Tasty Tuesday: Peanutty Jap Chae Recipe with Soba Noodles

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I updated my recipes page. All recipes are waist-friendly, most are vegetarian or vegan, many are raw or macrobiotic – there are tons of options. I will be updating the layout of the page soon (I hope) to make it more navigable and sortable, but for now I am so happy that ALL my recipes are actually listed. Go look! There are 214 recipes on there as of today. I am really happy that I have that as a history of my cooking for the last 3 years. Here is #214.

Korean Recipe Rehab: Healthy Jap Chae Recipe

Last night we ate in, and I cooked. I cooked! I have not truly cooked in ages and I have missed it so. I read Women’s Health this weekend and they had a recipe for Jap Chae (a traditional Korean recipe – it’s a noodle dish) and I wanted to make my own version of it. I used to make Jap Chae all the time, but that recipe is different from this one. It’s lower calorie, but not as filling.

Since I’m not trying to lose weight I’m going to stick with this soba noodle jap chae recipe (which has a peanutty Pad Thai twist). Here is my Very Low calorie Jap Chae recipe. The one I’m about to post is still not that hefty either! It is certainly a waist-friendly recipe. (Note the options in parentheses after ingredients that can make it a lower calorie recipe – the mods are simple and shouldn’t change the taste.)

I opted to do this in typical Maggie fashion: a fusion Asian dish – soba noodles (Japanese), jap chae sauce (Korean recipe), and the addition of peanut butter (Thai) – it was awesome. Bobby agreed. This dish is even kind of macrobiotic; I approve of eggs on a macrobiotic diet.

Peanutty Jap Chae Soba Noodles (AKA Spunky Soba with a Twist)

Ingredients (serves 3-4, depending on appetites)

  • 8 ounces soba noodles
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon (organic turbinado) sugar
  • 1 teaspoon chili flakes (could do less)
  • 3 tablespoons PB2 or 2 tablespoons peanut butter (could do less but this makes it tasty)
  • 1-2 tablespoons peanut oil (could do less; could use sesame oil if you don’t have peanut)
  • 1/2 large onion, chopped
  • 5 cloves of garlic, crushed and roughly minced (could do less)
  • 2 medium carrots, sliced
  • 2 (non-recalled) eggs
  • 3-4 celery stalks, sliced
  • 1 medium zucchini, julienned

Method

  1. Prepare the veggies. You will add them in the order listed above.
  2. Prepare the noodles according to the package. (Usually boil for 4 minutes then drain.)
  3. Mix the sauce while the noodles are cooking: soy sauce, sugar, chili flakes, PB2/peanut butter. (Do not need to dissolve the sugar yet.)
  4. Heat the peanut oil on high heat in a wok or large pan. Add the onion, garlic, and carrots. Saute for 3 minutes.
  5. Beat the eggs with a fork. Push the veggies to one side of the pan; add the eggs and scramble them there. It is ok if everything mixes together.
  6. Add the other veggies: celery and zucchini. Saute for 3-4 more minutes.
  7. Add the noodles (drained) and the sauce; stir a few times then turn off the heat. You can continue to mix to make sure everything is distributed evenly.
  8. Serve! This jap chae recipe is perfect alone: protein, carbs, and fat. Yum yum yum.

For dessert I had grapes; Bobby had a nectarine. I haven’t been into sweets lately. So strange.

What’s your favorite noodle dish?

Here are some of my other noodly recipes:

Enjoy, bookmark, share 🙂 Let me know if you make any of them!

P.S. Did anyone notice that Chrome had an update? I like it.

Papaya Salad Rocks My Socks

Free yoga mat giveaway! (And hot sauce discount.) Now: Papaya Salad. Papaya salad is in both Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. My favoritefavorite is the Vietnamese version of papaya salad, but I suppose this is kind of a mix of both.

I love papaya salad. So much so that I had it for dinner 2 nights in a row.

Ingredients and Method

  • green papaya
  • tomatoes
  • shrimp, sauteed in peanut oil with soy sauce and chili powder
  • dressing: fish sauce, vinegar, peanut butter, soy sauce, honey, hot sauce
  • topping: PB2
  • MIX

To slice the papaya into such tiny strips (which is the only way to enjoy green papaya), I first used my mandoline to slice the papaya in thin strips. Then I just cut up the strips. It didn’t take long at all.

Papaya salad is a good reward and a great way to celebrate…

Celebrate finishing my wedding invitations that is! Almost all of them were mailed out today.

I know I owe you that explanation for why I suddenly have more time. The truth is, I don’t really have that much more time. I cut back to part time at my job and I am taking a class in the evenings, but the class ends up taking up 4-5 hours of my night… so I have about the same amount of free time as I did before. But I love the class. It’s a linguistics class.

Have you ever taken a class after you graduated college? Do you like papaya salad?

Vegetarians Beware. Yummy Thai Food.

I mentioned yesterday that my very cool boss bought us lunch, but I neglected to tell you what we ordered! We ended up ordering delivery from Spice over on 8th Avenue. Spice is a very yummy Thai restaurant. I have been to the location at Union Square and I really liked it.

I ordered the Hawaiian Ginger and Pineapple Stir-fry (with onions, carrots, and mushrooms) and I ordered it with beef. Would I have preferred this to be organic beef? Of course. Did that fact that it wasn’t (I assume) stop me? Absolutely not. It was yummy and exactly what I was craving.

I also ordered the spring rolls (fried). I had one of them and gave the other to Bobby. They came with a very good sweet sauce. I have no idea what was in it.

Last night I used the leftover beef to make a stirfry with some veggies.

I have been using frozen veggies because they make cooking prep so so so much faster. I don’t have that much time to cook, and time will deter me from cooking (I’ve been doing takeout a lot). I cooked these in some butter and spices. Yum!

Are there any tricks you do to make cooking easier? Chopping veggies in advance? Making big batches and eating leftovers?

P.S. I had another acupuncture appointment today and I will definitely update about that soon. I need to sleep now!

Anniversary Day :)

Today is our anniversary!  3 years 🙂  Still not sure what we’re doing tonight, but I’ll fill you in later…

Review: Cassava Chips

These are really good!  They have double the fiber of normal potato chips.  Bobby got them at Whole Foods and I had to try them.  I’m guessing I had about 1 serving (23 chips is the serving size, 150 calories, 6 grams fat, 2 grams fiber).  No preservatives in these guys either, and 70%+ organic ingredients.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I woke up before the alarm and got in a lovely 40 minutes of yoga from yogadownload.com.  Thanks so much Julia for recommending this!  I also got a rec from Heather to check out yogatoday.com, so I’ll let you know what i think of that too.

Breakfast was a standard – 1/2 cup oats, 1 cup water plus a splash, and a whole sliced banana.  Add in at the end: 3/4 cup soy milk.

Mid-morning I snacked on an apple, then went for my lunch walk.

Lunch was a sandwich made of 1/4 cup lowfat ricotta and 1.5 tablespoons of olallieberry jam (all out now – I scraped the inside of the jar).

On the side I had a salad – 1/2 an apple (the other half is in Bobby’s lunch), broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, onions, vegan nacho cheese, topped with olive oil and lemon juice.

And an apple on the side (love apples).

Snack was the same as yesterday – a vanilla Chobani Greek yogurt and a BSI muffin, and later another apple.  Bobby and I really like these muffins.  I think there are only 6 left and we started with 16!

Bobby and I went to guitar center to look at things… He’s getting me a piano!

We went out for dinner – the pre-anniversary dinner – to a Thai place called Blue Mango.  We got 3 things and shared them all.

  • Shrimp Papaya Salad
  • Chicken Pad See Ew (thick noodles stirfried with a few veggies) – kind of oily but that didn’t stop me.  So good.
  • Mushroom Mountain (self explanatory name; also had baby corn, bamboo shoots, and tofu)
  • Brown rice

So I was very very full after this meal.  Definitely a splurge.  It certainly was delicious.

Can’t wait until tonight… thanks for all of the lovely suggestions!