I recently went through a love affair with mung bean noodles — you know, the skinny white rolled up noodles that come in the pink nylon string packages. I love those things, and they are so easy to make I can have a savory stir-fry ready in about 20 minutes. I start soaking the noodles in warm water, and then prepare the veggies. The vegetables get stir-fried in my wok in a little oil. The sauce is added, and then the noodles are tossed into the wok and stir-fried briefly to soften them and mix them with the sauce.
My favorite vegetables to add in are Chinese cabbage and broccoli, but I try to vary the combinations for each dish so it won't get boring, and also I like to eat a variety of different veggies. The sauces are usually mixed from sriracha or chili paste plus a little sweetener, or sometimes from a prepared Thai curry paste. My favorite brand is Thai and True — love the Massamun curry paste! I add a small chunk to the wok and chop at it with the spatula while sprinkling on small amounts of water, mixing until a sauce is formed.
Tofu is often the protein of choice because it's so fast and easy, and I like it a lot. But beans or tempeh might make an appearance, or as in the bowl above, soy curls. Sometimes it's just veggies.
Garnishing with peanuts, sunflower seeds, pine nuts or my favorite, pumpkin seeds adds another level of interest and nutrition.
Fresh veggies can be combined with leftovers, or even frozen choices like in the kale, (frozen) corn and bean dish above. There's really no need to eat boring food when you can whip up something delicious (and vegan!) in such a short time.
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Sometimes, when I'm not cooking or eating, I hang out with my two little grandchildren. Here we are recently relaxing on a lazy afternoon.
So, who is going to Vida Vegan Con? I want to meet you!
That's a sweet picture of you with the kids! The little boy is getting big.
ReplyDeleteSo are all those noodles mung bean noodles? I'm not entirely sure I've ever seen them. The ones in the second photo look a little like those Chinese yellow noodles, but I've never picked them up because I assumed they were yellow from egg. I think that's my favorite of the dishes - with all those mushrooms and snap peas, although I've never had soy curls so that looks great too.
How do leftovers hold up? Do they get too clumpy?
Yes, all mung bean noodles. No nutritional value that I can detect, but they soak up sauces nicely and have a pleasing texture. They start out white and the sauce decides the color. The snap peas were great — crispy and sweet. Soy curls are cool — you should get some.
DeleteWhat leftovers? Seriously, you have to be careful not to overcook the noodles or they get gummy and stick together, but if they should be leftover, just add a little water to heat them.
What a cute pic! If there's something that could be more fun than cooking it would be hanging out with those guys!
ReplyDeleteGood shout on the pumpkin seeds - I love dry frying them then adding a bit of soy sauce so they go all salty and crispy. yum!
Thanks! It's a bit exhausting hanging with the kids but fun, too.
DeleteI love pumpkin seeds and they seem to taste good on everything.
I just got back from visiting my sister and nephew and niece, so I know how precious those lazy afternoons can be! You are lucky that your grandkids live near by so that you can see them often :-)
ReplyDeleteAll of your noodle dishes look amazing!
Courtney
Actually, they live nearby because we moved here from Wisconsin. It is pretty great interacting with the baby from the beginning instead of just on occasional visits. I feel like he knows who I am, but that's probably just wishful thinking.
DeleteI'm also a mung bean noodle fan; I am a 10-min walk from Chinatown and all its culinary wonders. Love the photo of you and your grand kids. They are so lucky to have an uber-cool grandma (who has the skin of a 30-year-old!)
ReplyDeleteIf I were a 10-minute walk from Chinatown I'd be there every day! I do love mung bean threads though they have no nutritional value that I can detect.
DeleteThanks for the compliments, though I think the skin is the result of a blurry photo.:)
All of the dishes you made look so good! Lots of great veggies in them all, too.
ReplyDeleteSuch a cute photo of you with your grandkids. :)
I tend to get stuck on my favorite veggie of the week so I try to make myself vary them a bit. The grandkids I keep the same. :)
DeleteI really need a quick noodle; my shiritaki experiment wasn't exactly as successful as I'd hoped.
ReplyDeleteNow those two, small, people were what was missing from Thailand!
I'll miss VVC again this year, but hoping Chicago is during a different month!
Shiritaki noodles and I don't see eye to eye. Bleh is all I can say about them. I've tried and failed. Mung noodles are similarly void of nutrition but they do have about 130 calories per serving and less than a gram of fiber. (I don't count calories.) They take on the flavor of whatever sauce you provide and have a pleasant chewy texture, plus they don't smell like fish.
DeleteI'm only about three hours from Portland so it's easy to go to VVC. We'll see what happens next year.
Where do you find soy curls-they look yummy?
ReplyDeleteA great site! Thanks for your effort!
Soy curls are from Butler Foods. Here's a link to where they are sold: http://bit.ly/13It4yj
DeleteYou can mail order them from a lot of places. They are very versatile and convenient, and unlike some soy protein, they are extruded from whole soybeans and don't contain any weird additives.
All your noodle dishes look amazing! You could serve me noodles anytime.
ReplyDeleteWell you know I would serve you noodles anytime if you showed up in Seattle.
DeleteI finally tried soy curls. Not bad! I miss all those yummy thai things from Seattle.
ReplyDeleteHave fun at VVC. I have to be somewhere else but I will be thinking of all of you. Please re-cap it!
You may miss Thai things, but do you miss the cold and rain?
DeleteIt would have been fun to see you at VVC — I miss reading your blog!
Exactly. I just wish they had some of the nutrition found in whole mung beans instead of just carbs, but oh well. I'm not anti-carb. :)
ReplyDeleteMung bean noodles can be pretty tough for me to find, so they're a real treat when I can get my hands on them. These dishes all sound so delicious, I don't know what I would want to make first!
ReplyDeleteWe stock up on them whenever we go to our favorite Asian grocery store, which better be soon since our supply is almost gone!
DeleteEvery single one of those dishes looks SO GOOD!!! BW and I have a wok we've used all of once, and we were just talking about how we need to start doing stir-fries again! We used to do them a lot, but got out of the habit out of moving to town when the Chinese restaurant was so handy. Being a big noodle fan, now my challenge is to find some of those mung bean noodles! It seems like I've seen them somewhere before... oh well, if I can't find them, I'll put them on my Seattle shopping list! :-)
ReplyDeleteThat's a really sweet photo of you and your grandkids!
I use my wok constantly — it's my main cooking pan. Do you have an Asian supermarket? (hahaha) When you buy them in an Asian market they're extremely inexpensive. We can go to one when you're here if you want, or I can just have some on hand and give them to you.
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