Yes, Card #63 Spanish Rice. Or as I have renamed it: Spanish Rice for Crazy Charlie Sheen (I am aware that my Spanish is all kinds of wrong). Anyway, I dedicate this meal to my new favorite person on the Earth (which we all know is bipolar).
This is a perfect weeknight meal. You couldn’t get much simpler. Why? Two items are pre-prepared frozen and one is a relish tray. Just buy some pre-cut vegetables and you’re done. However, I did as directed and cut the carrots and cucumbers and refrigerated them. Why? Because I got magic and I got poetry in my fingertips. And a paring knife.
Then it was on to the main dish, which is so easy. I just made a few adjustments. First off, I used much less oil than the recipe called for. 1/4 cup oil seemed really unnecessary so I halved it. I didn’t have any cayenne pepper, so I upped the chili powder and threw in some tiger blood!!! (or you could just add plain ol’ ordinary red pepper flakes). I also used a smaller can of tomatoes because they do not make 1 lb. cans of tomatoes–at least at my grocery store. The only other change I made with the rice dish was that I used 93/7 ground beef instead of ground round. Not only does this cut the fat down considerably, but the ground beef was BOGO at the Safeway. Winning!
While combining the ingredients I thought that 4 cups hot water plus the beef broth plus the can of tomatoes would make this way too soggy, and it didn’t look soggy at all on the card. I started with 2.5 cups hot water and one-third of the can of broth. Well, I learned not to fuck with Dinner is Served. I felt as though I had picked a fight with a warlock when 30 minutes in I had to add the additional water and the beef broth. Well played, Spanish Rice.
Ok, that hiccup aside, I just let it simmer on the stove for a while. This allows you to clean up the kitchen from all of your prep work and gives you time to freshen up for when your man comes home from a hard day of work. I think I might have put on some lip gloss.
Time frame: started the rice at 6:50. Had it simmering on the stove at 7:20. It was ready to go at 8, but I let it sit longer since Cleveland wasn’t home yet. As the card says, ‘slow cooking improves this dish.’ When we were ready to eat, I popped the creamed spinach into the microwave for 5 or so minutes and boom! Print that people! Dinner is Served.
You can’t tell from my crappy photo, but there are black olives on both the relish tray and my plate. And although lime sherbet is typically a staple in our house, we had to settle for rainbow.
Over all, this was a very successful dish. Easy, cheap, and can be done in a relatively small amount of time. This was the only problem:
But I can’t let copious amounts of leftovers defeat me! From now on I am going to try to scale down the recipes. (Oh, sorry. Like Charlie says, the Nike slogan doesn’t say ‘just try it,’ just do it, man) I have to remember: can’t is the cancer of happen. And I have a lot of happen to go.
So far, I’m 3 for 3. Me. Winning.
i laughed so hard at this