Whatever you are, be a good one. : 1-9-15

I could feel the serious Friday struggle today, and cooking tonight was no exception. I was originally making a Vietnamese Rainbow Carrot Salad, but I deviated so much from the recipe (and apparently didn't find suitable alternatives to a couple of ingredients) that it really turned in to a spicy rice noodle salad with carrots and cabbage.

After a long first full week of work in the new year, I found it hard to cook solid meals at night. I finally got around to this salad, and it was just not coming together. I made my chickpeas yesterday in order to save time, and spilled them ALL over my floor while cooking. I had fortunately already added the amount I needed to my salad, but it was definitely one of those moments where I thought, "Was that really necessary?"

The great chickpea disaster of 2015...and playing with my new iPhone lenses...

Every once in a while (every time), I pick recipes with ingredients I can't find in my local grocery store. For some reason, I was unable to find sweet chili sauce this week, so I thought I would substitute it with sambal oelek and add some honey to sweeten it. The sauce was originally going to be 6 tbsp of sweet chili sauce and 2 tbsp of lime but let me tell you from experience, adding honey didn't work. My mouth was on fire....probably around a 5 alarm fire. I didn't want to completely discard the sauce because that's wasteful, so I turned it into something much different. I ended up adding quite of bit of soy sauce and tahini, which cooled it down to a more tolerable temperature....

Overall, my spicy rice noodle salad was tasty as long as I kept a liter of water next to my plate :)