Sweet and Sour Shrimp Quinoa Bowl

Start the weekend with a winning recipe made with a bagged lettuce and topping kit from the produce section, fresh cooked shrimp from the meat department and a prepared pouch of quinoa brown and red rice. It's the makings of a whole meal. Recipe serves two but can easily be increased to serve more though you will need another packet of dressing. It's a convenient meal to put together when you don't feel like cooking. 

Smoked Salmon, Stir fried pork or chicken can stand in for the shrimp. 

Sweet and Sour Shrimp Rice Bowl

Ingredients: 

• 1 bag of Asian Chopped Kit

• 1 pouch Seeds of Change Quinoa Brown and Red Rice

• 12 shrimp (I bought fresh large cooked shrimp with tails on ) 
• 1 cup diced cucumbers, divided
• 1/4 cup green onions diced, divided

Directions: 

• Cook quinoa following directions on pouch using skillet method. Set aside. 
• In each bowl place 2 cups lettuce mixture and 1/2 cup cucumbers. Divide quinoa among the two bowls. From the bagged lettuce add wonton strips and almonds.
• Top with shrimp and drizzle dressing over the top and green onions.

Sweet and Sour Dressing Directions: 

Enough dressing for 2 bowls.

From the packet inside lettuce mix, squeeze the dressing contents into a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons ketchup and 1 teaspoon sweet chili-garlic sauce, mix well.   

Alberto Álvaro Ríos is a US academic and writer who is the author of ten books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. Ríos is a Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University, where he has taught for over 30 years and where he holds the further distinction of the Katharine C. Turner Endowed Chair in English. In August 2013, Rios was named Arizona's first state poet laureate, a position he held until 2015. 

He was born of a Mexican father and a British mother in the border city of Nogales, Arizona. Rios has lived his life between cultures. He extends the metaphor of in-betweeness to language, claiming that he speaks three languages: Spanish, English, and a combination of the two. This linguistic richness gives Ríos’s verse a touch of magical realism,

"The Sheet Music of Place" 
by Alberto Rios

The river through its centuries has made a line on this place,
A child's line, wanting to be straight but distracted at every move,

A little left, a little fast, around a big rock, sliding straight away
Through sand, this crawling, leaden line echoing

The line made by the tops of the mountains in silhouette against the sky.
The railroad track makes another line, a double line-

The highway, too, and the telephone poles strung with wire.
All these lines work in sure if uneasy concert

Written on the arid air of this place, which has made everything
Dry and white, off-white, some darks but on their way to white,

All this landscape a great and delicate paper.

These lines make a musical staff borrowed from the world of dream,
The world that then fills these lines with its profundo notations,

The careful placement of one moving thing next to another,
The train engine and its cars-those drudging bass notes,

Birds everywhere in their thrill, 64th notes every one,
Everything scored onto the pages of this world suddenly heard.

Day and night, that ceaseless baton, unforgiving metronome:
Bees lumber along but their work is to stop, whole stops and half,

Busy at their honeying, these respites of work, these moments loud
Too-resting the ear so as to hear composed this place into music-

Every sound a new performance of the great song of this world.

These photos were taken in Tubac, a town close to where Rios grew up. I was a bit awestruck when I took the top photo noticing the diffusion of light in the sky behind the mountain contrasting it against the starkness of the desert landscape. It gives a sense of place that's prevalent in Rio's writing.