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I’m having one of those weeks where I just can’t seem to find the motivation to do anything. Stuff is either too boring or too much work. Too time-consuming or not challenging enough. I’m not the only one who goes through this, right?

When I have days like this I tend to rely on one thing I’ve always got in the fridge: leftovers.

For this week’s apathy meal I relied on leftover rice. I always, always make too much rice. I don’t do it on purpose and I know how to measure, but I’m always staring at half a pot of rice after dinner’s over, wondering what to do with it.

But this week the planets had aligned. I had eggrolls on the menu for the next night, and fried rice tends to work better with rice that isn’t fresh off the stove, so into the fridge it went.

Know what’s better than utilizing leftover rice? The leftover fried rice made from the leftover rice. Delicious.

Easy Fried Rice
from Life as Lofthouse

3 cups cooked white rice
3 Tbs sesame oil
1 cup frozen peas and carrots, thawed
1 small onion, chopped
2 tsp minced garlic
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 cup soy sauce

On medium high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the peas and carrots, onion, and garlic. Stir fry until tender.

Lower the heat to medium low and push the mixture off to one side, then pour your eggs on the other side of skillet and stir fry until scrambled. Now add the rice and soy sauce and blend all together well. Stir fry until thoroughly heated.

Katsudon means pork cutlet rice bowl (I don’t know for sure, don’t quote me) and is a popular Japanese dish. Mike gets them at a little shop close to his work, and asked me last week if I’d find a recipe for it.

All the ingredients were easy to find (in fact, the only thing I had to pick up was a new bottle of rice wine vinegar), but it was the combination that threw me a bit: fried panko-crusted pork chops that are cooked in a sweet sauce with eggs over rice. My first thought? Weird. But I’ll try anything once.

Of course, they were delicious. How could anything that looks like that not be? My pork cutlets actually started out as one-inch thick chops. Instead of spending ten minutes trying to pound them each out, I butterflied them and then gave them each a quick once-over with the mallet.

Once it’s done cooking you cut the pork into thin strips and put it in yet another pan with the warmed sauce. After letting the pork absorb the sauce for a minute you add a beaten egg and stir the whole thing around for a bit, and then serve over rice.

This was quite a production for five people but once I got the routine down I had dinner ready in about 45 minutes.

I used this recipe, but next time I’m going to add some sliced onion to the sauce since Mike says that’s how they serve it at the shop. I also didn’t use an inch of oil for frying (more like a few tablespoons), and we didn’t add peas (though that would be really good).

I’m awesome with rice.

(This is another dish that just doesn’t take a very good picture, but it does taste amazing!)

While this isn’t a quick meal to whip up — the pork chops need to cook for about 45 minutes — it’s very easy to put together. Read More