Food and Planning

Labor day is fast approaching! Do y'all know what that means?

Well, I suppose it means a lot of things, but in general, it means that Kat and I (along with our pianists Aryo and Don) will begin teaching in the OMA program again. This will be our fourth year and by golly are we prepared. Why? (I'm sure you are all asking yourselves). Two reasons, because of the through training session we went through in May (finally!) and because we sat down and actually planned out the first two quarters last night! Let me tell you, it feel great to be prepared!!!!

Oh yea, and we cooked an awesome nearly fat free veggie stir fry!

Photos and recipe:

Everything prepped and ready to go!


Adding the rest of the veggies!


We were disorganized!


But now we are organized!


Veggie Stir Fry:

Ingredients:

Rice or Asian Noodles of some sort, cooked (of course)
Sesame Seeds
Sesame Oil (only a tiny bit, just for the taste)
water (to stir fry the veggies)
Chopped:
-Onion
-Carrots
-Celery
-Cabbage
-Red and Green Bell Peppers
-Broccoli
(about 6-8 cups total, and you could use any combination that you fancy,
these are just the veggies I had on hand.)

For the Sauce (adapted by me from the New McDougall Cookbook):
1 1/2 cups unsweetened apple juice
1/4 soy sauce
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 tablespoon dried ginger
4 cloves crushed garlic
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

Okay, in wok (or a large fry pan) toast the sesame seeds until they are golden brown. Remove and set aside.

Add a tiny bit of sesame oil to the wok, heat it, and add the long cooking veggies (in our case, the onions, carrots and celery). Cook for about 5 min., adding water as needed.

Add the other veggies (we held out the broccoli, because we like it crunchy, not soggy) and add water as needed (so the veggies don't stick to the pan).

When the veggies are nearly done, add the sauce (which you should have mixed already, DOH!) and cook for another 5 minutes, or until it thickens to your liking.

Serve over whole grain rice, soba noodles or udon noodles. (We used udon noodles, but only because I thought I bought soba noodles. DOH! DOH!)

Note: Kat did all of the chopping and most of the stir-frying. I made the sauce and the noodles. Thanks for doing the hard work Kat!)