The Meatloaf Lady

A Little Oriental Flare

$7.00 feeds 4!

Saturday night and that Chinese/Thai/Oriental craving kicks in and you are just about broke. Stinks huh?There is a quick fix, my babies! Let me show you how ;)

Most grocery stores now carry their own line of frozen veggie dinner starters similar to the name brand microwavable "side" dishes. RAID THEM!There is always an incredible dish capable of happening with some lovely frozen veg in the fridge. Now don't get me wrong, I would much rather use fresh produce for all of my dishes, but we're broke and healthy veggies are some of the most expensive items in the store. The season is also pretty well spent, so frozen veg is the best, most economical solution! My favorite grocer always has the wonderful "10 for $10" sale, and 9.5 times out of 10, their frozen foods land in that category. This week I happened upon a lovely frozen bag of stir fry veggies WITH noodles. BONUS! Most of the meal is in the bag for a buck. You just can't beat that.

Once you have a veg base, and an idea, anything is possible! Check your drawers and cupboards for those leftover packets of honey, jellies, soy, duck, sweet and sour sauce, ketchup, and hot mustard (You know that they are lurking in there somewhere.) Now is the perfect time to prove that you indeed had a purpose behind hanging on to those guys. PUT THEM TO WORK! <Get creative here too. Any tomato, mustard, or bbq-ey sauce works great with this. Don't worry if it isn't from a Chinese restaurant, no one will ever know the difference..our little secret. WINK WINK>

Now if you are fortunate enough to find Teriyaki leftover in the fridge, by all means use it! I did :) For the record, Teriyaki is nothing more that a reduction of Soy Sauce, Ginger and Pineapple Juice, so if you are feeling really adventurous, throw those in a pot and let them reduce by half instant Teriyaki! Here's the deal, it is not what you use, it's how you use it! So feel free to experiment with any red based dressing you may have around. It's workable.

So the tally so far for veg, noodles, and sauce is around $1.50- $2.00. <Side note: If you can't find frozen veg with noodles you can always grab a $1.00 box of thin spaghetti, and cook off about a quarter of the box to al dente. If you don't have any jelly packets, a Tablespoon of whatever you have in the fridge will do, and it will also double as a title word in your dish's name "Oriental Strawberry Chicken a la Mom" for instance!

A cup of Rice is going to be our base, so that runs about $0.35- $0.50. (Are you beginning to see the benefit of opening a Chinese Restaurant yet? Just sayin'!)

Now the meat. You can go in all kinds of directions here. Being that I have small children, there are ALWAYS some type of protein nugget in the freezer. Chicken nuggets, veggie nuggets, frozen grilled slices of something, a veggie burger (black bean would rock!), or a turkey burger and there you have your meat. Nuggets are pretty cheap. Our bag was on sale for $3.00 and I used about a dozen, so that's about $0.75 for chicken. SCORE!

Let's recap real quick:

Veg and Noodles- high end $2.50

Sauce- high end $0.75 (Should really be about FREE)

Rice- high end $1.00

Meat- high end $2.75 (Just in case you had to grab something from the store)

Total: $7.00!! Now let's make it!

Oriental On A Dime

1 Bag of Frozen Oriental Veggies with/out Noodles

1 Fistful of Pasta par cooked to al dente (OPTIONAL)

1 Cup of Rice, cooked (You can even use leftover rice if you have it!)

About a dozen Chicken Nuggets or protein of choice cooked and chopped in quarter inch chunks.

Cooking Spray or 1/2 tbsp of oil (for coating sauce pan or wok)

Sauce Ingredients

1/4 Cup of Teriyaki, BBQ Sauce, Red Based Dressing or any combo of these

2 Tbsp of Soy Sauce, or a couple of packets (USE LESS, like 1 Tbsp, if you don't have a lot of sweeter sauce- honey, kecthup, jelly, duck or sweet and sour)

2 Tbsp of "Sweeties" Honey, Ketchup, Jelly, Duck Sauce, or Sweet and Sour Sauce (You can always double up on this if you'd like to create the sauce you like..think General meets Sweet and Sesame!)

Now I didn't mention spices above because that is up to whatever is in your pantry or whatever your pallet is up for. This is how I did it, but we like it HOT!

1 TBSP Hot Sauce

1 TBSP Garlic Powder
1 TBSP Brown Sugar

1 tsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

1 tsp Ground Ginger

1 TBSP Black Sesame Seeds OPTIONAL

Salt

Pepper to taste...PLEASE TASTE AS YOU GO!

Sauce First:

Combine all of your sauce ingredients and spices in a sauce pan or microwavable bowl and heat through until it comes together as one complete sauce. Taste from time to time and add flavors as needed, or as in my case, as you run across them in the pantry. Once it has a nice quasi oriental flavor, remove from heat and set aside.

Lightly oil a large sauce pan or wok and quickly heat the veggies through, approximately 4 minutes on med. high heat. If you have pasta add in right at the end. Add half of your sauce to the veggies and toss until coated. Divide rice on plates, top with prepared veg. Quickly and very BRIEFLY toss chicken or meat of choice in sauce. Once coated, top veg and rice with meat (Just thought about this now..some Mushrooms would be an AWESOME alternative to meat here). Sprinkle on a few sesame seeds if you wish and...