I used to make what my family called ‘macaroni chinois’ (Chinese macaroni) all the time until I switched to using Japanese soy sauce. It’s a ridiculously simple mix of sautéd onions, carrots, elbow macaroni, and Chinese soy sauce to taste, a very inexpensive and reasonably healthy meal for a hungry student! Thinner Japanese soy sauce works okay, but doesn’t have nearly as much flavour in this application.

I added way more veggies than I normally used to, when I was pretty much guaranteed to have onions and carrots on hand, but not much else. Here, you can see red onion, carrot, green beans, chayote, and garlic.

Add in cooked macaroni and soy sauce and done! The macaroni gets much darker with the Chinese sauce than it does the Japanese. I also had to use almost a quarter of a small bottle to get a burst of flavour throughout. Still has that wonderful umami flavour, though!

The only thing lunch lacked was protein. I only remember after I was done that I had some almonds in the freezer! I’ll add some of those to my leftovers. 🙂

I’m not going to be eating vegetarian per se this winter, but definitely more so than I have in a while. I’ve read about shopping for meat in MX and I’m not sure I have the stomach for it on Isla. I know I could get packaged meat at a Soriana or other grocery store in Maz, but that’s not very convenient. The chicken lady will keep me stocked in poultry (that I won’t even have to cook!) and I’ll eventually get to the fish market. So far, I’m not starving and I’ve even lost a couple more pounds. 🙂