Hash Mishmash

After arriving home from errands with the kids and procrastinating for a few minutes, I found that dinner was staring me in the face. I tried to pretend this wasn't so by polling my family members: "are you hungry?" I asked each person. The kids both said no, so I allowed myself to feel slightly hopeful about not having to make dinner tonight...but then I addressed the question to Aogu, and alas, I received an immediate and resounding yes.

Shuffling to the kitchen and poking through the randomness that is currently contained in the fridge, I found a 1/4 package of hayashi rice roux. Score! Izumi and I chopped an onion; that is, I chopped and she peeled the skin off while crying and saying "Izumi no me ga itai yo Mama!" (my eyes hurt, Mama!). I got the onion going in a skillet and went rooting for the thinly sliced beef that I was sure I had in the freezer.

Only it wasn't there. Curse words. But, the onion was already going, the idea was already percolating, and the trend of meat substitution started yesterday. So I grabbed some thinly sliced pork and scissored it up into the skillet (that's right, I cut it with scissors; I like to cut food with scissors whenever possible, especially raw meat. Scissors allow me to gingerly hold said raw meat over its intended pan and saw away at it with minimal contact). There wasn't enough meat. I remembered I had thawed a couple of little pieces of chicken, so I grabbed them out of the fridge and scissored them, too.

Better. As that was frying up, I dug through the veg drawers of the fridge and found a wilty salad for myself and carrots for everyone else. I also found some mushrooms, so I sauteed them in a separate skillet and threw them into the

*Hayashi Pork Chicken Mishmash, which we ate with the aforementioned
*hot carrots (that's what we call carrots that have been sliced and microwaved till tender...Koji LOVES them)
*wilty salad with ceasar dressing; strategically not pictured
*rice, white with a bit of brown mixed in
*milk

After trying out this "new" version of hayashi rice, our consensus was "it's not inedible". In other words, next time I will only make this dish when I am sure that I have thinly sliced beef. Hey, you never know until you try!