PG Kitchen with Mara Lauren Hutchinson

With Back to School season in full swing, Public Goods wanted to learn the best go-to recipes for the school year from the pros – our PG parents. Join us for our PG Kitchen series from now through September 13th, featuring recipe takeovers on Instagram and our blog.

Our fourth and final recipe feature in our BTS series comes from Mara Lauran Hutchinson, @atemara. Mara is a legally blind woman and mother to her almost 4-year-old son, Bronx. She continues to live a full life despite her blindness and uses her platform on Instagram to share her journey and spread Blind awareness! Today, Mara and her family are showing us how to make one of their faves, Thai Basil Chicken. 

Do you have any BTS family traditions? How do you bring them to life and what do they look like in this new, pandemic/remote learning era? 

This year is actually our son’s first official time going “back to school”. He will be in J[unior] K[inder] this September. So everything is new to us. As for family traditions, school shopping as a family will be one of them and creating family celebrations we can do together with Bronx. Definitely a huge dance party in our basement, as always. We’ll go with the flow and create traditions along the way, especially once we pass this milestone of his first time going to school! We are super excited for him! 

What is your favorite Sustainable Swap for meal prepping? 

My favorite Sustainable Swap for meal prepping has to be bowls and containers to keep ingredients in, especially chopped vegetables. I like things to be organized while I start to put everything together for cooking. Keeping myself tidy, organized, and having things set and ready in their individual bowls or containers is a huge help for me!

What’s your favorite PG product to prep with?

I will be flat out honest, I just started to really venture out to cook real meals. It was always my husband cooking the real big meals. I didn’t have a passion to be in the kitchen. I would clean, wash the dishes but never had the passion to really cook. But now that my mom is fighting cancer, I have to step up and take over meal prep. Maybe this was the push I needed all these years to really learn how to cook. So, as a newbie, I just discovered Public Goods. I just ordered a bunch of ingredients to keep in our kitchen for when I try new recipes. In terms of actual products, like I said, I am super new to cooking for my entire family. I have to admit, I do enjoy it. And seeing my son’s face and smile whenever I make something good for him just gives me more motivation and passion to cook. I am no chef, but learning my mom’s Filipino recipes has been a blessing. 

How has your role as a fast-growing Instagram Influencer impacted the way you share with your audience and the way you view parenting and being a mom?  

It’s honestly crazy to say the word “influencer”. I started this platform of mine by sharing my passion of taking photos, editing and sharing my life. I’m a legally blind woman/mother. And when I joined Instagram, barely anyone was on the platform – it had just come out! My Instagram started to grow as I started to connect with more people who were also visually impaired. I never knew there were so many other people who had similar conditions to me. So, I started to share more of my own personal journey and my life, whether it was how I felt living with my disability, or just how to go about life in general with my disability. Also just overall sharing of who I am, the good and the bad side of myself. I want to be real so that people can see that not everything you see on social media are all good things! I am a human being that can be broken, sad, mad and also happy. This is what life is all about. And my main thing with my platform is that I always want to be there for everyone. I’ve felt so alone when social media wasn’t a big thing yet, and now connecting with so many others, whether they have disabilities or not, and being able to be there for them is my biggest take on keeping my platform. This community I built with my followers is a huge blessing for me because I really do treat everyone who reaches out as a friend. And as a mom, I connect with other moms who feel the same way as me. My son knows that I take pride in being there for others and that social media is somewhat work for me. I always want to keep things real. 

PG Kitchen Recipes – Thai Basil Chicken

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons Public Goods Olive Oil
• 1 red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 red bell pepper cored and sliced
• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped
• 1 15-ounce can coconut milk
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce (use light soy sauce for less salty flavor)
• 6 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 to 3 tablespoons fish sauce, to taste
• 1 tablespoon chile garlic sauce
• 3 packs of Public Goods Original Ramen Noodles
• 1 1/2 cups, plus 1/4 cup  thai basil (for garnish)

To Prepare

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a deep-sided fry pan over medium heat. Add onions and bell pepper and cook until softened, about 8 -10 minutes. Transfer the vegetables to a bowl and set aside. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil to the pan then add the minced ginger and garlic. Cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add chicken breast. Cook for 6-8 minutes or until cooked through.


2. While the chicken is cooking, in a bowl, whisk the coconut milk, soy sauce, rice vinegar, fish sauce and chile garlic sauce, set aside. 

3. When the chicken is cooked through, add the onion mixture back to the pan with the coconut milk mixture, 1 1/2 cup basil, and simmer until reduced by one third. Serve the chicken mixture over softened noodles. 

4. Sprinkle additional basil over everything to finish.