Tinfoil Chef

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I’ve asked myself that kind of question not too long ago. Specifically, we had no idea what we were going to do with the collection of cookbooks, recipes, cooking magazines and so on that we’ve been collecting. While we got that situation pretty much figured out, there’s still the matter of all the things that we keep hearing about and jotting down when we think of it or see a good idea someplace.

My favorite thought is to first put an end to the eternal fight of having to scramble for ink pens every time we suddenly have the need to note something down so that it doesn’t get forgotten and that’s to have a laptop close by so that notes can be typed up and saved in a text file… then they can be sorted out and organized later.

Once you get to having hardcopy of so many things, once again you’re faced with the need to find a place to keep all of it. You can’t just leave stacks of printouts laying around, that’s going to be an invitation to lose something… probably something that you REALLY don’t want to lose.

The answer there is sets of three ring binders and a three hole punch. We got one at an office supply place once and it’s great… punches all three holes for a binder all at the same time. Then we can put together binders to separate different types of recipes, tips and ideas into their own categories.

All we’ll need then is to come up with another bookcase and a place to put it to keep all of these cookbooks and binders on.

Technorati Tags: recipes, organization, books, cookbooks, binders, notebooks, printouts

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I’ve been a fan of Chinese food for a long time and this Almond Chicken recipe sounds too good not to share.

This dish calls for the chicken to be marinated for at least an hour. A Marinade is A mixture of ingredients that are used to add flavor to foods as well as moisten them. A marinade can be liquid or dry. The liquid based are usually acid based and dry marinades are most often salt based. In this case we’ll be using a liquid based marinade.

Stir together a couple tablespoons of soy sauce, a tablespoon of rice wine, 2 tablespoons of chikcen stock, a teaspoon of cornstarch, a half teaspoon of sugar, a half inch of ginger root minced up and a minced up clove of garlic.

Cut two whole boneless skinless chicken breasts chicken into strips a half inch wide by about three inches long and pat them dry in paper towels. Put the strips in the marinade, turn them to make sure they’re coated all over. The chicken needs to soak in the marinade for at least an hour. Be sure to turn the chicken halfway through the marinade time.

Take the chicken out of the marinade and lay it on paper towels or perhaps a cake-rack or something to let it drain (no, you don’t want to wipe it off).

Beat an egg lightly with a half teaspoon of water. Dip the chicken pieces in the egg and coat them by rolling in some ground almonds. While the almond coated pieces set 15 minutes, heat about 6 cups of peanut oil 350.

Fry chicken pieces in batches one layer deep until crisp, golden brown. Be sure to let oil come back up to 350 between batches. Drain on paper towels and serve at once. If you like, you can garnish the chicken pieces with some chopped green onion.

Technorati Tags: almond+chicken, chicken, chinese+food, Dinner, fried+chicken, marinade, recipe

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The kitchen window in our house isn’t technically a “kitchen” window because it’s on the side of the room that’s designed as the dining area. The problem with this is that it’s on the front of the house facing the street. That wouldn’t be all that bad if it ad least had a set of roller shades or blinds…. something, that could provide a little more privacy than the sheer-thin curtains up there now.

As it was, that window got covered up with heavy plastic sheeting our first winter here to keep the cold out and we never bothered to take it down. From the outside it pretty much looks like there’s a heavy-ish curtain there. Inside it’s a bit more noticeable but since it’s not where anyone sits for any significant amount of time near it we never figured it was worth the bother. Besides’ there’s a big bay window in the next room that we do keep open a lot.

I remember when I was a kid the kitchen window would always be positioned right over the sink. This was so your mother could watch out the window while she’s doing stuff in the kitchen and give you what for out the window if you were caught doing something you shouldn’t have.

Modern houses don’t seem to have that kind of layout anymore. In ours for example, to put a kitchen window over the sink would give us a view of the hallway in the middle of the house. Maybe it’s just me but that’s just wrong.

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