Peanut Butter Makes Everything Yummy.... or not

A couple of days ago I was feeling rather uninspired on the dinner-making front.  I knew I wanted to make curried butternut squash soup, but other than that I was seriously lacking inspiration.

Hmmm.... we had pasta the night before (thanks Mom for the meat-sauce, it was yummy!) so noodles were out.  Although the kids love noodles, so in that case we can never have too much noodles......

Rice was going to take too long (because we are a brown rice family so I couldn't just whip-up 5 minute instant rice)......

Quinoa's pretty fast.  Yep, checked the label and it only takes 12 minutes.  OK - sold!  Now what to put on top of the Quinoa......

I scrounged around and found a recipe for peanut coated chicken in lettuce wraps (when I say peanut-coated, think Thai sauces).  I figured I could bastardize the recipe to make some sort of Pad-Thai like dish, but substitute Quinoa instead of the noodles.

So off I went mixing peanut butter (which is never in short supply in our house!) with lime juice, fish sauce and garlic.  Hmmm..... the smell was not too appealing but I thought: "what the heck, let's give this baby a whirl."

I threw the gnarly-smelling concoction in the pan with some chicken and voila - Pad-Thai-ish sorta thingy!  The smell, however was really pretty nasty, or so I thought.  I had Chris try it before I chucked the whole thing (I was too grossed out by the smell to try it myself. Yes, I would never do well in one of those: "Eat this bizarre, animal part / plant / insect" shows) and he said it wasn't too bad.

I dished everything out, and told the kids that if they didn't like it I'd make something else.  Well you know what?  Those little monsters freakin' DEVOURED it!  Aidan claimed it was "Yummy!", and Quinn said: "Mummy, don't yuck on my yum - it's Awesome!!!!"   Whaaaaaaa?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Weird doesn't begin to describe the experience.  I felt like I was in someone else's home.  Meanwhile, my food lay untouched on my plate because I just could not get over the flavour, and yet the kids pretty much licked their plates clean!  Clearly, peanut butter is the magic ingredient.  I may just have to start adding it to everything I cook!