My Main Chow? Chow Mein.

I'm not a bad cook. Just don't like it much. I'm Irish, pretty simple to please, (food-wise). Meat and potatoes, yup. I like some vegies and will eat most because I know I should. I've learned to eat salad, and sometimes I even like it. Seems to me like to cook a good meal takes a lot of time. Maybe I'm a Lazy Boy. Guess I am.

From time to time I will cook, but usually only things I really like to eat. Mostly I cook breakfast. I like bacon, sausage, or ham and eggs. I like eggs cooked most any way, but mostly over easy. And with that, I cook up fried potatoes or what my Dad used to call American Fries, and wheat toast. A big glass of orange juice, and a big glass of skim milk tops off my favorite breakfast.

I do like to cook home made french fries, and hamburgers on the grill. I take my time when I cook, try to get it just right, all done at the same time. I suppose there's a few other things I cook from time to time, but mostly the aforementioned.

Now Toll House chocolate chip cookies I used to bake, but I made them too good, and couldn't stop eating them. Oh, and I made some fudge that was so good that it was declared illegal and classified as a controlled substance sometime in the late 80's. I started with a single recipe, but kept doubling it until I was making pounds of it, and I'd eat it until I got sick and couldn't walk. I'd have to roll from place to place. You see I'm impulsive, compulsive and some would say repulsive, but the point is, I couldn't stop savoring that fudge. So my wife petitioned the Bemidji City Council to draw up an ordinance prohibiting any such goings on on lots 10 and 11, Riverwood Estates. Passed 4-3.

But my favorite thing to cook and eat is my mother's recipe for chow mein. My mother made chow mein for one meal. Because I love it so, I always doubled the recipe so that I could eat it for two or three days. Seems like anyone I've ever cooked it for loves it. I always have two helpings and most everyone else does too.

So eldest daughter Kimberly, who doesn't get up north all that often, has been lobbying for chow mein for years. So I say, c'mon up and I'l do it. And so she does, with husband Scott, daughter Kelly, and son Jack in tow. But now I have a problem. Gregory, Lizette and son will want to come for supper, right? Right! That's 4 + 3 = 7. And then my new friend Rachelle, finally realizing that Michael cooking may not be an urban myth, insists she must try this potion as well. Thankfully, she only brings daughter Ashley and leaves hubby and boys at home. Hmm, should I have been insulted? So with Barbara and I, now we are at 11 people eating my chow mein. The pressure's on the cooker. What if they really like it?
What to do? A quadtruple recipe! Instead of two each? Eight each to eat of onion, mushroom, bean sprouts, chow mein noodles, and a couple bottles of La Choy Soy Sauce. Gotta be La Choy soy sauce and bean sprouts, but China Boy chow mein noodles. Not too fussy on the mushrooms, as long as they're stems and pieces. The celery stock. Eight heads of celery. Not sure how many stalks.Four pounds of beef and four of pork. Not sure what the cut is, I just ask the butcher to make me some chow mein meat equal parts beef and pork, and this is what I get, whatever cut already cut to the right size. Having only a four quart pot, Brother Bear loaned me his eight quart. Brown the meat. Put some fire under the celery and onion. Notice how everything seems to be eight? Well believe me, 'tis true, everything WILL be ate.Add the meat, and you've got a full pot. But no bean sprouts and mushrooms yet, because they are already cooked. I do add soy sauce, salt and pepper until it feels right. Put a cover on it. Slow and low cookin' please, a couple three hours. You have to add water to the pot at first, but careful, as we all know there's a lot of water in the celery, and you don't want to be putting soup on your plate when it's done. After cookin' for awhile, the bean sprouts are added along with mushrooms. I can do it two handed. My granddaughter Kelly is amused quite often by her grandfather. And so quite often he goes out of his way to amuse her. I didn't even know she was there watching me. I was pleasantly surprised of course. She's as weird as me, maybe even more so. Actually more so, I've got peace signs on shirts, she's got on skin. I guess that's bonding of sorts. Only hers is more so.Maybe she's amazed, or amused or a ruse to confuse Hardly Harvard.Your grandfather added soy sauce to what? These two, having been only recently released from the Last Frontier, have not had Mother's chow mein in 30 years. Hmmm, doesn't that shirt seem redundant? If a Marine was "yellow", I reckon he/she would be of lower rank. Duh. Probably get booted right out of the Corps by some Blue Meanie, no doubt.
"As we live a life of ease,
Every one of us has all we need." ~ Lennon/McCartney
Ashley, Barbara, Alex and Rachelle pose with a pot. "Are we gonna eat the WHOLE thing? Oh no, no way. Mikie will be eating it for days, he'll eat everything but not anything.
Peas Porridge hot,     
Peas Porridge cold, 
Peas Porridge in the pot 
Nine days old! 

Same for Chow Mein...well, maybe three days and freeze some. How about that?

Grandson Jack. He loves squirt and chow mein? Not me. Gimme doodooshaboo, ain't that a great word for milk? Ojibwe.Kimberly, Scott, and Kelly on the couch. Ashley in the foreground. All eating away so much I thought for awhile they might be oxidizing. Ashley was the only one who did not have two big helpings. Don't remember what part she didn't like, but that little idio-sin-crazy is the only part about her I don't like. Lizette and Rachelle purse their lips blowing the hot chow mein cool. I know, counterintuitive. Stay away! No doggie bags! We ate about half. So I cut the other half in half, half to freeze and half to eat for the next three days. Just put it in the fridge for Barbie and me.