The Lesson:  Use what you have on hand.

Happy Birthday to my husband, Darren!  He helped me make the meal below.  Even though it was a simple thing to prepare and the rice cooker and frozen eggrolls made it a snap, I got in over my head with 2 pans to stir and other things to tend to and he rescued me.  Thanks dear!

Stir fry is one thing we rarely do the same twice.  If you have a reliable sauce recipe (one to follow), then you can just use what you have to fill out the dish.

This time we used a couple of chicken breasts, sliced and cooked in a skillet.  I cooked the sauce with the chicken after the chicken was mostly done.  This same sauce is nice with beef, pork, or shrimp too.

The vegetables were the rest of a bag of baby carrots, zucchini from my mother-in-loves garden, sliced onions, and fresh mushrooms that we happened to snag for $.77 a carton.  I’ve found it’s nice to add the crunchiest veggies first since they take the longest to cook.  I gradually add vegetables based on their cooking time.

The eggrolls were homemade and pre-frozen recipe here.  We baked them on a cookie sheet at 350 for 3o minutes and didn’t worry about thawing first.  Yum!

Here’s our sauce recipe which was passed to me from my sister-in-love, Gena.

Stir-Fry Sauce

2 cups cold water

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (or powder)

Shake everything together in a blender jar until the cornstarch is dissolved.  Pour over your browned meat and cook and stir until sauce is bubbling and thickened.  Combine meat, sauce and vegetables together and serve over rice.