Today is turning out to be a wonderful and productive day! First and foremost, the US Congress finally put on their big girl panties and made a decision. Well, a half decision. The nation gots the monies til next Friday, at which point I get to go through the same nail-biting, edge-sitting freak out until I hear whether I need to show up to work on Monday.



I also made it to the gym…and the international market.



I adore international supermarkets. They’re loud, and sometimes a little smelly depending on the fish of the day, and always packed with people. In mine, a little Korean lady stands in the corner selling…something. I have no idea what she’s hocking, honestly. Partly because it’s usually unidentifiable Korean food, but mostly because I don’t understand a damn thing the woman says.



My international market had not one, not two, but THREE names. The outside of the building says “Food Rite,” “El Grande,” and “Fresh World.” I’m not sure which one is the real name, but that’s ok. I think that the building (which used to be an old Hechingers building back when Hechingers still existed) passed ownership three times, and with each turn over, they just stuck up a new sign and left the old ones up there too.



Fresh World is like a huge outdoor farmer’s market/bizarre, with tons of people from every possible ethnicity milling about. There were little Asian grandmothers, big Hispanic families, Middle Eastern families in varying degrees of conservative dress, black people, white people, and one over-tanned woman was a very strange shade of orange. The food is wonderfully exotic…and cheap! (I can feed myself on $25 for a week! Take THAT, big chain superstores!) I love this place. It’s like the world. But in a store.



My original plan for today was to make a low-cost meal, and dance it around the whole “Congress can’t stay on a budget” joke. Buuuut now that we have another week to bitch about federal financing…I’m doing it anyway.

Budget Buster Noodle Bowls

Confession: Only half of these snow
peas made it into the bowl because I ate them.

The Whats:

2 ½ cups low sodium chicken stock

1 chicken breast, cooked and cubed

3 hunks, dried Vietnamese noodles

1 jalapeno, chopped

Sundried tomatoes (canned)

Roasted red peppers (canned)

Snow peas (fresh!!!!)

Garlic powder

Pepper

Worchestershire sauce

Hot sauce

The Hows:

First, I brought the chicken stock to a boil, along with the jalapeno, pepper, and garlic powder. (I used garlic powder this time, as opposed to the actual chopped garlic just because I wanted the taste of the garlic, but without the texture.) A lot of this recipe is just pouring in however much you think will work, tasting, and adjusting along the way. I added a few shots of Worchestershire sauce and about six shakes of the hot sauce.

Vegetarian noodles: pasta made
without meat...

When this was boiling away, I added the Vietnamese noodles, the chicken, sundried tomatoes, and roasted peppers. I found some “vegetarian noodles” (because regular noodles have meat in them?) in one of the Asian aisle. The package had 12…knobs…of pasta, for $1.79. I used three of them for this recipe. If you can’t find the “vegetarian noodles,” you can buy packages of ramen. BUT THROW AWAY THE SEASONING PACKET.  I covered the pot and left it to boil for about four minutes.


Can we talk about how awesome my apartment smelled after that? Garlic, chicken stock, and something unidentifiably awesome. I think it was the noodles : ) The nice thing about living in a super small studio is that when food smells amazing, it’s SUPER amazing since everything is concentrated in the space.


When the noodles were cooked through, I turned off the heat and tossed in the snow peas to steam.


I love two vegetables above and beyond all others. Snow peas and sugar snaps. Sugar snaps are my childhood, pure and simple. When I was a very little girl, my dad’s parents lived in a small town in northern Ohio. For nearly a decade, I spent my summers there. Every morning, my dad’s father would make me help him raise the flag—and full out hoist-and-solute thing. Afterwards, we’d sit at the base of the flagpole and eat the sugar snaps that grew on the fence. Now, whenever I bite into a fresh sugar snap, I flash back to those mornings by the flagpole. I kinda miss those times.



When the snow peas are perfect and tender, the meal is done! Ten minutes, from first chop to last toss-in. AND there’s very little sodium other than what’s already in the chicken stock. With the regular college student-style ramen noodle bowl, the included seasoning packet has like, four days’ worth of sodium. You just don’t need that in your body.

Now I’m off to clean the kitchen.