Near the end of a long week, I start to eye the Chinese food joint next to my subway stop as if it might be the answer to all my hopes and dreams. This was the case this week. I started to envision a day off spent in a food coma under a pile of crab rangoon and lo mein. But then I thought: why just one day? I deserve comfort food all week! So I found a lo mein recipe that looked manageable and delicious, and decided to make it so.

Planning!

This recipe from Epicurious was my starting point. Because I am me, I knew I would have to double the mushrooms or bust. Also, roast pork is hard to come by in my neighborhood, but no worries because I like beef lo mein, so I decided to stir fry some beef with the rest of it. And finally, after reading the recipe a couple of times, I still couldn't trust that the noodles wouldn't stick together in a gluey lump while I did the stir-fry, never to be unglued again, so I decided to do the noodles last, stirring the sesame oil in with the rest of the sauce.

Sadly, my grocery store didn't have chinese egg noodles, which was a surprise to me. Instead, I bought noodles labeled "Lo Mein" noodles, though for the life of me they look exactly like Udon Noodles, and there was even a bowl of noodle soup on the packaging. Shrug. Noodles are delicious... no complaints here.

Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...

Groceries I had on hand...

• vegetable oil
• sesame oil
• soy sauce
• oyster sauce
• rice wine
• honey
• ginger
• garlic
• scallions

Groceries I had to buy...

• noodles ($2.49)
• shiitakes (.36lb @ $5.99/lb = $2.16)
• beef (.73lb @ 5.49/lb = $4.02)

Total monies spent for the entire recipe: $8.67

Total monies spent for each of these 4 lunches....

$2.18 per lunch

Cooking!

I saved this for the last thing to cook because I wanted to have it for dinner this evening, and achieve all my Day Off Lo Mein Dreams. When I was ready for dinner, all I had to do was make the sauce then chop the aromatics and slice the mushrooms. Then I put water on to boil and promptly started stir-frying the beef. By the time the water had boiled, the entirety of the fillings were done and ready. The noodles were done 3 minutes later, and I stirred it all together then portioned it out!

Day Off dinner treat accomplished, with intentional "leftovers" for the week!