Variety In your Everyday Eats...part 1

Try to get yourself a decent Japanese knife - this one retails for about 60 bucks but i found the same exact one at Marshalls for like 12.99. It's nice to have a light knife for chopping a lot of light stuff like herbs and vegetables.

Variety is pretty normal in this house - we will flip from American Style Stews and Casseroles, to Filipino Food, to Soul Food, to Stir Fry, to Korean Food and almost always Mexican Food and occasionally Italian Food. I'm not really that particular when it comes to food, so if anyone in the house has a request I usually just roll with it.

Since we started prepping I made sure that we included Asian spices and sauces in our stores. Reason#1) We like it Reason #2) Long term storage always includes rice, flour and cornstarch - so there will always be a component for rice dishes, noodles and soups -also, a big part of our storage is dried vegetables and mung beans so after reconstitution - stir frying will prevent overcooking and will impart more nutrition.

Having said that if you would like to have more Asian inspired dishes in your cooking make sure to include - Oyster Sauce (5 yr shelf life - as seen by my mothers restaurant, the label will say 3), Hoisin Sauce, SriRaCha hot sauce, Soy Sauce, Vinegar, Rice Wine Vinegar, Curry Powder (vac seal in mini pouches to preserve quality), Coconut Milk, optional would be Korean Kochu Jang chili paste, sesame oil (also vac seal these in 16 oz packets), fermented soy sauce, chinese 5 spice, galangga powder, in my canned stores I also include straw mushrooms,baby corn, water chestnuts, and bamboo shoots and some other stuff i have that you probably won't need lol.

Below are some samples of dishes that you can probably concoct from dehydrated food with the exception of the shrimp - but asian stores do have the dehydrated shrimp - and they stink to high heaven but they impart a great taste.




green bean shrimp with hoisin sauce



young mustard greens with ground pork and ginger



curried chicken with long beans and kabotcha squash (yams can be substituted)



not asian but we love it - Paella...with sausage and shrimp



Okra with chicken breast and water chestnuts



and from my previous blog - the chinese hand cut noodles - dry or wet.

If anyone wants any recipes please let me know - asian cooking looks tougher than it is...
it is really just about prepping the veggies and the timing of putting them in.