One night last week, I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner that would prevent me from having to get dressed, leave the house, and go to the store. The fridge was pretty bare, with just some lettuce, a few leftover cherry tomatoes, and an avocado. I did however have some frozen shrimp in the freezer, so I began searching for a shrimp salad recipe.
I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I had on hand everything for this really filling salad, Summer Garden Salad with Chili-Garlic Shrimp, or pretty much everything since Carlo had to pick up a cucumber on his way home from school. All I can say is thank god for frozen shrimp! Thank you for letting me stay in my pjs all day 
This Shrimp Salad recipe feeds 6 people at $3.07 per serving.
I have been really craving seafood lately, especially shrimp and crab, so one day when I was at Whole Foods, I picked up a bag of their Whole Catch frozen shrimp. At $6.99 for a 16 oz package, it is a great deal, and the shrimp look and taste great once you defrost them. Plus they come in really handy when you need to throw some dinner together at the last minute because they defrost very quickly if you place them under running cold water.
Since I like things spicy, I added way more chili-garlic sauce to the shrimp than the recipe called for and just threw in a bit of extra ground cumin to balance it out. The marinade was perfect and ended up not being too spicy at all, so I would definitely use the chili-garlic sauce again for cooking any type of shrimp.
Marinate the shrimp in the fridge for an hour or so and then quickly saute them in a frying pan with a good glug of olive oil.
Since I was trying to only use ingredients that I had on hand, I ended up using frozen corn instead of fresh. I quickly boiled it and then cooled the drained corn in the fridge before mixing it with the tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, and mint from the garden.
I took the basic vinaigrette dressing from the recipe of fresh lime juice, sesame oil and soy sauce, and jazzed it up with some grated garlic that I had on hand to compliment the shrimp.
I tossed all the vegetables and mint with a heavy dose of the dressing and then placed them over a bed of lettuce on each plate. Next came the shrimp on top, and I even added a hard boiled egg for some extra protein.
The verdict on the improvised whatever-we-had-in-the-fridge meal: Excellent, especially when eaten in pajamas! We will definitely be making this salad again this summer.
