Labor Day Funsies

As a foodie with no particular travel plans this past Labor Day weekend, I partook in a few events involving much food.  There was the dinner at Sakedokoro Makoto (which I reviewed and posted food porn for in my previous post), a cookout co-hosted by my friend from My uMai and yours truly, and some simple Chinese dishes to fill in the gaps.

The cookout, I must say, was a fantastic 5-hour bash incorporating food (all home-made, mostly by Mai), drinks (beer, wine, sake), and games, both indoors and outdoors.  I hung out with friends and made some new ones, an activity that good drinks are likely to facilitate.  My friend Mai wrote a nice summary of our cookout on her blog, so I encourage you to check out her thoughts for the delectable menu and more.

In preparation for a weekend of eating, I snacked fairly regularly on fresh fruit, yogurt cups, and other simple edibles.  Contrary to misconceptions, starving oneself does not increase eating capacity; however, eating regularly does.

And so one of the simple dishes I found myself making late Saturday morning was Chives Stir-Fried with Eggs (韭菜炒鸡蛋).  Those familiar with Chinese home cooking paradigms will likely know this one.  On the other hand, those not familiar will probably start to see a trend: there are a lot of ways to stir-fry eggs.  In fact, one might consider an analogy between all the different stir-fry preparations of eggs and American yogurt.  For your scrambled eggs with tomatoes, there's peach yogurt; for your chives stir-fried with eggs, consider strawberry yogurt; and for the sake of completion, let's compare green onion stir-fried with eggs to blueberry yogurt.  The point is, it is not so foreign an idea to enhance stir-fried eggs (pretty much scrambled eggs) with other natural ingredients.

This particular dish comes in many varieties, including an omelette-like form, a scrambled eggs type of preparation, and a more loose type of stir-fry where the chives are completely separated from the eggs.  At my parents' home, the omelette-like preparation is most common; I elected to prepare this dish similar to scrambled eggs.

After finely dicing slightly less than 2 cups of chives, I sprinkled some salt to taste and added two eggs.  I beat the eggs and then poured the mixture into a pre-heated skillet.  Stir-frying and scrambling the eggs did not take long.  Since this preparation of eggs tends to brown easily, it is important to keep on stirring and flipping (until just the moment when there are no longer any runny components).  After around 5 minutes on the stove, the finished product emerged:

On a final note (if you have read this far), the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated in many parts of Asia, is coming up on Monday, September 8th.  I am planning to do something somewhat challenging, and hopefully very rewarding if I get it right.  Stay tuned for the results!