What great ideas! I always make fried rice (hubby's favorite).
WE all like food stories here, so I'll tell on some of you may have already read.
There I was, in Hawaii, at an old beach house a group of us had rented. One of the group was actually Hawaiian (i.e., she had lived there all her life. Ethnically she was the mix that most Hawaiians are -- many Asian drops of blood and a few drops of Polynesian). She had a chip on her shoulder, and didn't like haoles. It was the last morning, and the fridge was full of the mixture of foods you get in Hawaii (how I miss that!). I looked at it all and said we are having fried rice for breakfast. The woman went home to empty her rice cooker (for those of you who never have lived there, every home has a rice cooker that is filled every day before work) and then she sat and watched me. She and her children declared me OK and we were friends after that. Claire's OK, not just because she did it right, but because she thinks fried rice is a breakfast food (hey, it is. It generally has pork and eggs in it, right?) I've told this story here before. The only thing Angie told me to change from my way of making fried rice was to pour some cooking oil into the leftover rice and toss it before starting to fry. Oh, and that it really should have had oyster sauce in it, but she excused me that because I was dealing with the ingredients that were in the fridge.