RECIPE WORTH SHARING- SHRIMP LO MEIN
You guys…this recipe! First, let me preface this post by saying I am no food photographer. I have tons to learn in that department, but I need to share this recipe with y’all so bear with my amateur skills behind the camera.
I’ve been seriously slacking in the wife department when it comes to cooking, well pretty much everywhere else too now that school has started. Paul has been doing so much laundry. Bless you, babe! When you’re basically a sloth in the summer in front of Netflix all the time, you forget how to balance your life. Anyway, I am determined to get it back together now that I’m a few weeks in to school.
Yesterday I knew I had to get something to cook for dinner before heading home, so I headed to Pinterest for some inspiration instead of ordering pizza. I was sort of craving Chinese food, noodles, specifically, and shrimp and searched a lo mein recipe. I clicked on this pin from lifemadesweeter.com.
Ingredients
Her lo mein recipe used:
- shrimp
- red bell pepper
- carrots
Very simple and delicious. Paul doesn’t love bell pepper, so I decided to do broccoli instead. But when I got to the store I found myself adding all of these things to my cart to add to my lo mein, so I used:
- shrimp
- green peas
- broccoli
- grated carrots
- small sweet onion
- water chestnuts
For the sauce, you have to use oyster sauce. That sounded positively disgusting, and I fully expected the smell to be very off-putting, but it wasn’t so bad, and it totally makes the sauce, AND I found it very easily in Super Foods. Woo Hoo! (As much as I appreciate a good Walmart clearance or just a good Walmart find in general, I was so happy to not have to go there on a Friday afternoon.)
So here are the other ingredients I used (all but the veggie oil and noodles are used in the sauce). 
I followed her recipe just as she had written it, and I’m not going to post an in-depth description of what I did, since this is not my recipe. Please visit her website to see the full recipe. I just wanted you to see how I tweaked it.
Put it all together and what do you have? Deliciousness!
Okay, I mixed up the sauce while the noodles were boiling. I used thin spaghetti noodles instead of lo mein noodles because I already had those in the cabinet. I didn’t have the Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry, so I omitted it, and I never missed it. Also, Paul and I don’t like cilantro, so I left that out too.
The sauce only take a minute to put together, so while the noodles cooked, I heated a big skillet with some of the veggie oil, dropped in the shrimp and onions and sauted for a few minutes. Then I added all the other ingredients except the sauce. I let them all cook down and get a little soft. The recipe tells you to add the sauce and noodles next, toss, and cook for about two minutes, so I did that.
*I cooked the whole pound of noodles because, well, leftovers. But that means I doubled the amount of sauce that the recipe calls for.* It doesn’t look like it’s going to be enough sauce because my noodles did not get as dark as the one in her pictures, but it was perfect! 
The beauty of this recipe is how customizable it is. I think bell pepper would be good in it, chicken instead of shrimp, baby corn, chopped asparagus, pineapple, rice instead of noodles, or even just leave it veggie and not put any meat in it.
The Verdict
It was a big hit! Paul loves Chinese food, but I just don’t love typical Chinese takeout. I like the veggie lo mein and fried rice, but I’m never just dying to go get Chinese food unless, well, honestly unless it’s at Ming’s Garden in Montgomery or P.F. Chang’s. I do enjoy the fried rice and lo mein at China Town here in Greenville, though. And their fried wontons. Yum! I get so sidetracked, I’m sorry. It was so delicious! I took one bite and shook my head because it was so unbelievable. It was exactly what I was craving, and I’m so happy to have leftovers and happy to make this again and switch up some of the ingredients each time.
Here are a few more amateur pictures of our food. 🙂 
Please visit lifemadesweeter.com to find this delicious recipe. She has so many other scrumptious looking dishes to make, too. I’ll be going there for more Asian-inspired dinners soon.
Okay, go make this delicious dinner tonight! It was very easy and would be a quick weeknight meal. It would be even quicker if you meal-prepped early and had everything thawed (well, not the shrimp) and cut/grated.
Anyone else like Asian food? Paul and I love sushi, but haven’t gotten around to a sushi date night lately. Any restaurant recommendations for good sushi in the Montgomery area? Leave them in the comments.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
XO, Elizabeth