Sometimes bland is good. . . ?

This was dinner the other night. I don't know. Sometimes bland is good. I started the rice first, because I learned that lesson recently. . . it's always going to take longer than the vegetables (at least for me it does). So the rice was just plain old jasmine, that I cooked in water and added just a little bit of salt to.

I took out my large saute pan (which by the way I LOVE and use all the time) for the vegetables. I used a combination of canola and toasted sesame oil. As I sauted the onion and multiple cloves of garlic with salt and pepper, I microwaved the broccoli and chopped spinach. It's just been easier for me to keep (and afford) frozen vegetables in the house than fresh. Don't get me wrong though, I d still buy fresh vegetables -- I guess I'm just using more of a mix lately. I accidentally let the onion and garlic go a little too long, but it ended up adding some good, sweet flavor to the otherwise ridiculously boring dish. I then added some chopped green bell pepper and celery. It was supposed to be red bell pepper, you know, so my whole dinner wasn't green and white, but I cut into that pepper and it just wasn't happening on the inside. I hate when that happens. It was from Whole Foods too! Whatever. So once the frozen vegetables were mostly warmed through, I added them to the pan, along with some frozen edamame (that I first ran under some hot water in a small mesh strainer).

Okay, I'm not going to lie. I tried to make my own sweet and sour sauce. . . with organic ketchup, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a little orange marmalade. Sounds gross? It was AWFUL. I luckily tasted it before adding it to all of the vegetables. Instead, I had just about a teaspoon maybe of soy sauce left, so I used that. It added just enough flavor. And that was my quick weeknight meal. I did it all in under thirty minutes, and you know who would be proud of that.