Orange You Glad For Chicken?

This dinner was at my place. We invited Shan to join us as well. I had a marinated chicken from Tony’s to cook. It had an orange BBQ marinade. I cooked it for about an hour. The skin got a bit singed from the sugary sauce but it turned out okay. It smelled amazing while it was cooking.

For sides, I made mashed potatoes and salad. I made the potatoes from scratch and added 2% milk, light sour cream, smart balance butter, season salt, pepper, and garlic. Since I tried to go on the lighter side, the potatoes didn’t have as much flavor as I’m used to. For the salad, I used a Baby Spring Mix and added snow peas, red, orange, and yellow peppers, cucumber, and cherub tomatoes. I bought a special Citrus Vinaigrette to go with the orange chicken sauce. It was made with orange juice and cider vinegar. I was wary of a savory citrus dressing versus a sweeter one but it was delicious!

I had some crackers and cheese spread out for an appetizer. The cheese spread was Alouette berry cheese. Crystal brought watermelon strawberry soda as well as plain strawberry soda. Shan brought Coldstone cupcakes for dessert. The flavors were chocolate, cake batter, and sweet cream.

We talked and relaxed with tea after dinner.

Caribbean Mean (Jerk) Sandwich

The third dinner was back at Crystal’s place. We went tropical with a Caribbean jerk chicken sandwich. She marinated the chicken in a jerk marinade she bought. The chicken was then grilled and topped with provolone cheese. Some pineapple salsa also made it in between the buns with the chicken. The salsa was made with pineapple, cucumber, onion, rice vinegar, and cilantro. For a side dish, we had sunburst and cherry tomatoes chopped with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic and basil. We also had some sweet potato fries with spicy ranch. Our meal was finished with a skinny cow mint ice cream bar.

For entertainment we watched An American Werewolf in Paris. It didn’t even put off our appetites!

Thai-ed Up For Dinner

I decided to make this dinner extra special and introduce Crystal to my family. I invited my parents and my brother to join us. Crystal and I even made a trip to the Asian market downtown for some of the ingredients.

For the first course, I had pork dumplings that I had prepared the day before. This required gyoza skins and a mixture of 1 lb ground pork, minced garlic, grated ginger, an egg, soy sauce and black pepper. I froze them so they would remain separate. We boiled the frozen dumplings and then dipped them in either soy sauce, gyoza sauce or chili soy sauce.

For the second course, I decided to make pad thai the way my family enjoys it. I used Annie Chun’s rice noodles with Annie Chun’s Pad Thai sauce. They used to be sold together in a box so this was my first time using them separately. I put chicken, bean sprouts, cilantro, lime, green onions, peanuts and chili garlic sauce into it. I love this dish.

Since we’d agreed to make our meals healthy, I made a stir fry from some of the vegetables I’d previously chopped. This included zucchini, carrots, small bell peppers, green onions, and shitake mushrooms. I cooked it in sesame oil and added a hint of stir fry sauce for flavor.

We drank sake and ramune provided by my family and Crystal. We finished this fun meal with mochi, a kind of ice cream ball in a rice dough. The flavors were strawberry, green tea, and red bean.

After the family left, Crystal and I enjoyed the Japanese animated movie Ponyo.

Not Chicken for Pesto

Food makes everything better. Its magical properties can change the tone of a setting and bring people together in a way usually reserved for sexual or traumatic experiences. (ex. there’s lots of moaning and eye rolling.) My friend Crystal and I have decided to enjoy each other’s company through a weekly dinner. After two weeks we have each gotten a chance to host. My goal with this blog is to remember our delicious adventures.


The first dinner found us at Crystal’s apartment. We started off with a lite Caesar salad. For the main dish, Crystal had decided to prepare chicken pesto. She marinated the chicken in a pesto and oil mixture before grilling it in a pan. The side was pasta topped with a creamy pesto vegetable sauce. She made the sauce with cream of chicken soup, milk and pesto with frozen broccoli and carrots. For dessert, she provided sliced strawberries on top of vanilla ice cream. It was a nicely filling meal that was on the healthier side. I believe we also enjoyed a bottle of Meridian sauvignon blanc. We enjoyed our meal while watching some episodes of Community.