{Recipe} Mesquite Shrimp Salad

For better or worse, I usually cook dinner from scratch, and often meat-free, every night after work.  The boyfriend appreciates it, and is not shy about telling others how lucky he is. It sometimes saves us money, and sometimes doesn’t – because I’m frankly a bit of a food snob.  Taco nights are cheap, but free-range organic steak nights are not.  Even then, they’re way tastier and more affordable than a good steak at a fancy restaurant.

But a while ago I started to become aware of just how much of my after-work time is eaten up (pun intended) by cooking these interesting and often meat-free dinners.  And when I wouldn’t have the energy to spend an hour or more in the kitchen, we’d order out.   To save money and time, I decided to attempt meals with quicker prep times, and add more meat into our dinners – but only the organic, free-range kind.

Here’s one result:  a healthy and light summer salad.

Mesquite Shrimp (or chicken) Salad

1. Purchase some sort of meat, seafood, or tofu.
2. Rub with olive oil.
3. Sprinkle with Montreal Steak Mesquite seasoning.
4. Cook on George Forman grill.  (Or sear in a frying pan if you have no grill.)
5. While meat is cooking, toss a large amount of salad greens, avocado, and some other chopped veggies with basalmic vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil.
6. Top with cooked meat, and voila! A quick and easy dinner.

That’s all we had for dinner on several nights.  I made some seriously large salads, enough to cover each of our full-sized dinner plates, and then topped them with a generous but healthy portion of meat.   It’s good to eat a lot of greens and veggies.

After that successful attempt, I got smarter, and spent Friday night seasoning, marinating, and freezing a bunch of meat for this week.  If I want an easy meal at night, I  simply have to do is put two portions of meat in the fridge to thaw in the morning.  Then, after work I simply make a large salad and grill that meat.  Not a novel idea, I know, but it’s one that I had not ever tried until now.

Are you laughing at me now for waiting until the ripe old age of 31 to figure out that the freezer could be my friend?  Do you have any quick homemade meal tips to share?