Orange Chicken

Moving to Iowa from California is a little hard because many places I love to eat does not exist here. I miss In-n-Out Burger, Krispy Creme, The Habit, and Panda Express. We've been experimenting with places that seem similar to those in California, but it's not working well. For Panda Express, we've been trying all different kinds of Chinese food restaurants (I think I've eaten orange chicken from every Chinese food place in Sioux City), but none have that particular orange chicken flavor that I love. So, I attempted to try an orange chicken recipe in my Crock-pot.

It took quite a while to brown the chicken in the skillet, I think. But, I'm lazy and I honestly don't like to stand over the stove and watch chicken brown. But I did it anyway, with the hopeful promise of having a good Panda Express like orange chicken. After it was done cooking in the slow cooker, it looked really good, I was excited and couldn't wait to shovel it all into my mouth. But instead, I cooked up some rice and steamed some vegetables.



It definitely didn't taste as I expected. It was good, but didn't taste at all like Panda Express. The recipe I followed got the orange flavoring from frozen orange concentrate, so if I make it again, I may cut back the orange concentrate by half. It was way too orangey for me. It made for a really fabulous photo though, on my newest fabulous plate.

Chili and Cornbread

Every Thursday, I fix dinner for only myself. There's a lot of food that I enjoy, that the fiance doesn't like, so I take these days to make those foods for myself. I recently purchased a slow cooker, and am having so much fun making food that I love in it. There's nothing like dropping a bunch of stuff in a slow cooker and just letting it do the work for you. Last night, I had chili and cornbread, both made in my crockpot.



First, I made the cornbread. I used a box of Krusteaz Honey Cornbread and Muffin Mix, prepared the way it said on the box (I used the butter option instead of the vegetable oil, because I love butter), then just put the batter it in the crockpot (well greased, of course), instead of a pan to cook in the oven. I cooked it on high for about an hour. It was kind of a pain to get out of the stoneware insert in one piece, though. Like 75% of mine came out in one piece, the other 25% came out in crumbles. I actually gathered the crumbles in a bowl and ate them then, while I waited for my chili to cook. Hah.

After I cooked the cornbread, I washed the slow cooker, and started dumping ingredients for my chili in. I kind of modified this recipe to make mine. Instead of using bagged beans, I used cans of rinsed black beans, garbanzo beans, and white kidney beans. I also didn't use Tabasco sauce. It cooked for about 6 hours on low, and it tasted fantastic. The cornbread came out perfect as well.

That said, there is so much leftovers! I love that my crockpot makes so much food that I can refrigerate or freeze, but I only have so many containers! I made taco soup a couple nights ago, so, between the soup and this chili, I have absolutely no more plastic containers to store my leftovers. It's amazing that I can spend about $5, and have meals for a whole week is pretty amazing to me. Fiance won't eat chili or taco soup, so... more for me!