Easy Fried Rice and other Favorites

Hello, everybody! The Fresh Pioneer is back and I've got a super easy dish for those nights when you need to go grocery shopping but don't have time. But first... the weather has changed!
                                             
Which was tough when we got up at 4AM to help out with the hot air balloon festival. They moved it from May to October and I was NOT ready for 1) the dark and 2) the cold. Nothing like trying to find the tabs and straps in the pitch darkness!
                                              
When the sun finally rose, it didn't really warm things up. Crunchy field grass.
                                 
But my kids were troopers (I was the one whining, as usual) and here they are waving off Mr. Tick Tock. (Yeah, we know he's sort of creepy looking but the school kids just love to see him flying over their schools.)
                                     
They also had tethered rides for kids who could come before school. Here are our friend Ingrid and Rorique and Bill giving little rides to the kids. After helping inflate, the volunteers help act as "balast", pulling the balloon down and weighing down the basket so people can get off and on. Maybe the only time when a few extra pounds works in your favor!
                                           
Oh, and we celebrated Halloween early because our old friend Mindy came to visit from Montana! Here are Edward (skeleto man) and Ana (as our dear Miss Jane Austen) getting ready to run through the corn maze.
                                         
So, I've been running toward a deadline so I'm not putting as much thought into cooking as I usually do (which isn't much, hahaha). I've just been grabbing items from the pantry and throwing them together. This is what we made a few nights ago and it was delicious! I realized that although I've posted about quick shrimp stir fry, healthy low carb egg rolls, California sushi,  , I hadn't posted anything about fried rice, which we eat pretty often. Missy posted about fried rice  but hers looks way nicer so... don't follow the link!

 So, I didn't take pictures of every step, which is BAD, BAD, BAD blogging! But I'll explain what's happening in this shot. We chopped carrots and celery into teeny tiny pieces and sauteed them for about five minutes with a TBS of oil. Then we scrambled three eggs into the veggie mix.

 This is the rice I made for the stir fry and I am VERY proud to say for once, I did not make sticky rice! Hooray!

 Add four cups of rice to the veggie mix and fry on medium high with 2 TBS of oil. Turn lightly and carefully with a spatula because it's really easy to make a big pan of mush at this point. (Don't ask me how I know.)
Oh, here's one of our sweet new kittens! They are so playful and into everything, we really have to watch out for them under foot. The other night I was removing a pan of chicken from the oven and one of the kittens puts its paws right on the inside of the door! Poor kitten. All it was thinking was the delicious smells, not the 400F heat. It didn't seem to be hurt but scared me to death, so now we're extra careful when we're cooking.

She's my new editor... So hard to please. So critical! All she wants is stories about tuna and tummy rubs. *sigh*

 Add two packets of fried rice seasoning an gently combine. I told you this was easy!

 Someone has come to inspect dinner... Here we added chopped chicken.

 One more shot of the sumach in the yard. SO pretty. I want to bring it inside!

Until next time! Be sure to stop by my author pages at Mary Jane Hathaway and Virginia Carmichael, or my blog at The Things That Last!