Jalapeno Basil Corn Fritters

I have a tiny confession to make.  I didn’t really didn’t care about the eclipse.  My brother?  He drove hundreds of miles and I am glad it was everything he expected, and I can’t wait to read his recap about it when he blogs about it. I’ll be sure to link his blog post here if you aren’t following him when he does.

I wasn’t sure I’d see much of anything, because it was supposed to be cloudy around 1:00 p.m.

It was on the train ride in that I realized I never threw an English muffin into my lunch bag.  When I got to the train station I went to the French Market in the lower level and was shocked to find these giant, fluffy pitas for only 2 smart points each!

I can’t believe I am going to say this, but it was actually too much bread for my breakfast sammie, so after this picture was taken, I cut it in half and ate it like an open faced sandwich.  Although it would make delicious pita pizza!

So there were just a few people at Millenium Park to watch the eclipse 😛

And like I thought, it was too cloudy to see much of anything.  Oh well!  

I got back to my desk with FOUR messages from my boss – he asked where he was and I told him I was at lunch.  His first words “you seemed to be gone for a long time.”  Um, just my hour lunch 😛  So I give you my dinner for lunch picture at my desk – right next to the “sign here” stickers because that’s how the professional food photographers do it.  Five ounces of pork chops, cauliflower mac n cheese and canned green beans. 

Confession #2:  I did not meal plan or grocery shop this week!  I know, I can hardly believe it myself.  There are two reasons for that – Sunday I had plenty of time in the morning to shop, but chose to watch the Little League World Series.  Second: I have plenty of food in my house and will use this week as if I were on an episode of Chopped!  Last night my ingredients were:  corn on the cob, jalapenos, basil and frozen shrimp.  

I immediately thought of corn fritters, because duh, who doesn’t like those.  I found a few recipes online and wrote my version of a recipe on the train ride home yesterday.  The only thing I had to do was add more flour than I originally thought, and I added shredded cheese to help bind the batter.  I will say that this will work better if you make the batter, and refrigerate it for 30 minutes before cooking, because initially they didn’t want to stay together.

If you have the time, do refrigerate the batter for 30 minutes.  I have the rest of the batter in my downstairs fridge, and plan on having them again tonight, so I’ll let you know if that helps keep these together while cooking having sat in the fridge overnight.  I also grated my jalapeno into the bowl so that it was just spicy, and I didn’t bite down on a chunk of jalapeno.

Once the fritters cooked, I turned the heat up on medium high, added a 1/2 teaspoon of grapeseed oil to the pan, and just seasoned the shrimp with salt, pepper and a bit of crushed red pepper and cooked for about a minute and a half.  I added a drizzle of Bolthouse Farms creamy garlic dressing as kind of a “dip” for the fritters. 

This was so good guys!  The fritters were light, crunchy because the corn was raw when I started with just enough heat. When I entered this into the WW recipe builder, it came in at 2 smart points each – sweet!  I ate three and the WW app said that 3 was 5 points – love when that happens!  The 3 ounces of shrimp was 1 point and the dressing was 1 point, so not a bad 7 point dinner.  Sometimes it’s good not to plan and force you to think outside the box a bit.

I am loving all the Bolthouse Farms dressings they sent me.  They don’t taste low calorie, and are full of flavor.  

I am feeling so much better today – my head congestion is nearly gone.  I went to bed at 10:20 last night and didn’t wake up until 6:30 this morning – nice!

I plan to get to the gym tonight – I have to be competitive in my Fitbit challenge workweek hustle.  I only had 13,000 steps yesterday.  Rachel, tell Dave I’ve got my eye on him 😀

Make it a great day!