Pad Thai (a la Suzanne-can't vouch for authenticity)

I'M DONE!

My test is finally finally finally done. Thank goodness. Now I can enter the real world again for a few weeks.

Step one, was rent movies! Today I've watched King of California, which was pretty good. I have two more to watch, so we'll see how far I get.

Tonight I'm making up some easy pad Thai. I made the sauce a while ago, so i'm just going to use up the leftovers. The pad Thai sauce was very very fun to make, and the dish unfolded as follows:

I was at the grocery store, mad because they don't carry san J wheat free tamari...grrrr, and finally found tamarind. I took that as a sign and snatched it up. I'm not really sure why tamarind had been so elusive, but I swear I looked for it at least 5 times. I ended up finding a big block of it, and if I remember correctly it was about $1. So I bought it, with absolutely no idea how this hunk of gunk was going to turn into pad Thai. Let the fun begin!

When I got home, I googled it -how we functioned before google I honestly have NO IDEA-and got a general consensus. I was supposed to mix this tamarind hunk with about 4 cups of boiling water, let it sit till I could stick my hands in it, and then smash it up. Once it had formed a paste-and I was up to my elbows in zingy-sour smelling mush, strain to finish. Straining ended up being more of a "smash as much as I could" through my strainer, getting chunks and twigs out. It was so much fun, and let me tell you, something is very soul satisfying about smashing up your own paste complete with twigs. So after I made/hydrated my tamarind, I cooked up my version of pad Thai.

I based my recipe from here and was pretty please.

The sauce:
About 1/2 cup tamarind
a generous 1/4 cup of a mix of braggs aminos, wheat free tamari and a touch of fish sauce
*the recipe calls for 1/2 cup of fish sauce, but I just can't handle that. Maybe I bought cheap fish sauce, but the thought of it makes me want to toss my cookies. Bragg's has a very distinguishing taste to me, so I wanted the tamari in there too. I think it was a good choice. As you will find out, I don't pay too much attention to the details of measuring and all that nonsense, even in baking, and I majored in biochem! Whatever works:)
Brown sugar, till it's sweet enough. I started with about 1/4 cup, but kept adding untill I liked it
A pinch of paprika
A few pinches of chili powder, till it tasted smoky enough
A splash or two of sesame oil

The dish:
Sautee garlic, onions and other veggies.
I had sweet peas, carrots, red onion to start
I then added shiratake(well rinsed!) noodles and a ladle full of sauce and cooked
I pushed all that junk over to the side of my skillet, and scrambled an egg on my free side
Add a diced tomato and sprouts
Cook it all up
garnish with green onion and enjoy!

It really is very easy to make, but felt like such a huge accomplishment! I still have a glass jar of he tamarind paste in the fridge, so now I can whip up pad Thai any time I want. Hopefully I can get a picture up soon, but no green onion today:( maybe some zucchini and shrimp will find their way in though...