Spicy Oil Free Peanut Stir Fry

Hubby surprised me with an early Valentine’s Day gift – an AeroGarden!

We had fun setting it up yesterday and starting kale and herb planter pods in it, so I will be reporting a lot more on it when we start seriously growing stuff. First impressions:

• Wow, it’s high tech with a touch screen display, pump, and plant food system!
• It’s bright! It will easily light up your entire kitchen and other rooms. I will be tweaking the light on-and-off schedule as we get to know it more.
• I was a little shocked at the amount of plastic and garbage waste for the little planter “pods” for the pod tray system. But it looks like the pods can be reused and there’s this option for a seed starting try that just uses little dirt pods that I will be using to load with kale and other starters for the outside garden.
• There are tons of seeds and starters for it and I see it as being awesome for in kitchen fresh herbs!

Such a sweet and awesome surprise! Smokey was more interested in the box.

Leela was not impressed and more interested in our dinner.

My dinner was an interesting looking experiment that came out great! Our local Trader Joe’s has been a crowded mess since New Years and I have not figured out why, did everyone make a resolution to shop there? It’s gone from being crowded on the weekends to checkout lines backing up into the aisles, can’t move around the store, and being out of stock of the basics like organic broccoli! Instead of having a breakdown, I grabbed a bag of organic broccoli and carrot slaw to try in salads, smoothies, and this spicy oil free stir fry.

And grabbed a Grocery Outlet score from the pantry for this sauce – Santa Cruz Organics Peanut Powder with Milled Chia Seeds.

This powder has been great in smoothies with cacao powder and frozen bananas making it more of a treat. Basically it’s ground peanuts with most of the oil removed so much lower fat and lower calorie than using peanut butter in recipes. And the powder can be mixed with water for a thick peanut spread that’s a lot lighter than peanut butter. I used it in a thick and kicky stir fry sauce thickened with banana and packing a kicky flare from cayenne.

The peanut powder is very fine.

And blended beautifully into this thick sweet and kicky sauce. I sauteed the veggies in the wok with water for a few minutes over high heat to cook, then reduced the heat and mixed in the sauce.

Maybe it’s not the most gorgeous dish, but it was tasty and filling with a sweet and spicy decadent peanut flavor coating lots of veggies.

It has a thicker, stew texture which was warming and satisfying for a winter dinner.