Baseball Season Family Dinners Come From Bottles

This year, both my boys are playing Little League.  This is the boys' only extracurricular activity.  Bubs has been waiting for his turn and is SO. VERY. HAPPY. to be playing T-ball, especially since Husband is coaching.  Big leveled up so he has more practices and games, which means in order for us to still have family dinners requires creativity in execution.  (PS: Sitting in the car waiting for one's progeny to finish practice is boring AF and I had to pee really bad.)

Thursdays are particularly rough, because they practice at the same time, right at our geriatric dinner hour of 5 pm, so we have to prep food beforehand and eat at lightening speed at 6:45.  Behold, a dinner unbottled!

Thai-ish Chicken Noodle Soup

Trader Joe's to the Rescue!

1 bottle TJ's Thai Red Curry Sauce
1 qt TJ's chicken stock (free range, low sodium, you decide) 
1 pack rice noodles (we used pho noodles from the Chinese market)
1 chicken breast, cooked and shredded (hello, Costco)
1 bag TJ's fresh sugar snap peas, ends snipped
1 Tb fish sauce (or more, if you do the funk)
cilantro, finely or coarsely chopped, as much as you want
TJ's honey-roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
1 red onion, thinly sliced (optional)
juice of 1 lime (optional)

1. The noodles we used require soaking in warm water for an hour. Cook noodles according to the package.  Drain and rinse in cold water so they don't get mushy, which is gross. Baseball timing: We did the soak, drained them, left for practice, and came back to boil them for 2-3 minutes.  More prepared people could've done the boil before going to practice, but 60 minutes of soaking is a longass time!

2. Bring curry sauce, chicken stock and the onion if you have it to a boil.  Add as much fish sauce as you can stand and lime juice if you want it. Once it boils, simmer for about 10 minutes to cook the onions and blanch the sugar snap peas for an additional minute if you want them a little softer. Baseball timing: Turn off heat and go to practice.  Reheat and add peas then.

3.  Assemble your noodle bowl with noodles and chicken.  Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and cilantro to your heart's delight.  Pour soup with peas on top.  Baseball timing: Stuff your face and then start screaming at the children to get ready for bed.

It's not mind-blowing or authentic, but it was pretty good and it was a welcome change from Thursday spaghetti. I love meals where there is flexibility for people to choose disparate components.  There's less murder at the dinner table that way.  You can add more coconut milk to make it creamier, and do note the sauce is quite spicy so the littles opted to eat theirs soupless.