Vegetable Lo Mein

I’m finally back with a post, yay! I have finished all my testing and dr/hospital appts until mid August. Hooray. My lip is healing nicely, and it looks like, as of now, I do not have sjogren’s syndrome (thank God). But since I’m borderline on the test results for sjogren’s, I have to go see the rheumatologist every 6 months for blood work to make sure I don’t develop it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. There’s another autoimmune disease to check off on the list. I wonder what they’ll test for next.

After all of the tests and appointments, I’m slowly easing my way back into the kitchen, starting with simple, all-in-one meals. I have a whole list of delicious-sounding recipes that I want to make; hopefully I can get them knocked out soon.

This recipe originally comes from a Cook’s Illustrated cookbook from a recipe for pork lo mein. Mr. Surly and I love veggie lo mein noodles, but the local Chinese take out lo mein makes us both horribly sick. So for the past year I have been trying in vain to find a decent recipe for lo mein noodles. Some recipes call for oyster sauce or fish sauce. I don’t know why, but just the sound of those sauces grosses me out. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a big fan of sea food that tastes fishy. Yuk. It goes back to my childhood and a mini shark fish named Sharky, that my dad loved and us kids hated, who came back from the dead . *shiver* But that’s another story, perhaps for another day.

Spicy Peanut Butter Marinated Chicken

I’ve been all about easy meals recently. I saw this recipe and decided to make it since it was easy and sounded flavorful. Yes, it needs to marinate for hours, but I can handle flipping a bag every couple hours for an entrée that will cook up fast and not dirty any dishes. Oh my, does this marinade smell amazing. Every time I opened the fridge I caught a whiff of this and would immediately start salivating. I couldn’t wait to grill this up. The chicken tasted good, it was tender and incredibly moist, but I wish the flavor had been stronger. It wasn’t bad, I just expected more because it smelled so incredible while marinating. Maybe next time I’ll let it marinate overnight instead of all day.

Bourbon Chicken

I love Chinese food. I hate that it is usually loaded with sodium and a lot of the meat is deep fried. About an hour or so after eating Chinese take-out I’m usually regretting my decision due to stomach pains. Even before all my GI issues started last year I began making my own Chinese food. I scoured the internet for healthy make-at-home versions of Chinese take-out. I found this recipe and, over time, slowly tweaked it to this version.

Since we are not juice drinkers, I like to buy apple juice boxes (look for 100% juice; Mott’s and Trader Joe’s brands are my faves) so that I don’t waste a large bottle of juice. Definitely one our our favorite meals, this dish pops up often in our menu rotation. I love it because it’s easy and you can use any veggies you want. Sometimes I buy the ready cook stir fry asian veggies from Trader Joe’s. It doesn’t get any easier than just tossing in the precut veggies; all I have to do is cut up the chicken.

The chicken can be cut into chunks before cooking, but because I detest handling raw meat, I opt to cut it after it’s mostly cooked. I'm less grossed out this way.

I prefer to serve this over noodles, especially wide rice noodles, since they soak up all the yummy sauce and cook quicker than brown rice. The vegetables could also be sauted in a separate pan and added after the chicken has simmered in the sauce, but I'm lazy and I usually don't want to dirty another dish.