Chow mein - 炒麵

So many ways to make chow mein. The best thing about homemade ones is that you get to add lots of ingredients so that it's not heavy on the noodle or overly greasy like in restaurants.

This should make enough for 2 people over 2-3 meals.

Ingredients
some fried onions (chinese kind, optional)
3-4 large shitake mushrooms
chinese noodles (alternative: sphaghetti)
1 large carrots or 2 medium carrots
1 medium size napa cabbage or cabbage
bbq pork (alternative: ham, stir-fry pork)
low sodium soy sauce
black pepper

Instructions

1. Soak your mushrooms in hot water. Cut them into thin strips. Save your mushroom water!
2. In the meantime, cook your noodles. You want about 2 fistful of noodles. Add some oil to the noodles so they don't stick. When they're done, pour them out and rinse the noodles in cold water.
3. Cut up your carrots into thin strips
4. Cut up your cabbage. You can either do medium chunks or do medium strips too.
5. 2-3tbs of oil in wok. Wait till it's hot.
6. Put in your mushrooms and onions and stirfry. You want them to soak up the oil and omit some good smells.
7. When they're slightly brown, put in the carrots and stirfry. You can put in some mushroom water as you cook the carrots.
8. Put in the cabbage when the carrots are 75% done. Stirfry. You'll need to add some more mushroom water.
9. Cover wok till they're mostly done.
10. Add a bit of salt. Not too much because you'll add soysauce later too.
11. When the food mostly cooked, add the noodles and bbq pork. Mix them together. Add the soy sauce now and the black pepper. Mix will and serve.
    

Notes

1. You want noodles that are wide enough to be able to soak up the soysauce and mushroom juice.
2. It really doesn't matter how much of the ingredients you put in. Too much vegies? Add more noodles. Too much noodles AND vegies? cook them in 2 batches. :D
3. You want to make sure that most of the water you put in is evaporated when you put in the noodles. Since the noodles will soak up any juice, you don't want to have too much water, or else the noodles become really sticky and limpy.
4. Add enough soy sauce to make the noodles slightly brown in color. That's usually enough soy sauce for taste too. If it's the right color, but still not salty enough, add some salt.
5. Alternatively, you can add ham, or cook your own pork. For ham, add it in when your vegies are done cooking, before noodles. For pork, cut it into thin strips and add it in after the mushroom. Add enough just to make it look pretty.
6. To chop carrots, cut them in diagonals so you get longer slices. Then cut them into thin strips. Not super super thin, just thin enough so that it doesn't taste like you're biting into a chunky carrot when you eat it.