4 of 5

It was a nice day. I got some cooking done. And it ended up being good cooking, if a bit calorie-expensive. I even got to play The Legend of Drizzt. There was some upset this morning over the first chapter of Beginning Operations of the Sector General series, but the cooking and playing outweigh it.

Nightmares: If I had any, I don’t remember them. I don’t remember any dreams, in fact. This can only be a good thing.

Cooking: This was a fun day for that. I made a quickie Pad Thai dish that was rather too heavy on the shrimp meat… and sauce… and peanuts. Or too light on the noodles. I also made my very first curry from Quick & Easy Thai, a bright yellow chicken and potatoes curry. It managed to taste just like the ones I’ve had in restaurants, which is a relief since I can guarantee the GF-ness of home-cooked meals, as well as the absence of guar gum (which causes me a lot of internal plumbing pain).

Here’s Pad Thai for Newbies (serves 2):

1. Prep stuff:

   • Boil a pot of water, turn off heat, drop in rice noodles, let sit for five minutes, drain.

   • Heat a bowl of water in microwave, dump in 4oz of frozen cooked shrimp, let sit for five minutes, drain.

   • Beat one large egg.

   • Coarsely chop 1/8 to 1/4 cup of dry roasted peanuts.

   • Wash 1/2 cup of bean sprouts, if you didn’t forget them like I did.

   • Measure out 4 Tbsp of pad thai sauce.

2. Heat 2 tbsp of oil (peanut oil is my favorite, but canola oil will do) in the largest frying pan. Dump in shrimp. Let them heat up for 1 minute, then push them to the side and dump in the beaten egg. Let it set, and then scramble it up into pieces.

3. Dump in noodles. Let heat for a few minutes, then dump in sauce and mix it up into the noodles while folding in the shrimp and egg.

4. Dump in the bean sprouts and the chopped peanuts.

5. Eat for two.

Preparing food for cooking is somewhat hypnotic for me. For a while, you’re just in a world of chopping stuff up, measuring it, maybe doing some preliminary other prep. It’s comfortingly predictable and relaxing.

I’m going to try the Pad Thai recipe in Quick & Easy Thai at some point, because the sauce from Thai Kitchen is a bit too sweet for me these days.

Books: You can see me rant on Goodreads about chapter 1 of Beginning Operations. I’m going to continue reading, but I may alternate between it and Homelands, the first in the Legend of Drizzt series.

Schedule: It’s kinda here? Dinner I cooked a bit earlier than usual, and I’m going to shower tomorrow morning. Sigh. And do laundry. sigh.

Link of the day: Wil Wheaton’s vegetable soup recipe. I want to see if I can turn it into a slow cooker beef stew, because I’m crazy like that (and it would definitely involve halving the amount of liquid).