Chinese Chicken Fried Rice

I actually have been cooking quite a bit (for me!) over the past month, just not new stuff. I ran across this recipe under the "Dinner In An Instant" tab on Allrecipes.com. I made a few adjustments and here is the recipe I came up with for supper tonight.



Chinese Chicken Fried Rice


Table of Contents:

- 1 Tbsp. EVOO
- 1 onion, diced
- 6 oz. cooked chicken chunks (from the freezer from bulk cooking day!)
- 2 cups cold rice (I used instant brown rice)
- red pepper, diced
- frozen peas, thawed
- 2 Tbsp. soy sauce (I used reduced sodium)
- 1 egg
- 1 Tbsp. water
- salt, pepper to taste
- cashews or peanuts

How To:
In large skillet saute onion in EVOO over medium heat until golden brown; add chicken and stir until warmed. Add rice, diced pepper, soy sauce, and peas - stir fry together for about 5 minutes. Beat egg with water; push rice mixture to sides of skillet and pour egg in middle. When egg starts to set, stir into rice mixture and continue stir frying until egg is done. Season to taste. Stir in nuts, if desired.

The Outcome:
From start to finish, this took about 20 minutes to prepare. I did not have any leftover cold rice, so I just cooked a batch and then rinsed with cold water. The original recipe and several of the recipe comments stressed rice must be cold. My guess is it would be a sticky mess if used hot.

Every time I make something new, I am already thinking ahead to what I would do differently next time. This recipe was no exception. It was very good, but next time I think I would add a little chicken broth for richer flavor and also add some water chestnuts because I like the crunch of them. Also, I used some honey roasted peanuts, because that is what I had. Next time I would use cashews, or maybe just save the fat grams and not use nuts at all.


Overall, a pretty tasty dish in very little time!

Calamity in the Kitchen

Today was a good news/bad news day in the kitchen. Maybe "calamity" isn't quite the right word, but it would probably at least qualify for "misadventure".

I had this great plan for the afternoon, which included whipping up a new casserole recipe, sticking it in the oven, and then running out to mail a package. My plan would put me back home just in time to hear the timer go "ding", pull my beautiful dish out of the oven, and have a fabulous supper ready for The Drummer Guy when he walked in the door. Well, I did have supper ready when he got home, but it wasn't quite the way I had it planned.

I was making this sausage & egg dish and had all of the ingredients ready to layer in the casserole dish. I was checking out the recipe one more time to make sure I had everything and that's when I saw it. "Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight." Oh, no!!! I don't remember seeing that before. Now what?!?!?

Instead of mailing my package, now I needed to come up with "plan B" for supper. I had 1/2 pound of sausage left over from my original supper plan and thought I might as well use it. After a quick online recipe search, here's what I came up with:

CHEESY SAUSAGE & RICE SKILLET

Table of Contents:
-1 lb. sausage, cooked and drained (I used 1/2 lb - I rarely put in all of the meat that recipes call for. The sausage I used was Jimmy Dean - maple flavored)
-1 can (14.5 oz.) ready-to-serve chicken broth
-2 cups Minute Rice, uncooked (I used Minute Brown Rice)
-1 pkg (16 oz.) frozen broccoli cuts, thawed and drained
-12 oz. Velveeta (Same as meat - I usually don't use all of the cheese called for - I only used maybe 2-3 oz.)

How To:
Bring broth to a boil in a large nonstick skillet. Stir in rice and broccoli. Top with sausage and Velveeta. Cover and cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Stir and serve.

The Outcome:
Mark said, "I like it! You could make this again." It really was pretty good, especially for something I came up with at the last minute. The only thing I would do differently is cut the rice by about 1/2 cup.

(I was in such a hurry, forgot to take any pictures of this dish.)

So here's the good news/bad news tally for this little spin in the kitchen:

-Bad news: Not the meal I was planning and was kind of looking forward to.
-Good news: Found another new recipe that was quick and easy to make, and was really quite tasty.
-Bad news: Didn't get my package mailed.
-Good news: Supper for tomorrow is made and ready to pop in the oven after a day at work.
-Good news: Instead of making 2 new recipes this week, I ended up with 3 new recipes!

I guess overall, it turned out to be a pretty good day in the kitchen!

The Resolution

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the LORD . . ." Colossians 3:23

Here it is mid-February, and I have finally decided that I need to have a resolution. Maybe since I'm not declaring it at the "normal" time we generally think of resolutions (and I've stated it in writing) I will actually carry it out this year!

I've decided we are in a rut as far as what we eat. Anyone who knows me well is aware that I'm not known for my cooking. Lucky for me, Mark's mom did not like to cook either so he ate a lot of TV dinners growing up. As a result he isn't very picky about what I feed him and he thinks any home cooked meal is fantastic. But the downside of that is he tends not to be very helpful when I ask for dinner ideas. He usually will say something like, "Anything you make is great." So I have fallen into the routine of making the same stuff over and over, or we eat out, or we just pour a bowl of Cheerios!

The fact is that cooking is not my favorite activity. I would rather vacuum than cook and I usually only vacuum if I can't sweet-talk Mark into doing it for me! But anyway, back to the resolution. I have decided that I am going to make a minimum of 2 new recipes a month for the rest of this year - that's 22 new recipes! I'm not crazy, like the "Julie & Julia" thing; I just want something new for dinner once in awhile.

Criteria for the recipe:

· I have to be able to pronounce it (and the ingredients).
· The ingredients need to be items that real people might actually find in their pantry.
· If the ingredient list includes items such as “2 sticks butter” or "1 cup heavy cream” (except possibly for baked goods that won’t be staying in our house) it’s not going to happen.
· If the instructions start out with “8-10 hours prior to serving . . .” and it’s not going in a crock pot – forget it!
· The less dicing, slicing, and chopping called for, the better.


So . . . . . here we go - Recipe #1:
SWEET & SOUR CHICKEN

The Ingredients:
2 cup instant white rice, uncooked
1 can (20 oz) pineapple chunks
2 Tbsps. EVOO
1 medium red bell pepper, cut into chunks
1 medium onion, cut into chunks
½ cup mushrooms, sliced (I used canned)
1 can sliced water chestnuts
Chicken breast, cut into 1-inch pieces (I used a 6 oz. pre-cooked pkg.)
1 cup sweet & sour sauce
2 Tbsps. less sodium soy sauce

(Don’t forget to recycle the cans!)

The Directions:
Prepare rice according to package directions.
Drain pineapple; reserve 2Tbsps. juice.
Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Saute onion until golden, add peppers and mushrooms. Cook until tender crisp. Add chicken, sweet & sour sauce, soy sauce, pineapple chunks and reserved juice. Heat through and let simmer approx 5 minutes to blend flavors. Serve over cooked rice.

The Results:
This was really good and I would definitely make this again. Including chopping veggies, it took only about 20 minutes to prepare – my kind of recipe!!!