Day 63- Very Veggie Fried Rice

Or as roommate #2 calls it, fly lice. I suspect he might watch too much anime...

Fried Rice

• 6C prepared rice (3 scoops in my Rice Cooker)
• 1/2 zucchini, diced
• 1 sm onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, crushed/ chopped (can sub "fresh in oil", powder if desperate)
• 1 carrot, peeled and diced
• 1 sm sweet potato, peeled and diced
• 1/2 sm cabbage, chopped
• 1/2C frozen peas
• 1/4 C oil (estimate)
• 1/2C soy sauce (est.)
• 1/2tsp powdered ginger (fresh if you have it)
• 4 oz meat or replacement (I used the seitan), diced
• glug of vinegar

heat most of the oil in a wok, then add sweet potato, carrot, zucchini. Let them brown on one side a little, then add onion, cabbage, garlic, peas, powdered ginger, vinegar. Mix well, and cook until the cabbage starts to wilt. On high heat it should take about 5 minutes. Add the "meat" and cook, stirring a lot to keep from burning, until "meat" is warm through about 3-5 minutes. If at any point in the veggie cooking process things start to stick, add the rest of the oil (or more...).

Turn the burner down to low or medium low. Dump in rice- I just plopped mine out of the pot from the cooker. Break up the rice and start mixing it into the veggies. It doesn't have to all be separate, but you don't want huge clumps. When it's pretty well mixed together, add soy sauce, and mix some more. Keep cooking over low heat until warm-through.

Options and fixes-

1. If you use pre-cooked meat, dice and add just like in the recipe.
2. If you use raw meat or tofu, the chopped "meat" goes in the pan first- and make sure it's cooked before you add the veggies
3. You can use just about any veggie in this. I probably won't use the peas again.
4. If you eat eggs, I think they go in between the veggies and the rice, but you'll have to look that one up.
5. If you want to bring it to work for lunch and not have anyone know it's homemade, you can pick up Chinese takeout boxes at bigger Asian grocers, and some general restaurant supply stores. Also check Costco. This works for other left-overs, too.
6. 6C prepared rice and about 8C raw veggies fed me a measured 2C portion, plus fed assorted roommates and guests, with enough left for probably two more meals for me.

• This "recipe" is pretty flexible. Just don't put together things that taste gross together (beer and ice cream, anyone?), and you should be safe.

So that was dinner. I read that in Japan a tightly packed bento is assumed to be about 1 calorie per ml. Using that in-exact method, my dinner was just under 500 calories. I suspect the number is off a bit, but not by more than about 100. So I either need to figure out how to eat more at a time, or eat more often. Or figure out more calorie dense foods (and the real counts of what i'm eating... ). I hate counting- it never leads to anything good.

For breakfast/ lunch, I re-did the taco filling from two days ago. It was yummy. But again, probably not enough. It filled the plate, though...

So my first habit change either has to be snacks before and after sleep, or carting snax with me everywhere I go. I suspect the follow through on bedtime snacking will be easier to manage, so I'll start with that.