Stir Fry - Vegetarian, Part 1

I have a tendency to underestimate how much food a dish will make, especially when that dish is stir-fry. This can be a problem when you don't have the containers to store left-overs. One option is, of course, to use half of the ingredients, but if you don't have the means of storing half an eggplant or an onion, that isn't really a choice.

Which means you still need more containers, in any case.

I love stir-fry because a) it is easy to make with whatever you have on hand or whatever's cheap in the store that week and b) you get a lot of different types of vegetables - which makes a nice change from three straight days of spaghetti and meatballs. I usually make chicken stir-fry and that gets me through a few days.

This time I decided to skip the chicken and try a few new vegetables.

Vegetarian Stir Fry 
Serves 6
Ingredients

• one head of broccoli
• one can of water chestnuts
• one onion, chopped
• four or five stalks of spring onions/scallions
• one cucumber
• one eggplant
• one package of snow peas
• two baby bok choi/pak choi
• one cup of basmati rice
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/4 - 1/3 bottle of stir fry marinade or sauce, according to taste
• rice

Cook the rice according to the instructions, either on the stove or in a rice cooker, if you have one. While the rice is cooking, heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan or wok on medium high heat. Chop the broccoli, cucumber, and eggplant and toss it into the pan. Add in the onion, the snow peas and the water chestnuts, stirring occasionally. Cut the bok choi and the spring onions into small pieces and throw them in, mixing well with the rest. Pour in the stir fry sauce and stir until everything is warm and mixed thoroughly. Serve with the rice.

As you can see, this is a lot of food. I even thought to myself as I was buying it, 'This is probably too much'. But I couldn't use half and store the rest for later, so it all went it.

See? I even needed two pots to hold it all.

There everything is, frying away.

This made a grand total of seven servings. Seven! I was lucky I found a few more containers from last semester or I would have had to throw some out. The problem, of course, is that I spent most of the week eating the same dish and I don't even want to think about stir-fry for a while. I need to re-think this ingredient list.

The sauce I used was Kikkoman Terriyaki Marinade, if only because there is no Wegmans here. Sadly, even Wegmans has re-done its line of sauces and the new version is nowhere near as good as the old bottle with the purple label.

Maybe I should get some freezer-safe containers and do some true batch cooking. 

Broccoli: EUR 1.29 at Lidl

Snow Peas: EUR 1.09 at Lidl

Cucumber: EUR 0.69 at Lidl

Eggplant: EUR 0.99 at Lidl

Spring Onions: EUR 0.79 at Lidl

Basmati Rice, 1/5 of a bag at EUR 1.49/bag = EUR 0.30 at Lidl

Bok Choi: EUR 1.99 at Tesco

Onion: EUR 0.42 at Tesco

Water Chestnuts: EUR 1.05 at Tesco

Stir Fry Sauce, 1/3 of a 250ml bottle at EUR 3.59/bottle = EUR 1.20 at Tesco

Vegetable Oil, 1/10 of a bottle at EUR 1.59/bottle = EUR 0.16 at Lidl

Total Cost: EUR 11.96 for seven servings, or EUR 1.71 for one serving