Chinese

My World Geography professor is from southern China.  When we covered China in class we got to ask him all the questions that most of us wanted to, like, "Do you have cars?" and "What are the different kinds of religion?" "Why did you move to America?" and I had two questions.  The first one was, "When you were kids did you dig a hole to America, because we used to dig holes to China in our back yard."  His answer was yes, they did dig holes to America which made us all laugh.  The second question, of course, was about food.  "Do we actually have anything CLOSE to Chinese food here?"  and HE laughed.  Hard. And then went on to explain that there is nothing in the resturants here anywhere near what he had growing up and went into some detail on how they did not deep fry anything, they ate sticky rice and vegetables and sometimes if they had the money and had bought a chicken, they would eat it with some meat, and they used EVERY part of the chicken.  And since the part they were from had a large Hindu population, no cows were ever consumed.  He didn't have a hamburger until he went to Tokyo when he was 25, on his way to America with his wife and their 3 girls (the reason they moved to America). 

Anyway. Last night I made "Chinese" food.  The reason I made this particular thing is because I got a REALLY good deal on it with my rookie couponing ninja skills.  I would NEVER pay full price for this because it was not that good and I had to add mushrooms to it to stretch it enough for it to be a meal.  So here we go.

This puppy is 9 dollars full price. And honestly, since it serves two people $4.50 is not bad compared to take out, but still.  Well it was on special for $5.99 and I had a coupon on my Kroger card for $.50 and then another coupon for $1.50 so I got it for $3.99.  It's a complete meal so it came with rice and everything.  It was the only one of the ones on sale that didn't have deep fried chicken in it.  So I pull out all the packets on the inside and dump the contents that were supposed to go in the skillet, in the skillet. 

It is not a lot of food.
This was my reaction:

It would have been worse if I actually paid 9 bucks for it. 

So while I was doing that I put the steam pack of rice in the microwave, which was about the size of my palm by the way, about 1/2 a cup of rice total.  So when I added the sauce to the vegetables I added

Yes I have a checkered tile floor in the kitchen. No I don't like it. But it costs money to replace so I deal :)

So I put it in the pan and mixed it in with the sauce

There was a packet of roasted peanuts too. 

Put it all on the plate together:

Overall good flavor.  Shawn took off the snap peas and water chestnuts, and I gave him more chicken since there might have been a total of 2oz of processed chicken. 

Unless I have a super awesome coupon again and it's on sale, I won't be buying it again.  Not worth it.  I'm fairly certain I can make it for cheaper than that and use far less in the way of corn products.  But it was a cheap and easy meal, which was nice since I had ladies Bible class last night.  I might try and duplicate here next week after the crazy that is this Fundraiser is done.