Food Journal of a Famished Little Ferret: Mom's "Pad Thai"

   OK, I'm not gonna lie. It's not Pad Thai (hence the quotations in the title, silly). It started off as the desire to have Pad Thai again. Like when my mom and I would order Pad That take out from a little dingy Thai place back in Los Angeles (I'd hate to see what the kitchen actually looked like...but who cares!? That stuff was so good!).

   So yeah...there we were today...mom and I, chillaxin' on our bad-ass cheetah print couch (meow), talking about how deliciously wonderful that stuff was and next thing you know, my mom's up and in the kitchen trying to recreate it all over again! Oh, bless her heart. She's so cute. She had the spirit. She was certain it would come out tasting just like pad thai! Never mind the fact that we're missing a few ingredients...like the fish sauce... and the tamarind pulp..and the bean sprouts..and the rice noodles...and the ground peanuts...nothing much, just half of the main ingredients.:)

   Well, what she created might not have been true, authentic pad thai straight outta the Land...but it was a mouthgasm none the less. My mom is just gangster like that. She can literally throw anything (and everything) in a pot and have it taste absolutely divine (90% of the time. And this fact does not hold true when it comes to baking. Keep her away from baking. At all costs). Screw culinary laws and do's and don't's...she makes up her own!

   So there she was, cooking away and I just barely had enough time to take pics of the whole process. I apologize if the photos are a tad crap-tastic...it was the best that I could do as I was trying to not clash into my mom as she whizzed her short self up and down our minuscule kitchen. Oh yeah and you can forget about an actual recipe on this one, she literally just sized it all up for 3 people (and a little extra for a ever so epicurean-curious kitty).

The Chef du Jour

"Just eyeball it!"- Mom

So here goes the story of how mom made the best pasta. Evar.

No peanuts? No problem! She just slivered up some almonds and toasted them up in a bit of olive oil along with some chopped up dates.

She set them aside and then sauted a generous amount of garlic in the same pan along with about a tablespoon of brown sugar....

...and then she added some shredded carrots to the mix and stir frequently until the carrots started to caramelize...

Next, she added the almonds and dates back in the pan and let all the ingredients get to know each other a little bit better...about 2-3 minutes or so.

Then, she emptied all that loveliness on to a plate and sauted some green onions in the pan. She cooked them for about 5 minutes and then decided to make some scrambled eggs all up in there adding a nice amount of black pepper as well (she's seasoning as she goes along as well).

After the eggs were well scrambled, she added all the ingredients that have been patiently waiting on a side plate back into the pan and added some sesame seeds and chopped dried red chilies to it all and gave them one more whirl (all this on medium heat, by the way).

(I should mention that she put a pot of water and cooked our pasta in the midst of all this...)

So there she was, regular ol' pasta, drained and buttered, mixed with some of this Thai-inspired deliciousness of my mother's. There are no words...all I can say is...nom nom nom nom....