here. I baked these, stuffed with chicken, onions, a little brown rice, beans, tomato, and topped with a very hard cheddar cheese. It was easy and very tasty. I loaded the stuffing with cayenne pepper, hot paprika, and jalapeno sauce. This will also be a repeat.

Eating less bread can be challenging for me sometimes, I made it though the week with only a couple small bread like eats, both being Arabic flatbread of some sort. One was a flat bread that was sugar free and loaded with all these good things. But it tasted like cardboard, so I won’t buy that again. The other was a small bread with some sort of melted cheese fresh from the bakery. Tasty, but remembering to do this in moderation, not daily.

This week, Al Hasa has opened a Carrefour grocery story. This is a big deal, because once again, we get more food options here. Yay! Previously, the closest one was two hours away. And while I am cutting back on breads, Carrefour has some darn good bread! I will stay away from the works of art in the display cases there (it’s actually cake).

Also, while I wouldn’t really decide on Applebees for dinner in the States, we now have an Applebees in Al Hasa. It’s just one of those things that we have to go try out.

And lastly, in Al Hasa we now have at least three or four open or getting ready to open Dunkin Donuts. This has me the most happy, as I have always loved their coffee. Just wish I could drive over and get one during my normal drinking coffee hours. Guess that will have to be a weekend thing when my husband is off work. I think maybe a donut will be had as well.

Did you see how that just went from “I’m eating pretty well, to hey babe, can you go get me a donut?”

All kidding aside, just because the week’s challenge is over with the clean eating and exercise, I plan to still try to focus a lot more on healthy and reserve the rich stuff to every now and then…

I want to try this recipe (It’s not bread, but it acts like bread) from Marie @ https://aseatatmytable.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/cloud-bread-nailed-it/ but first I need to go practice my belly dancing.

Happy day to you, wifeabroad