Fast(ing) Food - Quick Shrimp With Snow Peas

Day 11, Fast Day #6

Weighed myself again this morning and thought I was hallucinating. So I weighed myself twice more. Turns out I am down another 3 lbs, putting me at a 7 lb loss after 11 days. Crazy.

I have been busy wedding planning today, so I did not have time to finish an epic blog post. But I will leave you with a fast day recipe instead.

I basically got tired of eating just cold, mostly raw food on my fast days. So I made a heartier shrimp stir-fry for lunch today instead, yum!

Ugh, more cold, boring vegetables.

Quick Shrimp With Snow Peas (Yields 3 servings) ~288 kcal/serving
Takes about 15-20 minutes

Stir-fry:

• 1 lb medium or large shrimp, frozen, no shell, cooked, and deveined (~427 kcal) - If you have time to devote to deveining and shelling your own shrimp and cooking them from a raw state, go for it. It will taste better. However I am cheap and impatient. Most shrimp sold in the US is previously frozen anyway.
• 1 cup snow peas (~42 kcal)
• 2 green onions stalks, chopped (~10 kcal) - I have been saving the bulbs and putting them in shot glasses full of water on our window sill and growing a second batch of green onions for free.
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (~8 kcal)
• 1 tsp ginger, minced (a root piece about half the size of your thumb) (~2 kcal)
• 2 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil (~309 kcal)
• pepper to taste
• salt to taste

Sauce:

• 1/3 cup vegetable broth (~5 kcal)
• 1 tsp white sugar (~15 kcal)
• 2 tsp rice wine (~17 kcal)
• 2 tsp soy sauce (I prefer low-sodium, but if you have a wheat/gluten issue, stick with regular strength) (~7 kcal)
• 2 tsp cornstarch for thickening (~20 kcal)

For Shrimp Thawing:

• 1 tbsp salt
• 2 1/2 cup cold water
• paper towels or a clean dish towel (for drying)

Add 1 tbsp salt to cold water in a large bowl. Stir until salt is dissolved. Add frozen shrimp and defrost. This takes about 10 minutes. So do any prep work now.

Add the broth, sugar, rice wine, soy sauce, and cornstarch into a small bowl or measuring cup and whisk until blended.

Pat dry shrimp on towel(s). Otherwise your shrimp are going to make the stir-fry watery and diluted coming straight out of the water bowl.

The key to stir-fry is not taking your eye off the pan and stirring continually to avoid burning things. Bring oil to medium-high to high heat in a wok, skillet, or large frying pan depending on how hot your burners get. 

Add garlic and ginger to the pan. Stir continually for one minute. 

Add shrimp, cook and stir for about a minute. If you bought precooked shrimp like me, these are already cooked so you are just heating them up basically. Otherwise cook raw shrimp until opaque and pink.

Throw in the snow peas and green onions. Cook and stir until snow peas start getting a little floppy.

Pour in the sauce mixture and stir until the sauce thickens up. Salt & pepper to taste and eat!