Peanut Butter Noodles

Date: July 31, 2010
Recipe Source: Dinnertime! 98 Dinner Solutions From Your Friends At Family Fun (bought at the newsstand - may still be available... C 2010)
Link: http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/peanut-butter-noodles-685939/

...So my first blog entry and already this is not a typical dinner plan. It's Saturday and we have a family potluck to go to. Jim's Aunt is having a party for her nieces and everyone is to bring a 'side dish'. I leafed through a bunch of recipe sources the day of the potluck, frantically looking for something because I forgot to plan for it. I leafed through my Family Fun cookbook/magazine (see above for full title & info) for something kid-friendly, easy, cheap, yet fabulous.
"What about Granny Smith Apple Slaw?" I asked Jim - "Didn't she say a side dish? That sounds like a salad." crap. I wanted to make sure we were using at least some ingredients that we already had - I didn't want to go out & buy $50 worth of groceries for one side dish (yes - I have done this). Then I found the recipe for Peanut Butter Noodles. I hadn't made it yet because it looked pretty bland and starchy - everyone likes noodles, but this didn't seem to have much more than that. However, we had a lot of the ingredients on hand already, so I popped over to the store to get a few more things & start cookin'.
Here are the ingredients that I claimed we already had, but I ended up buying more of anyway once I got to the store: angel hair pasta: I didn't have a full box at home, so since organic angel hair was on sale I bought a new one. I was pretty sure we had jarred crushed ginger (no way was I going to 'grate' it - no time), but it might be expired, so I bought some more. Soy sauce: we were running low and I would have to buy some more anyway, so I did.

Everything else we had on hand, but I also bought a few other random items because once I get in a grocery store, I fall under its spell and buy twice as much as I mean to. I'm working on this. However, how boring is it to go to a grocery store with a list and get just those items. totally.

When I got to the cashier, I mentioned that I was making peanut butter noodles for a potluck with lots of kids, because "how fun is that??" the cashier (it's our neighborhood QFC, so all the cashiers sort of quasi-know the people who live in the neighborhood and frequently shop there and vice versa - minus knowing each other's names. Then you get into little 2-minute conversations while you're checking out, but you don't really know anything about each other except that one of the cashiers is reeeeeealy into the movie Goonies & showed me pictures of the movie location she visited in Oregon on her iphone. I digress...) Anyway, the cashier responded, "Yeah, unless one of the kids has peanut allergies. My nephew has it pretty bad..." taking the wind out of my peanut butter-noodle sails. crap. what if I kill someone.

I still carried on with my plan though. Of course I added all the possible add-ins - grated carrot (ie: a bag of matchstick carrots), scallions (green onions) cucumber (I grated it on a cheese grater and sort of wrung out the shavings before adding them in) and toasted sesame seeds (a friend gave me some of hers a while ago and I still had a little baggie of them - I used them more as a garnish over the top when I was done with it.) I did not add the chopped peanuts - I didn't have any and the sesame seeds did the trick anyway. I was amazed as I whisked the peanut butter with the vinegar, soy sauce & sesame oil how it all came together into a smooth sauce and added the cooled noodles.

When I tasted it, it was FABULOUS!! Yum! I could add chicken to this sometime and make it a main dish, easily! Plus, it sort of satiated my ever present craving for Thai food without spending money to go out : ) I gave some to my preschooler - Big C - and fed her some of the noodles like a baby bird getting a worm "open your mouth and look up!" and she liked it too.

When we got to the party, the QFC cashier's words echoed in my head and visions of some kid in Anaphylactic shock haunted me, so when they put the food out, I announced to the party, "There's peanuts in the dish that I brought - just wanted you to know in case anyone has allergies". Way to go, drama queen. Now everyone thinks that you just wanted to call attention to the dish that you brought. Thankfully, no one had allergies and many people had piles of noodles on their plates, happily munching away.

Not, however, any of the kids. The party started at 1pm. Is that lunch? Or dinner? We got there at about 2pm and the food was set out at about 3, so it was sort of a "linner". We didn't have time to give Big C a real lunch before we left the house (none of us had one), so she was hungry when we got there and I saw one of the other moms making her son a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and immediately said, "hey, can I make one too for Big C?" She jovially handed over the fixings when she was done and I made a half-sandwich for Clara out with the seedy, healthy, flaxy bread. "There's more normal bread in the cupboard" the nice mom said. "It's OK - Big C will be fine with this" I answered. I presented the sandwich to my daughter and it was promptly rejected. Undeterred, I made another half-sandwich for her with 'normal' bread and then hungrily ate the seedy-flaxy one (giving a few bites to Jim as well. Hey, we were starving!) All was well, but as a result, no kids ate the kid-friendly dish because they all had peanut butter sandwiches and then had moved on to "the cartwheel show" for everyone's enjoyment.

All in all though, this recipe was easy to make - yes, lil C was screaming for part of the prep until Jim came in from his weekend yard work and held her - and good, nutritious and made lots. I probably would cut the recipe in half if I were to bring it again because it made so much. Good stuff!