It's Friday night! What's for dinner?

Usually, on Friday nights, I'm tired but I feel compelled to go out or do something fun to celebrate the end of the week.

This week, it's a bit different: we drove back to Toronto from my parents' on Tuesday and I worked for the rest of the week, so I did not have a lot of time for myself.

I arrived home hungry, and determined to spend a nice and quiet evening with M. I felt like having a good meal with him and relax.

Things turned out slightly differently, as he had had lunch late this afternoon and was not hungry. So, after scratching my head to decide what to eat, I started improvising with what I had in the fridge (we did not really go grocery shopping since we came back). And I wanted to have a healthy meal.

I decided to use my new julienne peeler and made a thai-vietnamese inspired carrot salad:

2 large carrots, julienned
1 1-in piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 clove garlic, grated
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp white sugar
1/4 tsp sambal oelek
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp fish sauce
A sprinkle of dehydrated chives (fresh cilantro would have been great, but I did not have any)

The salad was very good and felt very healthy. Somehow, that little bit of sambal oelek packed a lot of punch, so I added half an avocado, cubed, to the salad and that absorbed some of the heat.

I will make that salad again, and hopefully, it will be a more planned affair. But I'm impressed that, combined, these very simple ingredients made a very tasty salad. Vive le vendredi!