It's a special report tonight, blog readers. So far, all of my posts have been written past-tense, reflecting on things I have done. Tonight will be different. Tonight, I will be blogging as I prepare noodles with oriental peanut sauce. I've never prepared this dish before, so I could be in for an eventful evening. It could be crazy- crazy!

A little background:
I bought a package of organic oriental noodles at the food co-op the other day. In truth, I was only in there to buy a couple packs of instant thai noodles and try to position myself in the checkout lane with the cute redhead, but the sale tag over the noodle bags snared my attention. A buck thirty-nine for noodles is a bit much, but these were no ordinary noodles. These were organic noodles that promised not to kill me upon consumption. For those of you who aren't familiar with organic\vegan food, here's how to tell if it's organic: it looks like dirt and the packaging swears up and down that it contains all kinds of herbs and grain-based materials. No one can confirm exactly what most of these ingredients are, so they must be good for people.

Anyway, I want to make something interesting that I've never had before. I just have to find something without meat and made from things I have on hand. Kind of like Macguyver (peace be upon him).

I found a recipe using google here. The Columbus Dispatch in Columbus Ohio, a city I love, has provided me with an oriental peanut sauce. The peanut comes from peanut butter, which was developed by someone in America, or so I'm told every black history month. I'm including this link so you can open a new tab and follow along at home. If your browser doesn't support tabs, you're probably using ms internet explorer. My condolences.

Through the wonders of modern technology and Best Buy I'll be narrating the preparation via a laptop from the kitchen.

Preparation:
Okay, I'm in the kitchen to confirm that I have the proper sauce ingredients. We have a surprising amount of staple items for cooking various dishes. The hot pepper sauce I'm using is questionable because it's hot sauce for tacos, but I'm kind of making this up as I go along with the recipe, so we'll see what happens. Everything looks to be in order, so I'll get started.

Execution:
Okay, start with the peanut butter. Three tablespoons. It's kind of thick, and not the most workable medium in the world, but I managed. Now I need to mix in two tablespoons of boiling water. At first glance, this seems like some kind of joke for newbie chefs, to make them try to burn themselves measuring a tiny amount of boiling water. The trick is that the water boils away too fast for them to get an accurate amount, especially one tablespoon at a time. To compensate for this, I'm boiling more than two tablespoons of water. Liberal arts strikes again!

Well I'll be darned, it worked. The peanut butter thinned out nicely. It's the consistency of some kind of sauce, so I'm on the right track. Add soy sauce, done. Seems like a bit much, but whatever. Add vinegar, done. More stirring, everything mixes well in my little white dish. It's actually pretty tasty right now, but I choose to add a bit of hot sauce. Three little drops in my mix. Stir, taste, nada. Add a bit more. Not bad! Just a hint of pepper.

Okay, now the noodles. This ought to be easy, I've been cooking noodles for years. A watched pot never boils, so I'm typing to kill time. The recipe says I need four ounces of noodles. Fortunately, I have a postal scale handy to determine the weight of my noodles. After a little trial and error, I have four ounces of noodles. It was kind of like that part in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy has to balance the bag of sand with the idol, except I'm using noodles and I'm not in a room designed to kill me. Hey, there goes the water. Add noodles, stir, wait patiently. The organic noodles look like long thin wood chips and they float, so I have to keep stirring them. Noodles done, strained, and in the bowl. Pour on sauce and clean up a bit.

The verdict:
It's pretty good, actually. I'm pleased. It's a heaping bowl, so I'm glad I like it. Even a few bites later, I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. It's better than I expected, much better than peanut butter and vinegar and soy sauce on noodles initially sounds.

It was filling and satisfying without upsetting my digestive system, which is always a plus. If I had an image server I would have included pictures of my progress, but that would have taken even longer to complete. My total prep time was about an hour with all the typing and reading the directions, so I'm sure I could get it down to about fifteen minutes once I'm good at making it. I never thought I'd be mixing peanut butter to put on noodles. It never occurred to me.

This concludes my first sweeps month blogging stunt. Remember- watch this space for the superblog team-up of Gerry and Loyal, which will answer the question; "what if Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee collaborated on a comic about two skinny guys trying to survive in a world of lumbering fatasses clamoring around the mantra of atkins?" Stay tuned.