A Bean of a Different Color

April has proved to be a busy month.  About a week ago, I had an adventure that I haven't had time to write about until now.  Hopefully, my next adventure will make it on-line in a more timely fashion.

Joey's running cookbook has a recipe for Stir-Fry.  We were going to follow it pretty exactly, but then we got a little lazy.  So we basically made this Stir-Fry recipe from one of my Betty Crocker mini-cookbooks.  We've made this meal dozens of times because it's easy and delicious.

This time there was one major difference.  We were using the ingredients from the Runner's World Cookbook recipe.  And one of those ingredients was green beans.

Green beans are gross because they are like peas (gross) but with an even grosser pod.  If I'm not going to eat peas, I'm certainly not going to eat green beans.  At least I wouldn't eat them before I started adventuring.

The worst type of bean in the world!

I still don't like green beans.  I will not eat them by themselves.  They taste like pure vitamins, and that's gross.  But I can eat them in other things, I think.  For example, my mom makes delicious Chicken Pot Pie.  Sometimes it has green beans in it.  Maybe now I won't pick them out.

Lima Beans on the other hand....

Bacon-less Scallops

I tried scallops on Halloween.  I vowed to try them without bacon, and I have remained true to my word.  A few days ago, I used scallops as the protein in a Stir-Fry.

Normally I use beef or just vegetables, but those scallops were staring at me from the door of the freezer.  Also, my mom asked what my plans were for the scallops.  I checked out a bunch of directions for cooking scallops and decided browning would be a good indicator of cooked-ness.  I asked Emily if she would eat some scallops so that I could cook up a bunch and not commit to eating them all.

I couldn't find my usual stir-fry sauce, so I combined some soy sauce and oyster sauce.  Emily was dubious (since I wasn't even measuring the sauces), but she didn't back down.

Behold my creation!

That sauce was tasty.  A+ for me!  And the veggies were delicious (even though we were out of bean sprouts).  I ate this at 5:30 and was still stuffed when I went to bed five hours later.  That is a quality meal!  I love Stir-Fry.

But what about the scallops?  I had a minor revelation.  Scallops taste fine.  Not as good as bacon, but they taste fine.  What I don't like about them is their texture.  They feel like vinyl on my teeth.  Or at least, what I imagine vinyl would feel like on my teeth.  I do not dig that.  I can eat them as long as they're with something else.  In the Stir-Fry, scallops are fine because there are so many other textures at play.  Wrapped in bacon, everything is wonderful.

Oh, and Emily totally liked my improvised sauce.  And finished my left-over scallops.  Thanks, Em!