Busy Week from Hell made Real Simple!

This past week and a half at work has been insanely busy. Late nights and high stress do not lend themselves to eating well or eating right.

In anticipation of this hectic time, I chose two recipes from Real Simple that I could quickly prepare in advance to make my lunch a pleasant experience.

My first recipe was salt and pepper shrimp with Thai fried rice. Just about all of the ingredients were pantry staples, I had frozen shrimp in the freezer and there was some nice long grain brown rice on sale at the supermarket. Easy! The recipe (on the link above) was pretty simple to execute, however, I omitted the chorizo to save myself a few calories.

When the dish was complete and I was getting ready to pack it up in my Tupperware, I decided to mix the shrimp in with the rice to save some space in my work fridge. It looked beautiful and tasted great! I didn't find it as filling as I had hoped however, so perhaps the chorizo would had made it a more satisfying meal.


The week had taken a lot out of me (and it's not over yet) and I was really in need of some comfort food. That being said, for my second recipe I chose the turkey and roasted red pepper meat loaf in this month's issue of Real Simple. The magazine's been sitting unread on my table all week, so not only was it quick and handy but also gave my cookbooks a rest.

Chopping the onions and red peppers were the most labor intensive part of this dish but once you got past that it was a breeze. As I was mixing the meat, I could smell the herby goodness of the parsley and the zest of the dijon mustard. As the meat was resting on my cutting board, I realized that I accidentally omitted the Parmesan cheese called for in the recipe. After giving the meat a little taste, I can see where they were going with the cheese but I think it came out just fine without it.

So now I have a delicious satisfying lunch to look forward to next week. Hopefully I'll have the time to enjoy it!

More from the gross catering files...

Where to begin?

I worked on Saturday and as you probably know, the biggest question on my mind isn't "will all my hard work and preparations pay off?" but instead "what's going to be our catered meal?"

While my counterparts a few floors up were dining on a lovely Cuban meal courtesy of Havana Central, I was relegated to the studio offering which was mediocre American fare with all the trimmings.

The menu consisted of: ham, white rice with ham, turkey with runny stuffing, pesto fettuccine with veggies, veggies with butter, meatloaf, chicken parmigiana and chocolate cake with cherries.

The ham was sliced thin (therefore dried out) so I decided to skip that and move to the pasta. On first glance, the pasta seemed dry and I couldn't figure out where the corn kernels fit in (besides maybe being an inexpensive vegetable). Shockingly, this wound up being the best of the bunch - so sad but so true. There were also large chunks of breaded chicken barely held together by tomato sauce and cheese. Your local pizzeria does a better job.

Next came the veggies in butter - string beans, carrots and zucchini - typical buffet fare and overshadowed by the horror show that was the turkey with wet drippy stuffing. (skipped it) From there was a passable meatloaf and white rice with chunks of ham in it.

If you've assumed that my favorite part of this meal was the chocolate cake with a layer of cherries you'd be correct. However, in these situations, you take what you can get and you are grateful for the meal but it was a colossal waste of precious Weight Watchers points for me.

Not sure who provied this meal but as as I ran to email J-Bends to please save me some empandas and arroz con pollo I am convinced more than ever that I really need to open up my own catering company.

I'll spare you the photos...