Monday, January 27, 2020

Weekly Eats: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  This week we had one heck of a success in the family dinner department, so much so that I'm going to skip over this week's breakfasts and lunches and just talk dinner for this week's food recap.

Dinners
Monday (family meal): the week started on a high note with How Sweet Eats Korean Chicken Bowls.  This is something that I've made for myself before but it had some definite landmines as a family dinner:
  • Stepson #1 doesn't eat avocado
  • Stepson #2 is super picky about not having foods mixed together.  For this dish, the vegetables are raw and get lightly steamed by the rice and chicken, so things have to be mixed together.
But the boys like Asian foods in general and they're obsessed with green onions, so I figured that this was a worthy risk to branch out from Costco's orange chicken.

Recipe alterations:
  • Catered to the mild palates in my family and used sweet chili sauce in place of garlic chili sauce and I cut the brown sugar down by a tablespoon to offset any extra sweetness that might have come from the sweet chili sauce. 
  • Used Asian salad mix in place of the vegetables.  
  • Skipped the coconut water and TBH next time I'll skip the coconut milk as well, I don't feel like it adds anything.
When dinner time came, I pulled the chicken off the grill and piled everything into 4 bowls and slapped them on the table.  And I don't know if something was in the water or if the boys were in a mellow mood, but they went crazy for it.   And the adults enjoyed it as well.  It was the best family meal that we've had in a while.  Gold stars all around.

Tuesday (family meal): leftover Korean chicken

Wednesday (date night): Jo Cooks Pork Chops and Gravy.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): hubs had leftovers from Wednesday, I cleaned up the remaining chicken from Monday.

Friday (fend for yourself night II): hubs took the boys off to the woods for boy scout camp and hung out with them for a while.  Veggie burrito for dinner.

Saturday (date night): with the boys away at scout camp, hubs, stepdog, and I had burgers for dinner.

Sunday (family meal): our traditional post scout camp Sunday dinner of tacos, aka favorite dinner of stepson #1.

Meal Prep
We have a ton of taco fixin's and I made another batch of breakfast burritos.

Watching
When the boys are away...the adults will watch some strange things.  As a follow up to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which we saw last week, we saw Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (screenplay by Roger Ebert!)  Hubs's review "it was everything I hoped it would be."

And we also got back on our Hitchcock train and saw I Confess.

Reading
Finished The Family Upstairs, yay Lisa Jewell!  Now reading an old favorite, A Meddler and Her Murder by Joyce Porter.

7 comments:

  1. I remember reading The Valley of the Dolls when I was in high school. Scandalous! :p

    Hurray for a win at dinner. That always feels good!

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    1. And that was great literature! Beyond is a movie to watch for fun, no plot and no brain power required.

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  2. Wait, Costco has orange chicken again? Our Costco didn't have it for several visits and I gave up looking for it ages ago. Thanks for the tip. Have you tried Trader Joe's orange chicken as a lazy night staple?

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    1. Yikes I hope Costco hasn't gotten rid of orange chicken, we're already suffering since they haven't had our favorite breakfast chicken sausage. Yes we've had TJ's orange chicken, we like the Costco version just a bit better.

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    2. I haven't been to Costco since I commented, but it's on my list for next time I go. Our Virginia Costcos haven't had orange chicken in a couple of years "or" it's hiding from me. ;-)

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  3. As per usual...lots of good eats!! The Korean Chicken looks awesome!!!

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  4. That's great that the Korean chicken was a hit for everyone! It's a great feeling when a meal goes over so well.

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