Honey-Teriyaki "Exam" Stir-Fry

When you need to maximize your time but also need to keep your brain nourished (Kraft dinner only goes so far, I'm sorry), then try out this quick chicken recipe for a stir fry. Here's what you need:

Ingredients:

• Boneless skinless chicken breasts (1-2)
• Garlic, minced (1 clove)
• Onion (1/2)
• Green pepper (1)
• Red pepper (1)
• Mushrooms (1 sm. quart.)
• Honey (2 tbsp.)
• Thick Teriyaki sauce (200 ml. Can find your preferred one at any grocery store)
• Lemon juice (1 .... squirt?)
• Old El Paso Fajita mix (1/2 package)
• Rice (1 cup)
• Water (1/2 cup)
• Your favorite kind of oil

Instructions:

1. Cut / chop the green pepper, red pepper and onion into strips, half the mushrooms, and mince the garlic.
2. Mix half of the Old El Paso fajita powder with 100 ml of water. Set aside.
3. On a medium-low heat, combine rice and water in a pot and cover. Add a teaspoon of margarine / butter for flavor. You can pretty much ignore this pot until the end... Don't forget to stir, though!
4. In a wok, heat 1 tsp. of oil on medium heat.
5. In a small frying pan, heat 1 tsp. of oil. Begin frying chicken breasts on a high heat setting. Have a cover handy for spattering oil!
6. Add garlic to the wok. You want it to be hot enough that it starts sizzling when you add the garlic!
7. Add the onions when the garlic is lightly browned, and add a LITTLE splash of the water to steam cook the onions.
8. Add the red and green pepper to the wok, and cover.
9. When the chicken is finished cooking, remove from pan and cut into bite-sized strips. Put the strips back in the pan, and on a medium-low heat, combine with the old el paso mix for flavour. Cover and let simmer.
10. Add another splash of water to the veggies and cover. Keep checking them if they're tender.
11. Add the mushrooms to the wok.
12. THE RICE IS BURNING, just kidding, but seriously, check the rice.
13. Add the Teriyaki sauce to the vegetables and toss so it's well mixed in.
14. Add a "squirt" for a lack of a better measurement of lemon juice.
15. Add the honey to the veggies and mix it in well.
16. As soon as all of the water has boiled down from the old el paso chicken mixture, add that to the stir fry and toss well.
17. As soon as the veggies reach desired tenderness, turn off heat and serve over the rice.

Options:

For this stir-fry, I like sticking with the chicken theme and tend to go for the "Uncle Ben's roasted chicken and wild rice" flavour of rice or whatever its called. Experiment with this! I'm sure there are lots of creative combinations.

Wow, now that I type that out, it actually looks like a lot of work. I guarantee you, though, that it goes faster than that looks like it might. Well, it most definitely goes faster and better than studying does, that's for sure. Enjoy your stir fry!

Good luck on your midterms!

Chicken Casserole – Onion and Orange

This next chicken recipe is a low maintenance recipe which gives you time to do other things, when you're extremely busy like me! If this were an infomercial, I'd say this is a "Set it and forget it" kind of recipe! Remember when you were 12, sitting in front of the TV during afternoon prime time, and you saw Ron Popeil and his famous rotisserie machines? This recipe is kind of like that!

Ingredients:

• Uncooked rice (1 ½ cup)
• Boneless skinless chicken breast (4-5)
• Sliced Mushrooms (as many as you like)
• Lipton Onion Soup Mix (1 pkg.)
• Orange Juice (½ cup)
• Campell's Mushroom soup (1 can)
• Cooking Sherry (½ cup)

Instructions:

1. Combine the mushroom soup, orange juice and cooking sherry in a bowl. Mix thoroughly. It's not going to look pretty.
2. Spread uncooked rice in bottom of greased glass casserole dish, evenly.
3. Pour orange juice / mushroom soup mixture over top.
4. Spread sliced mushrooms on top of rice and mix.
5. Place the uncooked chicken breasts chicken on top.
6. Sprinkle Lipton Onion Soup mix on top of chicken.
7. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 1 ½ hrs. at 350F.

Set it, annnnnnnnnnnnnd FORGET IT! But seriously, this is a good, hearty and quick meal that will last you 2-3 days, if you're the only person trying to make it disappear! Enjoy.

Chicken of Russia

Allow me to share of timeless recipe, but fast when time is running out. Recipe come from generations of Russia cooks, who are #1 best in world. Here are what you need:

Ingredients:

• Salad dressing of Russia of Kraft
  
• Apricot Jam
  
• Four bone and skin remove chicken breast
  
• Onion soup package mix
  

Instruction:

1. Get large bowl of mixing.
   
2. Cut top off salad dressing of Russia, bottle should be used half in bowl.
3. Empty jam of apricot into same bowl, Russian cooks again say half.
4. All onion soup mix go into bowl too.
5. Cooks rotate mix until is smooth like Russian vodka tastes.
   
6. Put mix and chicken together. Oven pan is needed for it. Make sure pan is deep or mix will boil over side and you will be bulging with angry.
7. Bake in oven for 400 degree at 1 hour.
8. Serve with rice, vegetables. Sometime Russian cooks serve grade-A potato. Russia farms makes best ones.
   

In a blogosphere where anyone can proclaim themselves the ruler...

I'd like to begin with a small comic, which I believe nicely sums up the attitudes/personalities expressed on blogs by their owners:

(Thanks goes to xkcd.com for this comic)

Owning a blog makes everybody feel empowered! I feel full of power right now. I'm writing something that could potentially have authority/influence over somebody's opinions or ideas. You could agree, you could disagree, but when all the water boils down (I had to toss some cooking lingo in), each blog is its owners atomic instance of power, separate from everything else in existence.

So, then, who's the ruler of the Blogosphere, if everybody is feeling empowered, and declaring themselves as the one?

Technorati says its them! According to Technorati, they are assuming the position of being at the center of the Blogosphere.

---

We also help social media publishers to find the people formerly known as their audience. And they all converge, as a result, on Technorati.

We're proud of this position, of course, but also humbled by the responsibility it imposes.

---

This is how blogs MAKE MONEY. They start with a small idea that doesn't currently exist (or is not quite popular yet) and they capitalize on it and declare themselves as the winner. Actually, when you think about it, this is the oldest business model in existence.

Every four months, Technorati presents a quarterly report (smells like a business to me), which has several pretty graphs with the "Technorati" watermark all over it, and some obvious observations are extracted from some data. The thing is - they're only the best and the authority until somebody has pretty graphs, obvious observations ANNNNND free popsicles. Then that will be the new self-declared authority. Ok, well, it might take more than free popsicles, but I hope you get the idea. On a side note ... Technorati got the Law of Large Numbers wrong. Just thought I'd be a good blogger, and point out the inaccuracy.

Technorati did make a good observation, though. Tags! Social tagging, Wiki tagging, graffiti tagging, laser tagging... each new Web 2.0 platform allows the author the ability to easily categorize and label their works. This works wonders for SOE (I hope you're still not looking this up?) for your blogs. It helps you and other bloggers reciprocate. But wait, wasn't everybody their own center of the universe?

AZ Blogging says the ruler of the blogosphere is ... wait for it .... reciprocity! ... Wait what?? I have to comment and reciprocate on other peoples blogs, rather than just be an atomic entity? THIS RUINS EVERYTHING.

But seriously, I wholeheartedly agree with AZ's post! It's why planetary blog posting rates have ballooned to 17 posts per second (collectively), and the number of blogs to over 70 million. Like they say, you might not have time to return every single comment, or read every single blog post, but this is how all the magic starts, and it's why Technorati is able to capitalize on you, me and the blogosphere.

Mushroom & Carrot Chicken Dinner

Today's recipe will use the most magical flavour of condensed soup you've ever set your eyes on... Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup! Its flavour is pretty diverse and can serve as a base in many sauces, which makes it perfect for what were going to cook up!

Ingredients

• 3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I'm down to 27 now!)
• Carrots (2 large)
• Mushrooms (1 small quart)
  
• Rice (1 1/2 cup) or Pasta (match servings to number of chicken breasts)
  
• Campbell's mushroom soup (1 can)
• Oil (1-2 tbsp.)
• Butter (2 tsp.)
• Milk (1/4 cup)
  

Instructions

1. Chop your veggies. You want to cut the carrots into matchsticks (after peeling of course). Slice the mushrooms. Set aside.
   
2. Put some oil in a LARGE non-stick frying pan. Turn heat to medium.
3. Prepare a small pot with water for the rice / pasta.
   
4. Spread the oil around when its hot, and put the chicken breasts in the pan.
5. Start boiling the rice / pasta. Add 1 tsp of butter, and stir occasionally.
   
6. Fry the chicken breasts, flipping every so often until they're cooked through. You can test by cutting them if you're not sure.
   
7. When the chicken is 3/4 done, start preparing the sauce. In a medium/large sauce pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Empty contents of mushroom soup can, add the milk, and add the carrots. Whisk every 3-4 minutes.
8. When the chicken is done, you may turn off the heat, and set aside.
9. Let the sauce simmer for 10 minutes or until carrots are beginning to become tender, then add the mushrooms and add the chicken breasts. Simmer for 4-5 more minutes.
10. Check the rice. When it's finished, turn it off and remove it from the heat.
11. Check the sauce, the carrots and mushrooms should be tender. Turn off the heat when veggies are tender, or at your desired consistency.
    
12. Layer the rice on serving dishes, and place a chicken breast on each serving. Cover with sauce.
13. Serve.

PS. I'm looking for a better name for this. If anybody can think of one I'd love to hear it...