An icon of the Philasuburbs is Rita’s Water Ice. We have one in my hometown that is in walking distance of my parents house. I fondly remember walking in the summer heat with my best friends to go get a water ice. My favorite flavors: passion fruit & mango.
Sadly, Nashville does not have one. Or so I thought…..

About a year ago I saw a Nashville based friend tweet that she had just had Rita’s water ice and I FREAKED out! Seems someone got the bright idea to bring this lovely franchise to Music City and I had been missing out!

Well fast forward a year later….still haven’t ventured to Rita’s. Crazy, I know!

Last night I drug the SC 15 miles away from home at 7:00 at night for the infamous Rita’s experience. All the while he kept asking me “what are we getting?” The great thing about Rita’s is it is unique…this also makes it hard to describe. I kept telling him it is something like a slushie/italian water ice but I just knew I wasn’t doing it justice.

You know when you are so in love with something and you want to share your love for it with someone else? But then you get worried “what if they don’t like it?” Yeah…totally feelin that on the 15 mile drive last night.

However my worries were pointless as the SC loved the water ice. He loved it so much as we sat outside and ate it he kept saying, “We should open a franchise in Nashville”. Too bad I looked it up and costs about $200,000!

My favorite thing to do is to have them put a dollop of choc. custard on the top (they usually put it on the top and bottom but I don’t like it all mixed in with my water ice).

And my favorite flavors were there!!!

While cooking the rice (white jasmine…brown is so much better for you but I didn’t have any), I started to steam some broccoli, chop some garlic and green onions and heat about 1/2 a tablespoon of olive oil over the stove.

Once the olive oil was nice and warm I added the garlic and green onions. While those were cooking I quickly marinated some shrimp in a lovely concoction of these two salad dressings. (I don’t measure out my ingredients but I’d say I used about a tablespoon of both).

I added the shrimp to the pan and then added the snap peas. I like my snap peas crunchy so I only cooked them a few minutes.

Pile your plate with some rice, top it with the shrimp, snap pea mixture, add the broccoli to the side and you are good to go.

Bon Appetite! (or however they say it in Asia!)

tilapia, edamame, strawberries & blueberries

I absolutely love seafood but being landlocked in Nashville doesn’t leave too many affordable choices for fresh seafood. Occasionally I splurge at Whole Foods (which has the freshest/best seafood in my opinion) but normally I buy the cheap frozen stuff. I have found the trick to making it taste better is to rinse it a few times. This usually gets rid of that “fishy” taste it can sometimes have. Oh and I love to season the heck out of mine. Today I seasoned my tilapia with ginger, yellow curry powder, and a little cajun seasoning for kicks.

Think I got enough edamame? Love the frozen bags at Trader Joe’s!

As you can see from the picture my dining room table has been indefinitely turned into a grad school workstation. So I must get back to the books!

Before you leave….what did you have for lunch today?

I wandered around the store trying to figure out what would be good in these babies and this is what I purchased:

shrimp, crab meat, avocado, mango, rainbow slaw

I figure from all of these ingredients I can figure out some sort of tasty combination! I also bought some of this which I think mixed with some soy sauce should make for a delicious dipping sauce.

sweet chili sauce

What would you put in your fresh spring rolls?