Fried Rice

This week has probably been the craziest week of student teaching thus far. Seriously. 1/3 of the school left for a Disney trip today . . . and they have been ridiculous ALL week. One student told his mother (one of my fellow teachers) how horrible they were yesterday, and proceeded to be bad again to day. Another drew me a picture of Mickey when I told him to get his book out and start working. What grade am I teaching?

I also have a bunch of rehearsals for my FINAL concert of my college career. Yikes. And, well, my future depends on 2-4 emails that have yet to come. I'm impatiently waiting for them. And Friday is vacation. Vacation, come sooner!

Anyway, I found time to sneak in some fried rice on Monday night as a celebration of the fact that class was cancelled on Monday night. It was wonderful. Except I felt a little cramped. There was a lot going on in the kitchen. And a lot on the counter.

There's a story behind the fried rice. Last week was BMG's birthday, and we went to a Japanese hibachi place to celebrate. It was a lot of fun. They did crazy things. It was so fun. And the fried rice was really really good. We all left saying, "I should try and make that some time." Fried rice always reminds me of the Korean student who stayed with us one Christmas and made it for us. I always assumed that it would be hard to make because people always get it from restaurants, and let's face it, when's the last time that you heard someone say "I just made fried rice!"?

So I found this recipe, but it sounded a little odd. So then I found this recipe. But I had already planned amounts and stuff around the first recipe, so I made a combination of the two (a.k.a. I winged it). It really wasn't hard. At all. It was actually pretty easy. Although it would have been better if I hadn't run out of soy sauce. Oh well.

Improvised Fried Rice

2 cups of cold cooked rice

Oil

1 large clove of garlic, minced

2 scallions, sliced and separated into green and white

3/4 cup frozen veggies (corn, peas, carrots)

1 cup bean sprouts

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/4 cup soy sauce

Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet. Add the garlic and scallion whites and stir-fry until it is aromatic, about 30 seconds.

Add the bean sprouts and frozen veggies and stir-fry until the veggies are defrosted. Pour all contents of pan into a large bowl.

Heat more oil in the skillet. Add the eggs and season with salt and pepper. Cook the eggs, stirring constantly, until the eggs are firm but moist. Add the eggs to the vegetables in the bowl and use a spatula or spoon to break up the egg into small pieces.

Heat more oil in the skillet. Add the rice and break up any clumps. Coat the rice in the oil, season with salt and pepper and let it cook undisturbed for about 2 minutes. Break up any new clumps and add the scallion greens and soy sauce.

Transfer the contents of the bowl into the skillet and cook until heated through.

It came out really well. I was pretty excited, because I'm not usually very good at departing from the comfort zone of recipes. And there are leftovers waiting for me before rehearsal tonight.

By the way, it's a really good way to use up leftover rice. And it looks so Springy -- so many bright colors!

I prefer homemade over Chinese restaurant food any day. Yum.