Day 173 – My Night to Cook

I decided to cook dinner for my parents tonight, so I made a spicy chicken stir fry, spinach salad, and vegetables with dip. This was my first serious try at cooking entirely by myself. (The photos above were an afterthought, so they are composed of the left-overs, not single portions. The portions were much bigger than this.)

I orginally started following a Thai recipe, but I broke away from it. I also did a lot of guessing about how much to use of each ingredient. Here was the outcome:

Spicy Chicken Stir Fry (Feeds 3-4):
1lb chicken breast, cut in small cubes
4 cups of cooked rice
a handful of fresh pea pods, cut in half
a handful of fresh green beans, cut in half
2 tbs dried basil
4 or 5 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs chili paste (you can get this in the asian section at your grocery store.)
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
1/2 of a large red bell pepper, cut in strips

Cook the chicken, green onions, basil, and garlic in a large pan/wok with some oil, salt, and pepper. Add in the pea pods, beans, and red peppers about half-way through the chicken cooking. Fry this all for a few minutes until the chicken is done, then add in the soy sauce and chili paste. Be careful – the chili paste is some pretty intense stuff. If you don’t like very spicy food, you might want to only put in a tiny bit of this. Stir this all together in the skillet, then stir in the cooked rice. Brown it up a little, and serve!

Spinach, Tomato, Red Pepper, and Feta Cheese Salad (Feeds 3-4):
2-3 handfuls of fresh spinach
1 medium tomato, chopped
1/2 of a red bell pepper, cut in pieces
1/4-1/2 cup feta cheese

Dressing:
Olive oil
balsamic vinegar
cracked pepper
feta cheese
(I don’t know the quantities for this. I just mixed it until it looked like enough!)

Feel free to add any side dishes to this you would like. I just cut up some fresh vegetables, but I am sure other things can work, too.