Ginger Veggie Stir Fry

So, as I stated 2 posts ago, I was making the Ginger Veggie Stir Fry that came in the last packet from Linda.  You can find the recipe on this post.

For the record (and because you'll see by the pictures), I don't really measure my vegetables.  So when the recipe calls for a cup of this and a cup of that, I just chop whatever amount looks good to me.  With this in mind, I did bump up the amounts used in the sauce as well.  And I ended up having to cook the veggies in two different pans.  One non stick skillet and one wok.

Before I started chopping veggies, I mixed up what was going to be the sauce and set it aside.  I made sure that I mixed all the cornstarch in so that it wouldn't be lumpy.  I also added the spices into this mix so that they had time to infuse their flavors into the sauce mix as well.  I don't know how much more flavor it added if any, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I also decided to add meat to this dist (because my husband likes meat in the meal, though he also asked if I was going to make rice with this and I told him I wasn't because it had sweet potatoes in it).  I cooked up some kielbasa while I chopped up the first round of veggies and used the fat/oil that resulted to stir fry the veggies.  After the sausage was browned, I pulled it out and set it aside to add back in at the end.

Because of the amount of veggies I was using, and because I only have one larger cutting board for this purpose, I had to cut the veggies in two patches.  I cut the broccoli, carrots and trimmed the snap peas first.

Once the first round was cooking up in the wok (as per the directions), I chopped the onion and the sweet potatoes.  I purchased the non-orange sweet potatoes.  I've read conflicting things about what the difference was between sweet potatoes and yams.  I've always thought of the orange variety as yams and the white-ish as sweet potatoes.

By the time I was done peeling and chopping the sweet potatoes, he green veggies were looking pretty good.

I added the onions and sweet potatoes and realized that my wok was too full to really stir the veggies, so I split the mixture into another skillet.  Once the sweet potatoes were tender, I tossed everything back into the same pan, added the sausage and the sauce mixture and let that cook until it thickened up and coated everything.

The sauce helped pack the veggies down a little bit too.  My husband wasn't too sure about the choice of kielbasa in this, but I wanted something with it's own distinct flavor, and chicken just wasn't going to cut it for me.  I kind of liked the combination and after dinner, my husband admitted that it was pretty good too.

Since then, I have made one other stir fry, but that one I did with a bunch of veggies I had to use up (I had some older carrots, some broccoli stems and some celery), stir fried some chicken and made up some rice to go with it.  I needed leftover rice for a dish later on in the week.

I should be getting on here more often to post.  Lately my work schedule has been weird and my days off have been split up which makes it hard to have a day to just do things that I want to do because I'm always taking care of little things around the house or running errands.  However, I have finally been offered a full time position and that comes with a set rotation, where my days off are together for 3 of the 4 weeks in the month.  As of right now, I have a list of 17 more things to share in the blog and that's not counting all the new things that I'm trying to do as well.  So I'll have plenty to share.

Thanks and happy eating!