Nothing but a great dinner recipe!

Hey Y'all, I promised to cook more and I am going to keep that promise! Tonight after a LONG day working at the hospital, nothing sounded simpler than this recipe from Real Simple magazine.  Remember when I brought you this recipe showing you how to use rotisserie chicken to speed dinner along.  Let's do that again shall we? 

Gingery Peanut Noodles



Ingredients

• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 12 ounces spaghetti (I used whole wheat)
• 2 cups shredded rotisserie chicken
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 English cucumber chopped
• 2 scallions, diced
• 2 tablespoons chopped peanuts
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro (chopped) 

Directions

1. Cook the pasta according to the package directions; drain and return it to the pot.
2. In a blender, combine 1 cup water with the peanut butter, rice vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and ginger. Blend until smooth.
3. Add the peanut mixture, chicken, bell pepper, cucumber, cilantro and scallions to the pasta pot and toss to combine. Serve sprinkled with the peanuts.

If you divide this in 8 servings they are 10 pts each if you would rather do an extra large portion and do 6 servings they are 12 pts each!

It was peanut buttery deliciousness and you should have seen my girls devouring this, I bet they had thirds each!!

Then this recipe brings up a tip I wanted to share, I used to be constantly buying this:

 This ugly little guy you have seen in the grocery store is called ginger root. I LOVE fresh ginger and I was always buying these guys and using a microplaner to mince it into recipes but inevitably I wouldn't need it all and then the rest of the root would get moldy, or I heard you could freeze the root and use that way but mine was so frozen it became like a ginger icicle and just didn't taste right.  So one day I am walking through my friendly neighborhood Meijers and I see this: 

Fresh ginger, already minced in a tube that comes out like paste!  This is the kind of thing that makes me so happy people!  Check out this link here for Gourmet Gardens website, they have tons of these tubes they make and they give what looks like great recipes and ideas for using their products.

Well if you are noticing ginger and cilantro are also on that list of flavors I use a lot.  This recipe didn't originally have cilantro, that was my addition.  If you are a ginger/cilantro fan give this a try, your kids can thank me later!