Adventures in Cooking: Stir Fry on the Fly

I am not an adventurous cook. Although I've come a long way in terms of culinary skill, I am still very much a recipe-following woman. In my mind, if a recipe calls for 1/8 a teaspoon of a spice I don't have, just forget it. I can't make the dish or the whole thing will be ruined. Putting in 3/4 cup onion when the recipe clearly calls for a 1/2 cup? That's just crazy talk! You get the idea. 

But when I looked in my fridge and saw 4 oz of mushrooms, half a green bell pepper, half a red onion, cauliflower, and two celery stalks that were all going to go bad if I didn't use them, even I could come up with "stir-fry." 

So I fired up some EVOO in a large skillet and got busy. I was pretty sure the cauliflower would take theNot too shabby... longest to cook, so I dumped that in there. Then the onions and bell pepper and some garlic. (I was momentarily panicked when I realized I had leftover red and yellow onion. Do I use one? Both? I went with red only.) Then I dumped in some tamari sauce. Then the mushrooms. 

 

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Next On the Food Network: Dena's Dinner Disasters

Blair and I went grocery shopping today (where we ran into not one not two but THREE sets of neighbors when all we had yet in our cart was Gilette razor blades, birdseed, and two huge boxes of Playtex sport-glide tampons because we had a coupon about to expire - one can only imagine what they think of us) and then I came home and cooked. Blair, wise/cowardly man that he is, disappeared upstairs. He crept back down a few hours later and peered around the kitchen door.

"Everything okay in here?" he asked. 

"Fine," I said, smiling cheerfully while I drained some edamame. "Why?"

"Um, I heard some... questionable noises a while back."

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