Bountiful Baskets, Pad Thai and Kitchen Failures

Greetings!

This week is a Bountiful Baskets week.  With the regular basket and the guacamole pack we have even more goodies to play with.

With the produce from our basket, I now have a huge collection of yummy goodness that I need to use.  Some, like the celery bunch, I can do just about anything with.  Things like the spinach though…well…let’s just say it’ll be a new experience.  I’m thinking a ricotta spinach pasta filling…maybe spinach pasta and yogurt Alfredo…or spinach raviolis and yogurt Alfredo…hmm…we’ll have to see if there’s a grocery store run between now and then!

It’s going to be fun to cook based on a random share of food, rather than just meal planning.  It almost seems easier, limiting the possibilities of groceries. Working with new ingredients is quite fun, though.  We’ll see if they present too much of a challenge…but then, where would the adventure be if they didn’t?

Pad Thai

The first of the basket went to an improvised Pad Thai.  The recipe I used from The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles called for sprouts, shrimp, peanut oil and a few other things I’m missing in my pantry and fridge.  So with a base idea I improvised the recipe, and I’ve included my version at the bottom for your dining pleasure.   Let me tell you, it’s a keeper!  The red pepper was amazing and was a great counter to the hot peanut sauce!!

Kitchen Failures

It’s been a while since I’ve had an epic kitchen failure.  My most memorable failure happened not long after I moved out of my parents’ home.  You would think that something like chicken in a crock pot would be something so simple it would be idiot proof.  I’m here to tell you that it wasn’t.  I still remember three days of scrubbing carbonized chicken out of that poor crock pot.  The experience taught me that simple doesn’t always mean it’s guaranteed to turn out, and that while crock pot liners may be on the expensive side, they’re more than worth their weight in gold.

I’ve heard of other memorable failures involving delicious smelling casseroles interred to the garbage thanks to shattered Pyrex more than once; then there’s another of my favorites, where I ran out of sugar while making a double batch of jalapeno jelly and substituted Splenda for the rest…this only works if you have the right pectin.  Lucky for me the jelly is used mostly as a barbeque sauce foundation or meat sauce, so the runny jelly was less detrimental that, say, a fruit jelly would have been.

I’m not as adventurous as my husband when it comes to throwing together a recipe, but I’d like to think it’s my style rather than fear of failure.  Our mantra is “if all else fails, there’s always pizza.”  We’ve failed to that more often than I can remember.  Not all of my failures are memorable, but the ones that are make great stories!

I’d love to hear any of yours if you’d like to share!  Not all kitchen adventures turn out well.  If they did, it wouldn’t be an adventure!

Eat Happy, and never fear failure!  There is always pizza!

Recipe:

Pad Thai

·         Olive oil (1/8 C -1/4C)

·         1 Chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces

·         1-2 cloves garlic, minced

·         1 bell pepper, chopped

·         2 eggs, lightly beaten

·         ¼ C peanut butter

·         4 T fish sauce or soy sauce

·         Hot  sauce

·         Garnish: bean sprouts, red pepper flakes, peanuts (chopped)

~Heat oil in a non-stick skillet or wok until it shimmers and just starts to smoke

~Add chicken and cook, stirring constantly, until cooked (the smaller the pieces, the faster they cook)

~Add garlic until aromatic (maybe 30 seconds)

~Add the bell pepper, stirring constantly; cook about 1 minute

~Pour egg in the pan; stir constantly (there’s a rhythm here).  Break up any clumps of egg that might form.  Egg should cook within a minute or so; when the egg is cooked…

~Add the peanut butter, fish sauce and hot sauce, stir constantly until the peanut butter is creamy and saucy

~Dish up, and top with any of the garnishes