Meatless Monday: Stir Fry Rocks!

Rachel here.  as you may know, i eat only plant-based foods.  There's lots of well-known reasons to maintain a plant-based diet so i am not going to go into it here but i will tell you that i love it!

Meatless Mondays is a new thing going around - simply: meat eaters give up eating meat on Monday - for their health, for the environment, for their wallets.

With that in mind, I will be doing Monday's Fun Food posts...

Here is my favorite stir-fry preparation and it's my Go-To meal.  I call it a "preparation" instead of "recipe" because you can really use any veggies that you like. Ideally, I like to use 3-4 green cooking veggies and one or two colored veggies, but no tomatoes or lettuce,  for fun but most of the time I just look in the fridge and use what's there.

Suggested veggies:
Bell pepper (any color)
Celery
Carrots
Zucchini or Summer Squash
Bok Choy
Bean Sprouts

Ingredients:
2 cups chopped veggies per person
peanut oil or olive oil
handful of almonds

Wash your veggies and drain them.   Get them as dry as possible, the drier the better. (I actually dry them with a dish towel but you don't have to go that far.

Cut veggies in roughly the same size pieces.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a wok or a large frying pan, on medium heat.

Add almonds and stir constantly until you hear the almonds popping and smell a wonderful roasted smell.  (don't walk away, you need to stir and take them off once you hear the popping).  Take out almonds, leaving as much oil in the pan as possible, drain almonds on paper towel.

Add a 2 more tablespoons of oil to pan on highest heat possible.  once oil is shimmery, add all veggies except for any fragile ones like bean sprouts or spinach leaves.   Stir constantly until veggies turn bright in color.  Once they are bright, you can continue cooking until to your preference, and then you are done.

Serve with steamed rice.  Garnish with almonds and Bragg's Aminos or Soy Sauce.  When I am feeling super inspired and I have mushrooms, I make this little sauce for garnish:

Ingredients:
Peanut Oil,
Mushrooms, 5 per serving, cleaned and chopped fine
garlic clove, 1 per serving, minced
fresh ginger, 1" per serving, grated
Bragg's Aminos, 2 tbsp per person (or soy sauce, 1 tbsp per person + 1 tbsp water per person
scallions or green onions, 1 per serving, minced

heat oil on low heat.
sweat garlic and ginger until soft, stirring constantly.
add mushrooms and stir until soft. 
Remove from heat.
Add Braggs or Soy Sauce/Water and scallions, stir then cover.
let sit for 1-2 minutes so that flavors can meld.
pour over Veggie stir fry and garnish with almonds.

enjoy!