A JOURNEY TO ISRAEL…VIA EASTERN EUROPE, NEW YORK & MIAMI.

THE NINTH: A ONE-OF-A-KIND FIND IN LONDON.

THE LIDO (where I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come).

Then mix the 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with water and add it to the ground beef. For the brown gravy sauce, stir in the molasses and soy sauce to the skillet mixing thoroughly. It was maybe my first exposure to food as theater. Once all the ingredients are softened, add the ground beef meat and turn up the heat to medium-high until it is browned. Prep the vegetables by cutting them into spoon sized pieces.

Prep your carb base: cook your rice or soak your chow mein. I don’t think that I ate in a restaurant until I was probably 8 or 9 years old, unless you count the local Dairy Queen, where on summer nights my parents and I would stop in for a 5-cent cone….” the cone with a curl on top”….on our 16-block walk to Northeast Park to watch the Philadelphia Athletics class C farm team play baseball. I clearly remember the evening when, in my mind, Dairy Queen took a giant culinary step and offered to dip my cone into a warm chocolate bath that immediately hardened into a dark shell encasing the white vanilla soft serve. Marinate and velvet the meat for 5-15 minutes (basically as long as it takes to prep everything else, but longer is better). With three women sharing the cooking in our house, our meals were influenced from three different backgrounds…or should I say four, because my dad and Uncle Don were hunters and fishermen who occasionally prepared their catch for us.Īs I flounder in my memory, two things strike me about the food: It was UNCOMPLICATED. Fischer, who wrote artful personal essays and books about food, once famously said, “Our life requires three basic needs: food, security and love.” I aced it in all three categories. Every evening around 5 o’clock, we sat around the round oak table with the ball and claw feet in the kitchen table and had dinner. Only we called it supper. With no high-brow chefs or notebook-bearing critics to inform me that we were in any way deprived, this grubby, acne-faced adolescent reveled in the food he was served.Īnd why shouldn’t I have warm & fuzzy feelings about our meals? After all, I lived in a house with a dirt-floor basement and three families crammed into two floors: My Swedish grandma Nana, my Aunt Rose and newly returned WWII veteran Uncle Don, and my mom and dad, June and Ollie. There were no culinary magazines to be found in our house, I have no recollection of ever stumbling on any TV cooking shows.įor me, that was a good thing. shredded pork in hoi-sin sauce, on a bed of fresh green onion. The newspapers banished food to the women’s sections of the papers, amid articles about needlepointing and flower shows. 6 egg rolls, orange chicken spicy, beef with broccoli, kung pao chicken spicy, sweet and sour pork, shrimp chop suey, chicken lo mein and brown or steamed rice. Plus, this definitely hits the spot when you’re craving Chinese take-out, except this version is a million times quicker and tastier.And only today do I realize that during that time there was almost a contempt of American food. The La Choy Stir Fry Vegetables Chop Suey blend is. Add choy sum stems, carrot and mushrooms. Add chicken, cook for 1 minute until the surface changes from pink to white.

Add garlic, stir quickly, then add onion, Cook for 1 minute, moving constantly, until onion is starting to wilt. La Choy Bean Sprouts and Chop Suey Vegetables, 14 Ounce (Pack of 4) - with Spice of Life Bamboo Sporks. I digress.īut surely enough, there’s a homemade lo mein version that can be made in just 15 minutes from start to finish with ingredients you already have on hand.īest of all, you can clean out the fridge with all kinds of lingering veggies and you can also add in your favorite proteins! Per 1/2 Cup Serving: 25 calories 0 g sat fat (0 DV) 510 mg sodium (22 DV) 2 g total sugars. Heat oil in a wok or skillet over high heat.

Those long noodles chockfull of all those fresh veggies… How it was always so perfect with a side of potstickers. She’d have me order it at least 3 times a week, and I would get so excited because she would always pass along a plate for me to share.īut since blogging became a full-time gig, I find myself longing for that lo mein almost daily. It is so much quicker, tastier and healthier than take-out!īack when I had a day job, I had this boss who was obsessed with the lo mein from the restaurant across the street. The easiest lo mein you will ever make in 15 minutes from start to finish.

La choy chop suey