Hungry Girl Should Be Sainted

Jesse and I both LOVE asian food! I'm in the process of converting him to Thai food (rexburg actually has a Thai food restaurant in town! who knew?). Lately I have been craving one of my favorite asian dishes and it has made me a little cranky because I have no way of getting it. Its "Chicken Lettuce Wraps" at PEI WEI . For any of you that are fortunate enough to live by a PEI WEI- TRY IT!!! Any way, back to my story- I have been craving them like crazy and couldn't find a substitute in the back woods of Idaho. Then one day I opened my email and found my relief!! I am signed up to get the free daily newsletters by "Hungry Girl", its a website run by a lady who gives dieting advice, healthy eating tips, warnings on popular foods that are bad for you, and (my favorite) RECIPES!!! There in my email was a "lettuce wrap" recipe that you can make at home. I was kind of skeptical at first, I didn't think it would taste anything like my beloved "Chicken Lettuce Wraps." But I decide it was worth a try- so I made it last night for dinner. Lets just say Hungry Girls needs to be sainted now!!!!! It was AMAZING!! Almost like PEI WEI's! So now I want to share the recipie:

Veggie-Friendly Asian Lettuce Wraps

PER SERVING (3 wraps): 220 calories, 3.5g fat, 971mg sodium, 30g carbs, 8g fiber, 10g sugars, 21g protein -- POINTS® value 4* This recipe from the HG cookbook is TOO good... Make it immediately!

Ingredients:
6 medium iceberg lettuce leaves (or leaves from another round, firm head of lettuce)
6 oz. (about 1 3/4 cups) ground-beef-style soy crumbles (like the ones by Boca or Morningstar Farms), defrosted if previously frozen
1 cup canned sliced water chestnuts, drained & chopped
1 cup bean sprouts
3/4 cup chopped shiitake mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped scallions
2 tbsp. light/low-sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp. dark brown sugar (not packed)
2 tsp. chili garlic sauce (found in the Asian foods aisle)

(The type I used- its really good and really spicy!)
1/2 tsp. sesame oil

Directions: To prepare sauce, combine soy sauce, sugar, chili garlic sauce and oil in a small dish. Mix well and set aside. Bring a medium pot sprayed with nonstick spray to medium heat. Place all ingredients except for the scallions and lettuce leaves into the pot. Add the sauce, and stir. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes. Add scallions, cook for 1 minute more, and remove from heat. Divide mixture evenly among the 6 lettuce "cups" and enjoy 'em wrap-style (fold 'n chew!).

All of the ingredients where kind of expensive, which I felt guilty about at the grocery store but I immediatly forgot about after bitting into one of these babies- Its totally worth it!! I altered the recipe a bit to fit our tastes, for instance- I just used plain-old ground beef instead of that Boca crap. I also used onion instead of the scallion (a member of the onion family) because our WinCo store didn't sell them, or I couldn't find them. We don't really like onions all that much so I halfed what the recipe called for. And I can't rationalize paying $5 for a 3oz bottle of sesame oil so I just added more soy sauce. But if you already have it- more power to ya! Also Jesse wasn't too excited about the mixture being eaten out of lettuce so I rolled some up in some wanton wrapers and fryed them up for him. It came out really good like that too and I recomend it if you feel kind of like him reading this post. Just remember that kind of takes away the whole "healthy" aspect of this meal.


Long story short- It was amazing-try it-LOVE it!! Its a do over in our family =)

(When we were done =)