Veggie Chow Mein

I wrote this post a few weeks ago and have been haunted by the absolute terror that was the picture I shared of it. 

Behold, the ugliest picture of the tastiest food ever:




































We should perhaps establish now that there is an inverse relationship between the quality of the food photograph and the quality of the actual food. For example, my cinnamon rolls are practically famous, but they are also impossible to photograph. Could it be the prison-like windows in our apartment? The fluorescent lighting? The camera phone? Who can say... But it's true. Ugly picture = yummy food. 

Maybe I could have stepped back... But that would have exposed that I had already tossed it into the Pyrex. Whoops. Not planning ahead. 

But I'm all about spontaneity over here! 

That said, I have made the recipe quite a few times since then and this time I grabbed my bowl and carried it around the house, looking for perfect light while Emilie screamed for me from the kitchen (look for me before you scream for me! you know i'm in the house! i was with you two seconds ago!) until I captured this: 

A better, but still completely out of focus shot of my food. I'm just not cut out for iphone food styling. Also, the inverse relationships still stands. This did not taste nearly as good as the chow mein in the ugly shot! I'm pretty sure I completely left out the rice vinegar... Oh well. Follow the actual recipe and you shall have ugly and delicious food in no time! 

So back to the original post... 

The other night we were on a walk when the craving for chow mein struck. Being a moron, I thought CHOW mein and LO mein were the same thing, so I quickly googled a recipe for the LO variety, headed to Sprouts and stocked up on literally every ingredient in the recipe because I had nothing but Indian spices in my cabinet and 10 pounds of carrots in my fridge. Made the recipe, took a huge bite and yummmm....  not chow mein. 

So the next night I made this. And the next day I ate it reheated. And then today I made a double batch and ate half of it straight out of the pot. I have no shame. 

The first time I made this I used the leftover veggies from my lo mein shopping trip, which were not really right for this recipe, but worked, so that should be reassuring if you're already overwhelmed by the prospect of buying stuff like sesame oil that you might not ever use again. But, if you're like me, you'll eat this for every meal every day for a week until your pores start leaking sriracha. Because guys. I'm 10 years behind and just discovered sriracha and yeah. It's that good. 

Veggie Chow Mein (adapted from The Wanderlust Kitchen) 

• 8 oz Spaghetti

• ¼ Cup low sodium Tamari or soy sauce (I like tamari because it's actually made from soy beans, whereas soy sauce is made from wheat and other random stuff to make it taste like authentic SOY sauce)

• 2 cloves garlic

• 2 teaspoons coconut or brown sugar

• ½ cup water, reserved from pasta water  

• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar

• 1 teaspoon Sriracha

• 2 teaspoons sesame oil (or vegetable/coconut/olive oil)

• 4 ounces brown mushrooms, sliced

• 1 cup snow peas, cut into large pieces (or whole, but that's annoying to eat) 

• 2 large carrots, cut into matchsticks

• 1 cup shredded cabbage

• 2 green onions, chopped thinly
• Sesame seeds 

1. Cook pasta according to package directions. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water and then drain, toss with a bit of oil and set aside. 
2. Blend together garlic, sugar, vinegar and tamari or soy sauce and set aside. 
3. Heat the sesame oil in a dutch oven or skillet over medium-high heat. Add vegetables and cook until tender. 
4. Add noodles, sauce and reserved water and toss regularly until liquid has nearly all reduced. Add sesame seeds and eat straight from pot. Or a bowl. Your choice. 

I hope that you all try this and love it as much as I do. Like I said, it's easy to mix up with whatever vegetables you have in your fridge. This will definitely be a clean-out-the-fridge staple around here! 

Because it's been a while...

since I bloggily complained about my hair. Bloggily is a word, right? It is now! Hashtag that. #bloggily

Anyway, welcome to 2016. The weather is brisk and smoggy.

Back to my hair. Those of you who follow me on Instagram are lucky enough to get a play-by-play of my hair's issues/adventures. There was this one day a week or two ago when it was amazing.

I mean, this is the kind of stuff my hair dreams are made of. Shiny, somehow magically hiding my severe root situation... actually looking good in a desperately-trying-to-avoid-the-baby-pulling-it-all-out updo... yes. (Can we just also notice my teeth and eyebrows? And skin? Can this be my new license picture??)

But in reality, within a few hours it was this: 

Now maybe this doesn't look so bad, but it was. I was like the sad matted puppy in that ASPA ad. I can literally hear Sarah McLachlan right now. Ugh it hurts just to look at it. And this is normal for me! Almost every night I find a dreadlock or two hiding in the depths of my hair. I have a ton of fine hair. So I'm never going to look like Kate Beckinsale, but I'm also never going to be Gary Busey so it's sort of okay whatever. For some twisted reason only a middle child younger sister can understand, my sister's favorite memory of me is of my matted, dreading hair at a bowling party in like fifth grade. This was right before I chopped it off. And THAT was right before hormones took over and my hair refused to ever grow again. Yay...

Well obviously it grew again because look how long it was in the picture way up top! Lovely. But painful. Pretty for like an hour if I was lucky and alone, but really just being tugged at all day and matted by my clothes... It wasn't worth it, you know? And it wasn't healthy. It was dead and it was dragging me down.

So half a bottle of wine later:

Ignore the shower. Apparently the previous tenant ran an underground nursing home out of this bathroom. Also ignore my chin zit. Of course you probably didn't even notice it until I said that... ummm.... Bra? 

Okay anyway so I chopped my hair off and obviously did an AMAZING job. (Chad literally said "it's super even" and then walked away laughing hysterically when he saw it) But I don't care. It's soft! The bleached, dead, stringy and tangled ends are gone! And so is 2015 because if I can just squeeze this into half a paragraph: 2015 sucked. I had a baby and like a record-breaking labor and delivery of said baby and she is amazing and her sister is amazing and I discovered nursing bras FINALLY and got to be in the most amazing wedding ever (more on that later), and yadda yadda yadda, but overall the year sucked and that's all I'm going to say about it. 

Welcome to 2016. My hair is short, as are the days. Sriracha is on the menu and I haven't seen my floor in weeks. I'm so glad to have you here. 

#bloggily yours,

Katrina

Only mostly dead

Oh hey look, a blog. It looks dead. Maybe I should poke it with a stick.

...

Nope, only mostly dead.

Ah well... at least the baby thought I was funny. 

essentially homeless...

Where did I go, you ask? Oh, just to my corner of the cardboard box.

That's not really true. While we are technically homeless right now due to the unexpected dramatic suicide of the air conditioning unit at our former apartment, we are actually living quite comfortably in a guest house up the mountain from where we lived before.

It's cozy. Like "700 sq ft" (we're guessing more like 400-500 sq ft) cozy. But we're small people and the yard is big and the mansion on the other side of the yard is generally open to visitors, so we're happy.

But we still don't have a home, you know? And that's stressful. It's hard to feel like a good parent when you can't provide a proper home for your kids, and really hard to explain to your three year old why you're moving again for the second time in five months and why she probably won't see her new friends at the complex again. And sometimes she decides to protest by reverting back to a naughty puppy who pees all over the place. And I don't know about you, but when I feel like a crappy parent I start to feel like I'm failing as a wife and then the whole infrastructure of our family just goes to shit. I mean hell. I mean... gah.

Anyway, we should have internet tomorrow. For now I am able to get it up at the main house, but my computer is almost always hijacked for Wild Kratts so blogging gets put on the back burner.

Which reminds me, we don't even have a stove in this guest house! But you know what that has taught me? Trader Joes frozen vegan burritos are the bomb. And you can totally justify eating chips and salsa for breakfast as long as you've already had your coffee and maybe a piece of fruit.

So there you have it: the reason for my absence.

Here's a picture of my cute threenager to make the post seem legit:

Sleep Deprivation-Inspired Haikus

This is what you get
when I write a sleep haiku.
hey, it's not half bad.

...

Sleep is for the weak
And I have spaghetti arms.
I'm going to bed.

...

One Two Three Four Five
One Two Three Four Five Six Sev
One Two Three Four Five

...

Time to go to bed.
But the bedroom is so far.
Time to go to couch.

So typical...

I have two sick kiddos, one of whom is teething, and the walls of our rental all flooded with backed up air conditioning condensation and are going to have to be cut out and rebuilt, which might mean we have to move out... so I've decided to push the launch back another day.

Thus is life.

And until then, this is cute:

Caturday

I told myself I wouldn't blog on weekends, but then I also told myself I would blog every weekday so... yeah. Here we are.

Caturday is a ridiculous concept but that's what you get when I blog on the weekends.

This illustration (by Gemma Correll) sort of sums up my life perfectly. Now, if the scribbed cat also had a flabby belly and disproportionately toned shoulders from carrying babies (in every sense of the word) we would be set. 

Happy weekend, meow.