Last week I was going to make a simple spring meal.  Just lemon, shrimp, rice, and dandelion greens.   Doesn’t that sound nice?  Just go with that inspiration, because things got a little out of hand.  I don’t have a recipe for you.  I can only try to recount what happened.

First I didn’t get around to making it.
Then a week later I was grocery shopping again and kept thinking of things to add to it.
I was going to cook it Friday, and soaked some mung beans so I could just cook them quickly with the rice.   But then I didn’t get around to cooking on Friday (which was caused by Andrea’s dumpling adventure).  So the beans sprouted.

When I finally got to cooking my lemon shrimp pilaf it was messy improv the whole way.

I wanted to cook the rice in sort of a shrimp stock.  I sautéed the shrimp tails in butter, black pepper and the zest of three lemons.  Then added the rice.  (It was actually more like a messy redundant process that I’d rather not admit).

With the rice bubbling away I squeezed the lemon juice over the shrimp to be added later.  I prepped the asparagus that enticed me the day before.  I rooted around the kitchen…

Meanwhile the rice was starting to stick to the pan.  I decided I should take out the shrimp tails before adding everything else.  This ended up being a long process of trying not to remove half the rice with the tails.

So now my shrimp flavored rice was sticky and getting mushy when I add the asparagus.  Oh, and the randomly bought cashews.  Oh, and I might as well throw in the sprouted mung beans.  And then the three ingredients which had started it all; the shrimp, lemon juice, and dandelion greens.

Then I found green onions and thought heck, those should go in too.
And a little garlic powder, and a little hot sauce…

It was not the simple meal I had envisioned, but it was tasty.