A post in which I have cooked a ton of Chinese Vegetables

And trashed my kitchen in the process!

Scenes of devastation.

The kitchen, part 2. Note the huge bowl of fried rice. I have already put two containers of vegetables in the freezer at this point.

I haven't done this in a while. I used to do it more when Michael lived here, just because it took so much food, it seemed like, to keep something in the fridge.

I had a good day at work today. My boss is out of the office until Thursday, so things are fairly quiet. I heard from my friend Jay in Atlanta, and he'll be coming to stay Friday night, so that will be really nice. Although that means I have straighten up the house some.

We had free lunch at work today, which for me meant a cheese sandwich, since they were having hamburgers and hot dogs. You don't really think about how meat-centric our food is until you quit eating it. To go with that, there was nachos with plasti-cheeze and some fairly tasteless cole slaw. They had cookies at first, but as usual they ran out. By the time I ate lunch they were serving some kind of thawed out little tiny cheesecakes that looked much better than they tasted. I must admit, the plasti-cheeze they use is pretty tasty, petroleum-based or not. I just tried not to think about what bizarre chemicals I was ingesting. Free lunch is free lunch, after all.

I knew I had to cook tonight, so I jetted out the door on the dot. Interestingly, traffic co-operated, and I was home in record time. I ran through the store for tofu, peas, and another onion before I got home. I also picked up some tater wedges for dinner. Mmmmmmm. And like a $1.20. You can't beat that.

I put my bok choy in to soak (they're always gritty), and put my tofu in towels to press and drain. I scarfed dinner, since I was starving, and went on in the kitchen. I started to realize I was in trouble when I got everything out. I had:

2lbs tofu
1 savoy cabbage as large as a small bathroom garbage can
10 baby bok choy
2 large white onions
1 lb green peas
1/2 lb baby carrots
2 cans bamboo shoots
4 ribs of celery
a bit of garlic

And that wasn't counting spices, etc. I started washing and chopping vegetables. You have to have everything chopped before you start stir-frying because it goes very fast. I knew I would have to do the veggies in batches. Well I knew I was in trouble when I ran out of big bowls. I finally finished chopping the rest of the cabbage and piled it on a towel. The chopping took about an hour.

Then I started cooking. And cooking. And cooking. I knew I had to get out my big chrome bowl to mix everything in, but by the time I got done with the vegetables, I knew I had too many to make fried rice with. I put about 2/3 of them in the freezer before I even stir-fried the rice.

The cooking took about an hour, and would have taken less time if I had been able to get my pan hot enough. You just can't get an electric stove hot enough to stir fry correctly.

So I got everything mixed and put away in the fridge, then was faced with the huge mess. I finished cleaning up around 9:30. I was pretty damn tired. But I have lunches for the rest of the week, and two containers of frozen Chinese veggies in the fridge. They won't be like stir fry when you thaw them, because you can't really freeze stir fry, but they'll be fine mixed with soba or something like that.