Asian Crunch Salad

I'm fresh out of awesome stories to tell you. Maybe I just can't think of any right now. All I can think about is that it's Friday. Aruba vacation spoiled me. It seems that's all I look forward to every week anymore. Then it comes and the weekend goes too quickly. This won't be too different either especially since I am helping my family with their moving sale and packing everything up! There are only 2 weeks left! Yikes! One awesome thing I'm doing this weekend though is seeing my friend play at the new Green Turtle in Annapolis. Know how my super talented friend made my logo for my site? She also sings along with being super artistic. Pretty darn cool!

So this salad was one of the first ways my boyfriend really got me to stick around. It was part of one of the first meals he ever made for me and it sucked me in. This peanut dressing is seriously amazing. So amazing I just take spoonfuls of it and eat it. It may not be so healthy but it's heavenly. They may say the way to a man's heart is through his belly, well it's the way to my heart too! 

Asian Salad

Yield ~ 4 salads 

1 pound shrimp

1/2 Napa cabbage (they are pretty large)

2 carrots, julienned 

1 cup bean sprouts

1 cucumber

1 red pepper

handful of cilantro, chopped

toasted almonds

Peanut Dressing

1/2 cup oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 inch piece of ginger, chopped

4 tablespoons rice vinegar

1/4 cup peanut butter

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

dash of pepper

 Bring the oil, garlic, and ginger to a boil in a saucepan for about 10 minutes. Take off stove to cool. In a separate bowl mix together the rice vinegar, peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, and pepper together with a whisk. Once the oil mixture has cooled some, whisk it into the peanut butter mixture. Pour the dressing on the salad (when prepared) as much as you'd like. To prepare salad, cut up the napa cabbage, carrots, cucumber, and red pepper. Mix it all together in a bowl with the bean sprouts and cilantro as well. Set aside. Last bring a pan to medium high heat and spray with cooking oil. Prepare your shrimp with any spice you prefer. We sprinkled some Chinese five spice on ours to give it some extra flavor. Place them in the pan, they won't take more than a few minutes on each side. Prepare your salad and add your shrimp and toasted almonds on top!