When Josh does his “surprise dinner” with me (every two weeks a different child selects a recipe and then prepares it with me for the family to eat – it rarely is a surprise though since everyone likes stopping by to see what is cooking – but we still refer to these meals as our “surprise dinners”), he takes great care in picking his recipes. He likes the books with pictures – and then wants to copy the picture exactly.

He found a good recipe for chicken satay – but when I went to read the actual recipe – it was a little too complicated for me (probably not for him – but for me:))

Luckily, Gran came to the rescue, with a “peanut butter” recipe that was super easy and ended up being a super big hit. We made our own variations of the recipe (I added some extra healthy things which Josh wasn’t crazy about but we adults thought it made the meal!).

VERMICELLI WITH CHICKEN IN PEANUT SAUCE:

3 tbsps oil
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced
1-11/2 cups chicken stock
3 tbsps each of honey, soya sauce and cornstarch
1/4 cup (PLUS – meaning we added about 1/2 cup) peanut butter
3 green onions chopped
chopped parsley
vermicelli pasta

Heat oil, saute chicken, Remove and set aside.
Combine stock, honey, soya sauce and whisk in cornstarch and peanut butter.
Cook and stir till thickened. Add chicken.

Cook vermicelli. Spoon chicken mixture over vermicilli and add chopped green onions and parsley.

Our variation: Steam some asparagus, then cut into bite size pieces. Cut up some cucumber into bite size pieces too. Toss both with vermicilli and peanut butter sauce. A very unique combination of flavours!

We also made another super yummy variation: instead of vermicilli, we steamed some chinese dumplings and served them with the peanut butter sauce. Peanut butter dumplings!!!