After one week of home-cooked January, I'm feeling good about this project. It's been pretty manageable and the food I've made has been tasty for the most part. I've mainly made decisions about what to cook from day to day and I'm trying to get better about planning in advance. To that end, I made a big batch of vegetable stock today to use later this week.

Vegetable Stock
1/4 cup canola oil
2 onions, quartered
4 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 potatoes, sliced
1-2 cups mushrooms (I used one king oyster and a handful of baby bella)
5 cloves garlic
12 cups water
20 stems parsley with leaves
1/4 cup soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in stock pot then add onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, mushrooms, and garlic. Cook for 5-10 minutes until vegetables start to brown. Add water, parsley and soy sauce, bring to a boil and then simmer, partially covered, for ~1 hour. This recipe makes just over 2 quarts. Strain, pressing vegetables and store in refrigerator for 3-5 days or freeze.

For dinner, I used the remaining king oyster mushrooms from Mike's dad. I simply sauteed them in canola oil with salt and pepper for 10 minutes and then added 1 tsp minced garlic and 1 tbsp soy sauce. After cooking for 1 minute more, I served the mushrooms over thin Chinese egg noodles. I boiled the noodles for ~3 minutes and then rinsed them in cold water. Then I added 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp soy sauce and some chopped green onions and stir fried the noodles in oil until they were heated through. I topped mine off with a little Sriracha hot sauce. The finished meal tasted better than it looked. The king oyster mushrooms have a chewy consistency and a mild flavor and went well with the Asian flavors and noodles. Alex isn't usually a mushroom fan but he thought they were ok, a pretty good compliment ;)