Chop Sticks, to Taste

It's summer time, and that means unlimited access to a fully-stocked kitchen. That, coupled with the mounting anticipation of having to cook every meal for myself in Scotland (who needs a meal plan when the supermarkets have haggas?) means that I could really benefit from learning a few recipes. My hunt for a fun  recipe program for my PC may appear in a later post (sources report that the PC culinary app market far exceeds Mac equivalents; take that Apple-lovers), but for now, I'll focus on the few new dishes I've been cooking up this summer. They're Asian-cooking-themed and can easily be done vegetarian. Enjoy!

This side of chicken-less chicken goes great with the chicken-stock soup behind.

Vegetable Fried Rice
Quick Recipe: Cook some brown rice (white's less healthy, they say). Fry oil in a skillet, cook your onions here as desired. Fry in some eggs, mixing to keep them from becoming an omelet. Add in the rest of your chopped veggies, using soy sauce liberally and adding ginger/garlic paste to season.

Spaghetti Lo Mein
Quick Recipe: Cook spaghetti. Then, pretty much make the Vegetable Fried Rice, except use noodles. In our variation, we used more pea pods and peppers. Also, you'll want some minced garlic.

Egg Drop Soup
Quick Recipe: Mix about 1 cup of chicken stock with 1.5 tablespoons of cornstarch; mix that well. Separately, dump the rest of the stock into a pot and bring that to a boil. Stir in a little bit of ginger and chopped chives into the pot. Beat 1 to 2 beat eggs. Using a fork, drizzle bits of egg into the pot; they'll cook. Finally, stir in your cornstarch mixture to thicken.

Rice Noodle Stir Fry
Quick Recipe: Yep, it's the Vegetable Fried Rice again. I went with more mushrooms and peas for this. Don't bother boiling the noddles; just soak them in hot water for about 20 minutes before dropping them into the skillet.

There we go: Four yummy recipes. All they take are a bunch of fresh vegetables, plus super-common ingredients like Kosher chicken stock and ginger paste. I'm sure I'll have that stocked in my Scotland kitchen. No problem.