L&W Bean Threads, aka Vermicelli

The egg roll recipe I had in the queue for the food plan required mung bean threads also known as vermicelli. I thought I knew what I was looking for until I started taking really good looks at what Asian vermicelli can consist of when I shopped HMart. Usually, when I buy vermicelli, I buy the type with Korean characters to send home to Mom in MI.

There are rice, sweet potato and various bean threads. Would I be able to tell a difference between any of them by appearance or flavor? Uh, no. It turns out that the types I send home to Mom are rice or potato vermicelli. I hunted for mung bean threads and since this Chinese brand of bean thread was on sale, I rolled with it.

A package of Chinese L&W Vermicelli (bean threads) can be purchased, on sale, at HMart for $1.99.

I'd give you a run-down of ingredients, but if there is anything other than some kind of beans, hopefully mung beans whatever those are, there wasn't an ingredient statement to be found. Ultimately, it doesn't matter since I probably wouldn't be able to read it.

Golden Dragon

Happy Birthday, Rodney!

It's Rodney's birthday today and so I broke my "I'm never going to Chinese again" vow for the second time. It has been about 5 months since Rodney's had Chinese in my presence. It's his birthday for Pete's sake. And he loves it. Feverishly.

I meant to stop at the Chinese place which is conveniently located a couple doors down from a Korean place on my way home to surprise Rodney with Chinese and please my own palate with Korean. My mind and body though went on autopilot at some point during the drive from work and I came home empty-handed.

After some "we should" "no, we shouldn't" "we could" "nah, let's not" back-and-forth, we agreed to do Golden Dragon again. They did make some stuff for us a few times that was decent before I was forced to put my foot down on the Chinese.

We ordered some of the special egg rolls to share, Aromatic Shrimp for me, and Mushroom Beef with Broccoli added for Rodney.

My dinner of Aromatic Shrimp on steamed white rice accompanied by a piece of the speciall egg roll.

Rodney's dinner, mushroom beef add broccoli. There wasn't room on his plate for egg roll pieces, so took the remaining ones and ate them from the box/trough.


I didn't think my shrimp was too bad. Sure the breading was sloppy, the shrimp slightly overcooked and there was a little bit too much sauce. Still, it was edible. It didn't remind me at all of leather simmering in a soupy brown gravy like last time.

Giddy at first, Rodney acknowledged my previously stated contempt of Chinese food after having quite a fair share of his beef dinner choice. He realized that Chinese is really W, X, Y, Z meat with A, B, or C sauce and L, M, N, or O vegetables. It's a big mix-and-match. And none of the flavors of any one thing really stand out.

I'm sorry this Chinese food thing came to light for him on his birthday. But he is 36 years old now. It's about time.

I can't wait until we can afford to travel to China and eat there. I bet it'd be fantastic. Rodney will want to globe-trot just for the sake of eating -- which is really the point in travelling, if you ask me.

$37.46 out the door.

Mandarin Orange Chicken

Ok, ok, I know. So I said I'd never eat Chinese again unless I was actually in China. This is the single time I will consciously go against what I said and knowingly make myself a liar.

During Mom's shopping spree at HMart, she picked up a package of ready-to-make Orange Chicken and left it in our freezer.


We'd essentially be criminals if we didn't eat Mom's food gift(s). Besides, with Mom here, I completely fell out of the routine of grocery shopping over weekends for meals during the week. We needed something to eat! And so we ate it. And it was pretty good.

I followed the bag directions and baked the chicken on a baking sheet in the oven.

Looks pretty skimpy, eh?

I got the bag of sauce ready and warmed it.


Then mixed the warmed chicken and sauce together in a bowl.


Plate the chicken with steamed rice, mandoo and kimchi.



The sauce was pretty orangy sweet, and fortunately for me, the quantity of sauce would be what many would consider too littl. I thought the chicken:sauce ratio worked out very well even after having eaten 2-3 pieces of the chicken before mixing the chicken with the sauce. The chicken wasn't swimming in sauce and I used the entire packet.



I probably won't buy this for us unless Rodney gets desperate for some Chinese. I'd rather have this than risk a super-sucky-overly-sauced experience from a Chinese restaurant.

Cost? I'm not sure about this one. Probably $5-6 for the 1 lb bag?

Time from prep to plate was about 30 minutes.

Golden Dragon

"Today you will find something you have been looking for."

Today I found the answer to whether I'll ever have Chinese food again.

That's it...tonight was the last night I'll have Chinese food for the rest of my life. Unless I find myself in China.

For some reason I cannot comprehend, Rodney adores Chinese food. On occasion, he talks me into getting it. No more. I'm done. It's over.  I can't stand that Chinese food is always served smothered in some sort of wacky gravy and the meat (chicken, beef, pork or shrimp) is deep-fried or cooked down to a mushy madness.

Tonight, we picked up take-out from Golden Dragon, a place we've been picked up from about 4-5 times before. It's been tolerable so I haven't put my foot down on it or Chinese food in general -- until today. We split an order of the special egg rolls, I ordered Red Pepper Chicken, which is fried chicken with zucchini and some other veggies in a sauce, and Rodney got his standard fried rice of some sort.

Special egg rolls

Fried rice and Red Pepper Chicken

Unlike the past, Golden Dragon neglected to give me steamed rice with my chicken, which immediately pissed me off. The chicken was fried, but the "crunchy" part was absolutely soggy. The flesh itself was so dry in areas that it was too similar to jerky, which is completely horrifying but even more so when it's my dinner. As with all American Chinese food, the chicken was drowning in brown sauce and the vegetables were cooked down.

Oh, I nearly forgot, I paid $35 for that crap.