College Student Cooking {Thai}

Dear Kate,

While I was out shopping this week, I browsed the aisles for some healthy, college friendly products.  I am thrilled that you are broadening your horizons with international foods and taking a liking to them.  There is a brand that is found mostly in health food stores like Sprouts called Tasty Bites.  Their products are mainly Indian and Thai flavors and they use real ingredients, no salt, MSG, preservatives, colors, ect.  Take a look sometime and try some of the products out.

The line I recommend is the simmer sauce.  With these, you use your own brown rice and fresh vegetables for incredibly frugal and nourishing meals.  A 7 oz pouch of simmer sauce is $1.69, the package says it serves 2, but I can easily stretch it to 3 or even 4 servings with vegetables.  There were 5 different sauce recipes available including; Pad Thai, Satay Partay, Good Korma, Tikka Masala and Rogan Josh.

Here is a recipe I have come up with, using what I have on hand.  You might just use 2 or 3 vegetables, or throw in a scrambled egg or chicken even. Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, asparagus, green beans, celery would all work good here.  You would most likely leave out the cilantro and look forward to having a refrigerator bigger than a nightstand one day.

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 small red bell pepper, diced
2 carrots, sliced
1 cup snow peas, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 pouch Satay Partay
1/2 cup water
3 green onions, finely sliced
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 cups cooked rice noodles

Heat oil in pot, add pepper, carrots and snow peas.  Cook 7 minutes, until carrots are just tender.  Add salt, sauce, 1/2 cup water and noodles.  Simmer for 2 minutes. If the sauce has gotten too thick, add more water.  Mix in onions and cilantro, chopped peanuts would be nice too.  If you want to replace the noodles with rice, cook rice separately and serve up vegetables with sauce over the rice.

Links; Monday Mania, Happy Homemaker Monday, Menu Plan Monday