Mushroom Lo Mein!!

Along with pizza, we've decided that this recipe will be one of our staples that we just always have on hand...It's SO GOOD.
The ingredients below made dinner with seconds for both of us, and enough leftover for Jared for lunch today.

Ingredients:
8+ mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup soy sauce (divided)
3 tbsp rice vinegar
1 1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
6 oz. linguine pasta or lo mein noodles (basically the same thing!)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp ginger, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
6 green onions, sliced
2 carrots, sliced into long slivers
1 can water chestnuts
3/4 cup green peas (I use frozen peas...)

Directions:
-Cook noodles as directed, then rinse with cold water in a colander until the noodles are cool to the touch. Then transfer them to a plate (or anything to keep them out of the way for a while) and toss with olive oil to prevent them from sticking together into a gelatinous sticky lump.
-In a large frying pan (or wok if you have one!!), saute the mushrooms in a tablespoon of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and olive oil, with the garlic and green onions. Cook and stir until the mushrooms are soft. There will be some moisture remaining in the pan, don't worry about it! It'll go into the final step.
-In another pot or pan, combine the broth, rest of the soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, pepper, green onions, carrots, peas, and water chestnuts. Boil until the peas are cooked. The carrots won't be soft yet, but they'll be lightly cooked.
-Pour the broth and veggie mixture into the frying pan/wok with the mushrooms, and combine them all together. Then add the noodles, and stir thoroughly. Let the noodles sit in the sauce for a few minutes to soak up some of the moisture and flavor, and then serve!

Don't be alarmed by all the ingredients. Most of it is probably stuff that you already have around the kitchen, and of course you can experiment with substituting and eliminating/adding things! That's what I did with the recipe I found, and this is the result. Make it your own!

Not the best picture, I know...not like in all those fancy food blogs, but we were in the middle of dinner and I said, "I HAVE to take a picture!" (Jared is used to these stop-for-photo-op outbursts by now, haha). So this is my mid-dinner, but you can see what it looks like!)