Crunchy Chicken

Busy weekend for us since my parents were visiting. I haven't really done anything crafty in the last week, so I thought I'd share an old stand-by recipe I started using in the past year...which I guess makes it not so old, but whatever. You only need three things: boneless chicken breasts (or strips), honey mustard, and those french fried onion things that you use for green bean casserole. You should use honey mustard for sandwiches, not honey mustard salad dressing. I think the salad dressing would be much too runny.

1. Squirt a bunch of honey mustard (HM) on a plate or in a tupperware dish. 
2. Dump a bunch of crunchy onions (COs) in  another dish.
3. Roll the chicken around in the HM.
4. Roll the chicken around in the COs.
5. Put them on a pan. Bonus: cover the pan in foil and then you don't even have to mess with cleaning the pan! 

Cook time depends on the cut of the chicken. I always at least halve breasts because they take forever to cook otherwise (it seems like forever when you're hungry anyway). Oven should be around 375 and cook anywhere from 10-25 minutes. Just make sure the chicken isn't pink and isn't burnt and you should be good to go.

I've also had success using crunched up Sun Chips. Perfect for when you only have crumbs left and nobody really wants to eat the last of them. Just remember your hearing protection if they're still using those terribly loud bags.

If you're looking for something even easier, go to the nearest Trader Joe's (or TJ's as we affectionately call it) and pick up some Mandarin Ginger Chicken from the freezer aisle. That stuff is AMAZING!! And I'm pretty sure that's the right name, if not it definitely has mandarin in the name and it's in an orange bag. We've had it twice in one week before. Just pair it with some brown rice and you have a meal.

Here's what we were busy doing this Saturday:

Seeing whales. Well, more precisely, seeing parts of whales. Unfortunately I didn't catch any Free Willy jumps, but then again these were gray whales so that probably isn't their style. It was fun though. If you ever go on a whale watching tour in central/northern CA, dress much warmer than you think is necessary...and have fun! :)

Playing Catch-Up

Number of blog posts started in the last week but not posted (or even halfway complete): 3

Number of hours I spent on the phone for work yesterday: 2 and 1/2 (with only about a 15 minute break in the middle). Did I feel like I was melting into a pile of blahness in my chair after being on the phone for so long? Yes.

State of our house: eh, not terrible but definitely not ideal (see birthday cooking mess below)

Birthdays: Bro-in-law's bday was last week...and his card is still on my desk...hopefully he knows we didn't forget about his birthday all together, it took us over a week to decide what to get him.

Hubs' bday was yesterday and a success, I think :) Although one present won't be here until Thursday. I'm telling myself that just means he gets to stretch the celebration out for the whole week! And here's the aftermath of cooking three meals plus a cake yesterday:

Whittled it down to just a few dishes last night, yay! 

 

PS - Do you see the lack of counter space I'm dealing with? I knew it wasn't much, but seeing this picture made it stand out even more. There's not really much available space on the other side of the kitchen either unless there are no clean or dirty dishes (no dishwasher, sigh). Also, now I feel compelled to do a post about how much we love our house because we really do. But when you live in a house that's almost 102 years old you have to put up with some annoyances of the things that give it character.

On a happier note - some other birthday highlights from yesterday:

Happy Birthday Hubs! You're awesome and I wish I could've

given you the day off of work yesterday for your bday! I'm especially thankful you 

were born because I got the best husband anyone could hope for out of the deal!

No icing on the cake due to icing failure

FYI almond extract is not always a good substitute for vanilla extract. 

Rather than mush together bits and pieces of three unfinished posts into one (you're welcome) I'll try to just wrap up with my new cleaning strategy. I say try because I'm finding that I have a terribly hard time staying on topic when I write! Guess Hubs is right about my train of thought being all over the place when we're talking :/

I don't like doing dishes, therefore the kitchen is rarely spotless. I don't really have a good excuse for the rest of the house. So I have a new game plan. I'm hoping that by putting it on the internet I'll stick to it because if it's on the internet, it must be true. Hah.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Spend 20 minutes each evening picking up clutter and just generally tidying up the place.

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

Dishes. Do them. 

Sunday

Alternate between vacuuming and moping/cleaning tub and toilet.

So I'll let you know if this pans out. I'm hoping to have a sparkling house from now on and live happily ever after :) I think I can still get the happily ever after either way and we'll just have to see what happens with the sparkling house.

Grab Ball Toy

So there's a chance this is old news to some people, but somebody recently showed me a grab ball they made. I promptly started scouring the internet to find it, and found the pattern...for free! Here's the link: Grab Ball Tutorial. The tutorial was a little confusing at some points for me, but I'm also pretty new to sewing. A little tip if you want to save time (read: you're lazy and/or some steps in sewing patterns seem pointless and time consuming) here are a couple things I skipped. I didn't press any seams, actually I rarely ever press any seams on anything. I guess it's a wonder the stuff I make even turns out. I also didn't trim any of the corners off. I mean what's the point of that really? You're going to stuff the thing, so what's a little extra fabric on the inside? I used the plump version of the pattern. Here's how mine turned out!

I used snuggle fabric, which made for a very soft and snuggly ball. It was a little harder to work with though since it was so plush. If you want to avoid extra hassle and LOTS of fuzzies everywhere on everything that even thought about being near the fabric, you should go with something else. Sorry I didn't take more pictures during the process. If you want to imagine that I did, just picture that ball, not stuffed and in pieces, and little pieces of yellow fluff eeevverrrywhere (including my hair on one occasion).

It's a good project to do if you craft in spurts because you can just finish one section and easily come back to do another one later without having to figure out where you left off. Overall though I was thrilled with how it turned out. I'm thinking the plump version might be a little more forgiving if you make minor mistakes or your seams aren't totally straight because everything ends up smooshed together. I actually liked it so much I thought about making one for me and my husband. We don't have kids, but it is pretty fun to throw around...What? We had to test it to make sure it was safe (and fun) for the baby who's getting it as a gift. :)