Grocery Stores and Thai Food

In New York City, I had my go-to grocery stores and local markets, though some may have been a good 15 minute subway ride away.  To make almost anything, I felt like I had to go to at least 2 or 3 stores to find all the ingredients.  In Texas, a regular sized grocery store looks like a New York mega store or even bigger with all you could possibly need to make whatever recipe you have in mind.  In the last week, I've been exploring all the grocery stores there are within a 2 or 3 mile radius of us.  We have a Super Target, Central Market, Kroger, Tom Thumb, Albertson's, and a newly opened Trader Joe's.  (There is also a Sprouts and other stores, but I haven't visited them yet.) In all my exploration, I also found a traffic circle... I was pretty excited since it reminded me of our Italian honeymoon.

Last night's dinner was Pad See-Ew, so I took advantage of my visits to various supermarkets to find good Asian food sections.  The Kroger down the street from TCU actually had quite a selection, though I will give Central Market credit for having the sweet dark soy sauce that my recipe mentioned would be hard to find.  I read somewhere that there are lots of Asian restaurants and a good Asian market in Haltom City, so I will have to check that out for our next Asian dinner night. 

Getting back to the pad see-ew... I used a recipe I had found a while back on Serious Eats.  It took a mini-investment in Asian cooking products like oyster sauce and rice vinegar, but the flavors of the dish were well worth it.  Hubby said it was his favorite meal of the week, which made me feel bad for Tuesday night's pork, but the pad see-ew really was quite delicious.

How it all began

The sauce smelled a little funny at first, but the finished dish was out of this world

 Voila!

Once all the pieces were ready, bringing it all together went by really quickly.  I used the stripped chicken I had made the night before and seasoned it with soy sauce.  This saved time on cooking the chicken from scratch.  I quickly made the noodles and cooked up the broccoli.  Then it was just a matter of bringing everything together in a stir fry, which means I looked frantic as I tossed ingredients into the pan and tried to get them to mix around.  I own a wok but left it with my parents before moving to New York since my NYC kitchen could only hold so much.  On my way to Fort Worth, I forgot to pick it up, so the wok remains at my parents' house... and I still remain frantic trying to stir things around without making a mess.

I'm taking the weekend off, but I'll be back Monday with stories from a (hopefully) exciting weekend.