Joe’s Lunchbox: Veggie Fried Rice

 

Veggie fried brown rice with green onion and scrambled egg.

Veggie fried brown rice with green onion and scrambled egg.

 

Joe came home from his 5th-grade nutrition class saying that he’d like to eat less meat and more vegetables and grains.  I said, that’s great!  Let’s try some new recipes. I’d like to eat less meat, too!

So I’ve been making of lot of rice (brown and basmati), beans (pinto and black), and several permutations of this vegetable fried rice.  Fried rice is a good way to use up leftover steamed rice and whatever else might be languishing in your vegetable bin (green onions, shallots, carrots, celery, mushrooms, broccoli, frozen peas, corn).

 

Rice cookers come in a vast array of price ranges.

Rice cookers come in a vast array of price ranges.  I bought mine (same make and model as pictured) at a thrift store for $6 but you can pay up to $199 for a fancy one with digital display.

 

I bought a rice cooker at the thrift store and we’ve been putting it to use, making rice at least once a week.  Normally I’m not a fan of gadgets that are devoted to one single purpose.  I already have too many gadgets.  My good friend (whose husband comes from a large Filipino family and eats rice at every meal, including breakfast) swore she could not live without hers and now I am a convert.

It is so easy to cook rice this way if you are going to be cooking it once a week or more. The rice steams perfectly and the cooker turns itself off (into ‘warm’ mode) when it’s ready so it is very forgiving of your timeline.  The rice comes out just right, every single time.  (No more peeking under the lid to check if rice is done.)

Here’s the scenario:  rush home from work or whatever your activity was pre-dinner, walk in the door, get out the rice cooker, pour a cup of rice in and at least a cup and half of water, push the button, then live your life, write your blog, check your email, feed the cat and/or dog, throw a load of laundry in, get the mail, pay a bill online, pick that random sock off the floor, and in 20 minutes or so, rice is done.  Check.

 

Excellent Chinese cookbook by Nancie McDermott.

Excellent Chinese cookbook by Nancie McDermott.

 

Nancie McDermott, author of Quick and Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes (Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2008) includes four recipes for fried rice.  Once you have her method, you can adapt the recipes to include what you have on hand (or exclude what you don’t.)  You’ll need some basic Asian pantry items (soy sauce, sesame oil) and if you’d like you can jazz it up with other Asian sauces, condiments, or chile pastes you might have.

I love going to our big Asian grocery store, so my exotic condiment shelves overflow.

 

Love spicy, garlicky Asian condiments.

Love spicy, garlicky Asian condiments.

 

Seriously though.  You only need soy sauce and sesame oil (plus aromatics like garlic, ginger, onion) to make an outstanding fried rice.

Vegetables for fried rice

 

 

Garlic and brown eggs still life,

Here is Nancie’s recipe for Ham-and-Egg Fried Rice which I have adapted by taking out the ham and adding more vegetables and aromatics.  The excellent cooking instructions are hers with some adaptations from me.

Basic Veggie Fried Rice

Serves 4.

Ingredients

  • 4 cups cooked rice, cold or at room temperature (Note from Rebecca: use up that leftover rice from your Chinese takeout order)
  • 1 T. vegetable oil
  • 1 T. sesame oil
  • 1 T. chopped garlic
  • 1 T. dark soy sauce
  • 1/2 C. shredded carrot (I peel the outer layer of a large carrot and discard the dirty peel, then keep shaving the carrot into ribbons until I have 1/2 C.  Then cut the ribbons in half to make them more bite-size.)
  • 3 T. chopped green onion
  • 3 well-beaten eggs

Directions

  • Break up the rice clumps into individual grains for easy stir-frying.
  • Heat a wok or large, deep skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the oils and swirl to coat the pan.  Add the garlic and green onions and cook, stirring often, for 15 seconds.  Do not let the garlic burn.  If you feel (see or smell it burning) turn the heat down!
  • Add the eggs and then tilt the pan to spread them out.  Stir the eggs and aromatics together and scramble the eggs into soft lumps.
  • When the eggs have barely scrambled, add the rice all at once and toss.
  • Cook the rice, tossing often, 2 to 3 minutes.
  • Add the soy sauce and stir.
  • Add the carrot ribbons and toss another 30 seconds until rice is hot and tender.

 

The key to a stir-fry is to have all your ingredients chopped up, measured, and ready to go.  The French term is mise en place.

The key to a stir-fry is to have all your ingredients chopped up, measured, and ready to go.
The French term is mise en place.

 

Consider fried rice as your emergency back-up plan when you haven’t planned dinner or had time to shop.  The most time-consuming part of it is the chopping, and if you take a tip from my (much more well-organized) sister, you will OF COURSE have little zip-lock baggies in your fridge with the dribs and drabs of chopped garlic, chopped onion or shallot, sliced cabbage, the 3 tablespoons of cooked corn too good to throw out, the one chicken breast your family didn’t eat at dinner 2 nights ago, etcetera.

Master the method and then go forth and experiment!  Buy some crazy condiments at your Asian grocery store (which makes a fun field trip for children, by the way.)

Cheers!

Rebecca

 

 

 

Kiddie Crack

Free slurpee day on 7.11

Free slurpee day on 7.11

I will never forget the time I got the dirtiest look from a mom at preschool when I gave Joe his snack and it was a baggie of the new-on-the-market multi-colored Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers. I guess it was the lurid prospect of purple and red food dyes near her child and in my child’s stomach that caused her alarm.

Goldfish Cracers Colors via darthbitch.tumblr.com 1

It’s been awhile since I’ve struggled with a toddler over food in the grocery store.  Joe is 10 now and I don’t take him to the store with me unless I have to!

But I painfully remember cursing those evil geniuses in food marketing behind the obvious placement ploys in the cereal and snack aisles.  STOP!  MOMMY! THERE ARE TOYS INSIDE!

Fruit Loops and Shrek candy placed right at child-in-cart eye level. Those end caps of potato chips – brightly colored, exploding with exciting graphics.  And the dreaded chocolate-infused, Skittles, Lifesavers, and M&M-fest that is the check-out lane.

(Of course you could queue up in the “No tabloids or candy line”  if your supermarket has one which undoubtedly ALWAYS has the little old lady who can’t find her coupons or checkbook in front of the mom with 3 teenagers with an overflowing cart including  3 12-packs of soda, 2 cases of bottled water and enough Tide to launder a baseball team.)

Remember him?

Remember him?

When Joe was riding in my cart, I sped by the cereal aisle like a Mom at Nascar.  It was just too much.  Joe would be pointedly shouting out that he “LOVES Fruities, Mommy” as we passed the Fruit Loops at exactly kid-eye level.  And there was just no time to try to comparison shop, looking for the box with the “1/3 less sugar than regular Fruit Loops” or  to discern if  Cocoa Puffs were really made with whole grain as they claimed and if so, so what?

Meanwhile your toddler is beside himself with the choices and the prospect of something yummy that he’s never had before and the harried mom is trying to do the math to see if the sugar content calculated by the actual serving size is really below 9 percent of the total….sheesh!

Maybe all moms should take a class on reading nutrition labels at birthing class.

Nutrition label

Help me! I have to do math in my head to figure this out and I have a toddler AND a new baby. I need food and sleep. Not nutrition labels.

I also remember a battle between my husband and I over Trader Joe veggie fries, otherwise known in our household as “kiddie crack.” I thought this was acceptable food, after all they do have vegetable matter in them and lots of air.  However, my husband considered them junk food, and given my son’s unnatural appetite for stuffing his face with these until he explodes, I think my husband was right.

But hey, give a mom a break. Who is in charge of the feeding day after day, mornings, noon, night, snacks? The mom!  (Usually.)

Ten years after Joe was born there are now way more natural, organic, fresh, local, gluten-free, sugar-free, wheat-free, nut-free, corn syrup-free choices out there (not that I make use of them all the time, or any of the time.)

Making good food choices and clashing swords over the junk food battlefield with my budding middle-schooler still happens and I do try to make sure Joe gets in his four food groups (wait, aren’t there 5 now?) over the course of the day.

And what, veggie crack fries are not in one of those food groups?  No worries.  Joe doesn’t break my back for those anymore now that he’s moved on to the barbecue potato chips that the babysitter turned him on to.

Joe with cherries from our neighbors tree.

Joe with cherries from our neighbor’s tree.