Yesterday, I made this recipe for Chicken Pad Thai. I found it by using this search engine that covers recipes that have appeared in various health-oriented publications such as Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, you get the idea. I’ve been thinking that my experimenting with lots of Rachael Ray recipes has been a lot of fun, but the recipes can tend to be a bit heavier than what I really want to make in the evening. So I figured that I should also include some lighter recipes. Let me tell you, when I saw the amount of chicken that was going to go into a recipe with 4 portions (one breast… a large breast, but still only 340 g!), I immediately saw the difference with the Rachael Ray recipes.
I’ve already read in one of my favorite forums (www.weddingbells.ca), in one of the discussions groups on cooking and recipes, that Pad Thai is notoriously difficult to make well at home. It would appear that the cost of stocking all the different ingredients required is so high that you might as well go spend 7$ at a noodle joint and eat good Pad Thai. But I figured that it would be worth a try to make it at home even if the result isn’t so sublime as what’s found in a restaurant (I loooooooove Pad Thai. I think it’s purely wonderful). And that’s basically my review of the recipe. It was easy to make, it tasted good (a little bland, but that might have to do with me hoarding my peanuts at the bottom of my bowl to scarf down all at once… hehe). It was nothing like real Pad Thai. I might have used too low of a sauce to noodles ratio. It also didn’t have any spice to it, whereas I usually request spicy Pad Thai when I go to the restaurant (at which point the waiters usually eyeball me to see if I can take it… trust me, I have an iron stomach so far as spice is concerned!)
(that’s not what my recipe looked like, at all… just including a picture for inspiration… also, it’s 11:30 a.m. and I’m already hungry!)
Incidentally, this wasn’t such a healthy recipe since I estimate that it includes about 500 calories, which is more than what the recipe mentions, and it really doesn’t include that much protein. Again, I might have used too much noodles (I forget the size of the bag), since I didn’t want to have any extra lying around. Also, I now have a jar of peanuts lying around in my kitchen, which is a terrible thing considering my love of nuts. Apparently, it’s impossible to buy small quantities of peanuts!
(Also, this is trotting through my mind, I’m thinking of possibly including an exercise/diet angle to this blog since I’m feeling a bit stuck exercise-wise. I’ve pretty much reached the weight that I’ve always wanted to be at and that I’ve been working at since January 2009, so I need to figure out where I go from here. I might start a more intense weight lifting program like the one featured in this book that I’ve heard a lot of good things about: The New Rules of Lifting for Women. The word goddess is included in the title, how can I resist? hehehe… More details to follow…)
