using up ingredients

last night i cooked again, after cleaning out the fridge and rearranging the shelves to make more efficient use of the space. my new resolve is to use all my purchased fresh ingredients before they go bad, so that meant i needed to cook two recipes last night, one of which was my standby favorite, snow pea stir fry. it used the fresh snow peas and mushrooms. this is all the ingredients you need to make a delicious side dish.

here it is all finished, toasted almonds get the snow peas and mushrooms added to them, then the cornstarch/soy sauce/chicken bouillon sauce, then just let it simmer a few minutes until it thickens a little.

since the snow peas were an old favorite, the other recipe i made was a new experiment. here's the cooked brown rice and a pound of rough chopped tomatoes, ready for the dressing.

the dressing was simple -  rice vinegar, olive oil and some pepper.

then you add chopped fresh basil - i had purchased some, and was determined it would not go to waste. my basil plants in my herb garden are done for the summer.

when this was all finished and i tasted some i wasn't so sure about it, but scott loved it. if you like vinaigrettes, this one's for you. it took me a little while to warm up to it, but i liked it, and i think it'll be better after the flavors have had time to marry in the fridge.

in this one i also added in green onion, since i had some of that in my vegetable drawer to use.

here's the link to the food network recipe: brown rice with tomatoes and basil.