10 minute meal: shrimp, sprouts, and tomato bowl

Approximately every single evening I find myself in a little bit of a, "what should we have for dinner?" conundrum. I seriously admire the organized folk that have meal planning and execution locked up as part of their routine because I am not one of those people quite yet -- maybe in another month or 40. I'm still trying to eat a tiny bit healthier but when it comes to dinner Simon throws a little wrench into my noble quest by being a hater of (most) cooked vegetables (which he failed to tell me until we had been married for about a year). But! he claimed to actually like this meal and didn't complain when I made it twice in three days. I offered to add noodles but he said it was filling enough on its own -- which is nice because that eliminates the difficult task of boiling water and adding noodles and wiping my brow after all that toil.

Simon can call to tell me he is on his way home from the lady part trenches and I can start and have this made (with the whiners at my kneecaps) by the time he walks in the door (with only one whole pan dirtied) which is the way I would look all dinners to be, please. Rachel Ray can keep her 30 minute gourmets.

Ingredients for two servings:
1.5 cups chicken or shrimp
1 cup brussel sprouts (halved)
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes (halved)
~2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/8 cup Parmesan cheese
olive oil

I really prefer this with chicken but the chicken was allllllllllllll the way downstairs and Sebastian had a firm grasp on my thigh skin so I opted for the shrimp that had been lazily thrown in the overcrowded upstairs freezer just this once.

1. If you go the chicken route: boil the chicken, drain the chicken, chop the chicken into bite sizeish pieces and set aside.
1.5 If you go the shrimp route: saute the shrimp in a bit of olive oil until it's pretty shade of pink, drain the water from the pan, and set the shrimp aside.

2. Boil the sprouts in about two minutes inches of water for NO more than two little minutes. Mushy sprouts are the worst. Here is a photo of the process for you visual learners:

exactly what you thought they'd look like, right?

3. Drain the water from the pan, add a bit of olive oil along with the shrimp or chicken (or I guess if you were feeling wild you could do both protein sources) and saute the victims.  After three or four minutes, sprinkle the brown sugar into the mix ...

like that.

4. The sprouts will absorb the sugar in no time -- just watch. Turn the heat off and I know I don't need to tell you but this is when you should divide the dinner into two bowls.

5. Throw as much Parmesan on as you'd like. Add the halved tomatoes (I am not a fan of warm and mushy tomatoes but if you are -- by all means -- add them earlier in the complicated process) and serve.

6. I know there are about 67 trillion better ways to make this -- better seasonings, more varied vegetables, different cheese, added starch, yadda -- but I like to keep things simple and lowwwww on the standard pole around here ...

... so I do.