My mother (Nana) makes a friend no matter where she goes. She’s the kid that every mother worried about “don’t talk to strangers, you’ll get kidnapped”. At 4 foot 8 give or take a smidge, she’s still the size of a middle school girl but now that she’s 77 she can talk to all the strangers she wants. And she does.
When I arrived in front of the cheery door on the second floor of Nana’s apartment Saturday night the entire floor smelled like Chinese take out. I love me some good Chinese to go so I was excited even before I let myself in.
Imagine my excitement though when I heard her story for the day. Nana had made a trip to the Asian Supermarket and check it out, made a new friend. Her new friend explained all the tubers we had been curious about, showed her some new to us tofus, and most importantly introduced her to a type of noodles that she assured Nana her daughter would love. I am confident this also tiny Asian woman meant that I would love the taste, but my very hard of hearing mother was sure they had a mutual conversation about Weight Watchers. Doesn’t matter, she was right. I LOVE them.
Nana made Veggie Lo Mein which we will get to in another post…but let me go on and on here about the amazing noodles she used. I had never seen any noodles quite like these and had no idea what they were, so I looked them up. Did you know there is an entire website devoted to looking up things and their substitutes just like a Thesaurus for food? Well there is and here is what they say on Food Subs.com about mi chay = mì chay Notes: These are Vietnamese wheat noodles. Genius.
So the kind Nana bought comes in what I will call little “nests”. I have done the math about 20 times now and based on the nutritional information on the package and online each “nest” is only 1 points plus. Just one. I know, I know, sit down and breathe into a paper bag. I had the same reaction.
I took one nest and put it in a bowl of cold water as per the instructions. Only it doesn’t say for how long…soooo I texted Nana. She says as long as it takes to get soft. Ok, thanks…5 minutes did the trick for me and I’m assuming it will for you too.
Next bring at least a one quart saucepan with water to a rolling boil. Drop in the “nest” and boil for about 5 minutes. I used a fork to gently un-“nest” the noodles so they wouldn’t glob together. I don’t know if that’s the appropriate cooking term but it made sense so I did it. Then I lightly drained them, fluffed them a little again with the fork and put them in a 2 cup glass measuring cup just for fun to see if Nana’s theory was indeed correct. By jiminy one “nest” is almost a cup and a half of noodles when you are just done with this part!
And now a teaser at the first recipe Nana made with this find of the day, you’ll have to wait until the Veggie Lo Mein post to get the full scoop but I highly recommend it!
