Happy Hanuchristmakwanzivus.
Family and travel. No posts today.
Make the most of the holiday.
Cheap Lo Mein
- Image via Wikipedia
I’ve never been a fan of making Chinese food. It always seems to involve ingredients I don’t stock and several hours of prep work. It’s not usually worth the hassle. Several months ago, I began to notice that, when we went out for Chinese, all of my kids had the same favorite dish: lo mein. It would be nice to be able to have the dish without having to pay restaurant prices, so I did some research and came up with a quick, easy, and cheap recipe for lo mein. It takes 3 dishes and 20 minutes.
Lo mein has 3 components: noodles, sauce, and the rest.
Noodles
I use spaghetti noodles. I leave them a bit al dente, because they will spend some time in the hot lo mein sauce, which will cook them a bit more. 1 box of noodles is enough for two meals for my family of 5.
Sauce
- Chicken broth, 4 cups
- Rice wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons
- Sesame oil, 2 tablespoons
- Red pepper flakes to taste, about 1 teaspoon
- Soy sauce, 1/4 cup
- Sugar, 1 teaspoon
Mix it all in a bowl, then wisk until the sugar is dissolved. Nuke until hot. I do this while the wok is heating up and the noodles are cooking, so the pepper flavor has a better chance to blend with the liquid.
The Rest
- Sesame oil
- Minced garlic
- 1 Onion, cut to whatever size you like
- Protein, chopped
- Vegetables, chopped
- Ginger powder, to taste
Chop everything first. When you start cooking, you will be busy cooking, not prepping.
Get the pan hot. Splash in some oil, then toss in the meat when the oil is hot. I usually use chicken, but any meat you like–or even no meat at all–will work.
When the meat is almost completely cooked, add the onions and ginger. Stir constantly.
When the onions are barely translucent, start adding the vegetables, in the order they will take to cook. You can use any vegetable you want. Broccoli, carrots, and peas work well. Whenever the grocery store has a sale on stir-fry vegetable packs, we stock up for about $2/bag. Just defrost ’em before you start cooking, so it’s possible to chop them up, and they work great. Otherwise, any vegetables you have on hand will work. Add them, and stir constantly.
At some point, toss in a spoonful of minced garlic. When depends on how much garlic you want to taste. The earlier you add it, the tamer the flavor.
When it’s all cooked, spoon in some lo mein sauce and toss to coat. Remove from heat.
Serve
Spoon the rest of the sauce over the noodles and toss. You will have extra sauce, so don’t add it all at once. You want the noodles coated, not floating.
Combine the noodles with the stir-fry and serve.
If you buy the noodles, vegetables, and meat on sale, this meal costs about $10 to make. Like I said, that’s two complete meals for 5 people, 3 of whom have adult appetites. The rice wine vinegar and sesame oil aren’t cheap, but you don’t use much, so the cost per meal is negligible.
Taco Seasoning
A few weeks ago, Edward at If You Can Read, You Can Cook sent me a jar of his taco seasoning to try.
Yum.
He’s got four flavors: hot, medium, mild, and sweet cumin. Since I’m the only one in my family who likes spicy food, I asked for the sweet cumin.
This is a jar of pure taco flavor, without any of the burn. Tacos, burritos, omelettes, or Rice Krispies, nearly anything could benefit from a dose of this stuff.
Seriously, we’re done with the little paper packets from the grocery store. From now on, Edward is getting our taco seasoning business. We do large batches of tacos 2-3 times a month, so I’m looking forward to trying the other flavors, too.
http://www.ifyoucanread.com/if-you-can-read-you-can-cook-taco-seasonings-original-page-2/ I was not compensated for this post, other than getting a free jar to try. It’s just good.
Charity
Charitable giving is down. Predictions have been that donations would be up this year, but the reality appears to be otherwise.
I have an admittedly low sample size; I don’t talk to many charities and the 2012 donation amounts aren’t out, yet. The one I do have access to says that donations this year are among the lowest in memory.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a bit busy cleaning out a hoader’s house. Last weekend, we tackled one of the stashes of toiletries. We came out with several cases of soap, shampoo, blankets, towels, and sleeping pads.
For the right charity, an unopened case of bar soap is better than gold.
When our new-found treasures were delivered to Mary’s Place, I’m told the nuns wept. Mary’s Place is a transitional housing complex attached to a homeless shelter. They were totally and completely out of hygiene products for the residents.
Something that means nothing to me meant the world to someone else. I was just looking for a useful place to dump the stuff we can’t use or don’t want to store, and I made a nun cry.*
People need so much, and so much of what they need is trivial to my family. A blanket? A bar of soap? That’s nothing…to me.
As we go through the rest of the stuff, our focus will be different. Instead of, “Can we sell this at a garage sale, or should we donate it?”, it’s going to be “Can someone get more value out of this than we’ll get by selling it?” We can sell a comforter for $5, or give it to someone who needs to stay warm in the winter.
I’ll forgo $5 for that warm fuzzy feeling.
*Check one off the bucket list.
Oklahoma Tornadoes
My heart goes out to all of the victims of yesterday’s tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.
I couldn’t imagine hearing that my kids’ school was demolished around them. Twenty or more dead children in any community is devastating.
On top of the sheer horror of dead children, the town is nearly wiped off of the map. Will they rebuild or cut their losses?
I hope everyone in the town was well insured, but that’s never the case. There will be many in the town that will have lost everything: their homes, their families, their jobs. Family is irreplaceable, but so is your home, if you don’t have insurance. To lose it all and not even have a place to mourn….
Have you checked your insurance policy to make sure you are covered in the event of whatever natural disaster is common in your area?
To help the victims, text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. It’s the least you can do.
Related articles
Nigella Lawson and the High Cost of divorce
Heartache and heartbreak are hard enough to endure but imagine having to go through the loss of a relationship while the world looks on. Such is the high price of celebrity divorce and the latest victim is the beautiful and talented television chef, Nigella Lawson. Shocking photos of Nigella apparently being choked by her husband, Charles Saatchi, surfaced in the media following the June 9th dinner at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, London, where the incident occurred. Saatchi’s advisors urged him to humble himself and admit a public apology for the assault. Saatchi denied any wrongdoing, saying he never assaulted her and in fact, was actually removing mucous from his wife’s nose. Nigella was stunned by the admonition of “nose-picking” and his refusal to apologize. She left Saatchi and their family home in Chelsea.
The two sides continued to disagree about the pictures; Saatchi claiming it was just a “playful tiff” and Lawson hurt and humiliated by the public’s assumption of her as victim of domestic violence and her husband as her tormentor. Insult was added to injury on July 7th, when Saatchi announced his intent to divorce his wife in the media instead of directly to her. Lawson, who had been waiting for a public apology, was blind-sided by his cruel divorce announcement. Lawson and Saatchi have been married for 10 years; Saatchi has claimed that the couple had become “estranged” the last few years. Saatchi claims that he had no choice but to act publicly since his wife “failed to defend” him with a statement to the media. In fact, Lawson has remained silent at the advice of her publicist so as not to further affect their children. Lawson (53) and Saatchi (70) have three teenage children from previous marriages that they were raising together.In addition to the “he said, she said” controversy, Lawson and Saatchi will have to fight over $150 million in shared assets, including their $12 million Chelsea, West London home. Both brought substantial assets into the marriage. Charles Saatchi is worth $100 million from the high-profile, highly-successful New York advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi. Nigella Lawson is a celebrity chef, bestselling author and television star with a net worth of $15 million. By the time lawyers for both sides duke it out in court and attempt to untangle the shared assets, those net worths will be considerably less.But it’s not just a monetary cost to this celebrity divorce. Saatchi had grown increasingly resentful of his wife’s high-profile career that he helped established. It’s a common theme in celebrity couples; one partner becomes the higher earner or the more recognized celebrity and the other gets bit by that green-eyed monster, jealousy. In Nigella’s case, there is the public humiliation at the hands of someone she loves to endure. It seems that Saatchi is determined to do whatever he can to make her suffer in the media. And then there are the children; children always suffer in a divorce. It can be lessened when parents work together to keep it private and amicable. But it’s incredibly painful to have your lives dragged through the media. In this case, it is Nigella and Saatchi’s children that are paying the ultimate price.
