Noodles and Chicken with Peanut Sauce

Prior to this year when I moved into my new apartment, I was in a grocery store desert. There was only one tiny Trader Joe’s near my apartment and it hardly had anything. The next closest was a Safeway and it was the most disgusting grocery store I’ve ever seen. As a way to try to still cook with the proper ingredients, my mom gave me this recipe book called “Cooking with all things Trader Joe’s”. Because the store near me was so small, unfortunately I still couldn’t even find all the ingredients in the book, but at least it was a start.

I have made a ton of tweaks to this recipe because it was so impractical. It made such a small amount and was really only a side dish. I don’t know about you all, but one of my favorite parts about cooking is having leftovers to take to work the next day for lunch, so this recipe simply wouldn’t do. Anyway, now I have remedied it and it is super easy to make, the ingredients are always available and my bf loves it. I’m also not usually a huge fan of peanut sauce, but this dish is a great exception.

The ingredients are as follows: a box of spaghetti noodles (when I don’t have regular spaghetti, like tonight, I substitute with another kind of pasta), 1 cup shredded carrot, 1 cup peels and chopped cucumber, 4 green onions chopped (I ran out of these tonight, so they aren’t super important), 2 chicken breasts and the sauce.

The sauce is 1/2 cup teriyaki sauce (any kind will do), 1/2 cup peanut butter (any kind that is creamy), 4 tsp toasted sesame oil, and 1/2 cup water.

While boiling the water for the chicken and then boiling the chicken for 20 minutes, I chop the green onion, cucumbers and shred the carrots.

While the pasta is cooking, I make the sauce and cut the chicken into bite size pieces.  When making the sauce it’s really important to mix the teriyaki, peanut butter and sesame oil first, then add the water and mix again- otherwise it gets this weird grainy texture.

I then mix everything together. You can serve it hot or cold, although my little family generally prefers it cold. The sauce gets creamier in the refrigerator and it’s simply delicious.