OK girls, you remember last time how we made that Crazy Asian Stir Fry and I had you make twice as much rice as you needed for the stir-fry? There was a dern good reason for that and when I think of it, I’ll surely let you know. Seriously, when I’m hungry for something home-cooked and delish but don’t want to spend half an hour makin’ it, finding some left-over rice in the fridge is like finding a shiny penny on a dirt road – makes me feel all lucky.
But if yur anything like my daughter, the word “left-over” (or is that two words?) just curls your lip. Well, that’s probably because when you were under your momma’s roof, you could curl your lip up at something and she’d say, “Aw, Pookims, let me make you somethin’ fresh if you don’t want leftovers.” And after years of that, you got dern spoiled, and yur poor momma grew pudgy from always being the one to finish the leftovers.
Well, yur on yur own now and that means one of three things: You either nickel and dime away yur paycheck on eating out, you do a heck of a lotta cookin’ or you learn to like leftovers. Maybe this fool-proof fried rice can help with that. Complete with an egg, veggies and some healthy fats, this dish is really a complete meal.

– 1 tsp olive or canola oil
– Two green onions or ¼ cup chopped yellow onion
– ¼ cup peas
– ¼ cup carrots, either chopped very small or julienned
– 1 clove garlic, pressed or minced
– ¼ tsp powdered ginger or 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
– ½ tsp curry powder
– 1 cup cold cooked rice
– 1 ½ to 2 tbsp soy sauce
– 1 egg
– Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the green or yellow onion in to iddy bitty pieces and toss ‘em in a large skillet (or wok for weenies!) with the oil. Heat over medium and stir those onions around every minute or two for about five minutes until they soften up. Then toss in yur peas, carrots and garlic. Ya know you can buy a can of peas and carrots already mixed – and they sell that combo in frozen veggies too – and it’s just as cheap as buying ‘em separately. Go ahead and get you a bag of em frozen and we’ll use the rest for chicken pot pie real soon.

Mix up everything for a couple more minutes of cookin, adding the spices between mixes. Now add the rice. If yur rice has been left over for a week – yes, it’s still good – it’s gonna be hard and it’s gonna hit that skillet like a brick. Use a wooden spoon or something to break it up in the skillet or break it up as yur adding it to the skillet. Don’t you worry a skinny minute about how that hard rice is gonna taste. Cuz our next ingredient is gonna soften up that old hard rice. Add the soy sauce and keep stirrin’ and mixin’ and mixin’ and stirrin’ until it’s starting to look like fried rice – about two minutes or long enough for the rice to heat through.

Now make a little well (that’s what they call a hole in cookin’ jargon) in the middle of the pan. Just scoot everything to the edges and expose some pan in the middle. Crack yur egg into that bare spot and scramble it gently, not so much that you mix it with the food around it. On the edges, it’ll mix with the rice a little, but most of yur egg should be free and clear of rice and veggies. But then when the egg is cooked through, break it up and mix it in with the rest of the stir fry. If you don’t get this quite right on yur first time, don’t worry because this is fool-proof fried rice, meaning it don’t matter! It’s gonna taste great regardless of whether yur egg looks all pretty like in the Chinese restaurant or not! Salt and pepper to taste, add a fortune cookie and get ready to enter into a grown woman’s relationship with leftovers.