rainbow vegetable pad thai;

Rice noodles tossed with a rainbow of veggies and egg, pulled together by a complex sticky sauce and topped with fresh herbs and chopped peanuts.

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It’s been a full weekend!  Luckily I have off today to recover, and generally be a lump!  Sometimes you need one of those laze-about days, and I think I need one!  To be fair I still have a phone call and a doubleheader volleyball match, but those aren’t until the evening so we’re gonna ignore those for now.

We’ll go day by day since there was so much going on!  Friday I just caught up on some errands and we had a light date night, then Saturday we took the pup to the dog park where we hung out with a fellow shiba-owning couple that are just as nerdy as us!   Then, since it was Jackie’s birthday weekend, she hosted game night followed by brunch at Penn Commons (read a previous review) the next morning!  Tyler and I even dragged our butts to the gym!  And then we had our friends Tegan and Alex come over for dinner where I tried out this vegetable pad thai recipe by Lindsay over at Pinch of Yum.

It was a hit!  Tegan is vegetarian so I love the excuse to try out some vegetarian recipes, although it does help that she’s not adverse to seafood, so fish sauce is still a go. If you’re looking for a vegan fish sauce recipe, there are some suggestions in the comments of the original recipe.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much flavor was in the dish and actually really loved the fresh cilantro mixed in. It has some complex flavors without a huge arsenal of uncommon ingredients. In fact, I’d say the “hardest” two to come by unless you’re stocked for Asian cooking are the noodles and the fish sauce. And nowadays you might even find both of those in a regular grocery.

The noodles I used are a “Korean rice noodle” which is actually not the traditional pad Thai noodles. But I love white rice noodles and by the end I don’t think I could have told you the difference. Traditional pad Thai noodles are mostly opaque rather than the stark white of this kind.  It’s also good to point out that rice noodles are generally far more starchy than the Italian counterparts, so make sure when you drain them you add a decent splash of oil and toss to coat. Otherwise you’ll get one huge rice noodle cake.

Related posts:

marinated kabobs; crustless vegetable quiche; vegetable fried rice; broccoli alfredo stuffed shells; quarantine bagels;