Since I am currently are not bringing in any income I’ve been focusing on making meals with refrigerator and pantry items. I learned long ago in college that you can make a one pot meal out of any 3 vegetables, a protein, and a sauce of your choice. Back then I ate low carb so thats how many meals were. Fortunately for tonight I found some rice noodles in the pantry in addition to pad Thai sauce. Onions, carrots, and mushrooms may be a unique choice for traditional pad Thai, but I’m always happy to use whats on hand.

I also had shrimp in the freezer, but since I found some Bang Bang shrimp sauce in the refrigerator, so I opted for shrimp with that sauce and kept the pad Thai vegetarian.

I heated up the skillet with sesame oil, and then added the onions for a few minutes. Once the onions were starting to caramelize I next added the sliced carrots and lastly the mushrooms. When sautéing vegetables in the same pan always add the vegetables that take the longest to cook (or reach their desired doneness) first. I next added garlic and ginger paste, and because pad Thai sauce recommended a fried egg I threw that in next. I followed the directions on the rice noodles and cooked them in the glass bowl by pouring boiling water on them and letting them soak before adding them to the pain. Lastly, I added the pad Thai sauce and cooked for several more minutes. This is one of those meals where I made up my steps as I went, mostly because I wanted to use on hand ingredients, but it still turned out great. So great that I forgot to take a picture after 😦

I sautéd the shrimp separately and then added the Bang Bang sauce after they finished cooking. Again no picture :(. Maybe with a little practice I’ll be able to complete a full post with the correct pictures!!