Ode to Home ~ General Tso's Chicken

General Tso, ancient Chinese General from the Qing Dynasty...your chicken is delicious, I wish you were alive to try it when they came up with the recipe only 40 years ago. Mmmmmm...

My House (no map...nope)
My Street
My City, Alabama

So the urge struck me again. I felt like cooking and actually take on a challenging dish and you can't get more local than in your own kitchen! Well, come to find out, it really was not that challenging but there were a few steps. I had the taste for Chinese, General Tso's Chicken, to be exact...so I made it at home!

General Tso's Chicken is a sweet yet spicy chicken dish which consists of fried boneless chicken in that sweet and spicy sauce. It is a Chinese Buffet favorite and it goes WELL with rice and broccoli, which I also made! I got the recipe from another blog called "Appetite for China" (Click HERE for recipe) and with a few slight modifications, I created a very similar dish to what you would get in your local chinese takeout. My changes were chicken breasts for the chicken thighs, vegetable oil instead of the flavored oils, no seseme seeds or scallions, red pepper flakes instead of whole peppers, candied ginger instead of ginger (it's what I had on hand) and apple cider vinegar instead of rice wine vinegar. I took pictures of my ingredients so that you can see that you may actually have these ingredients in your pantry already! The finished product was DEFINITELY worth the steps and you may just surprise yourself as this is kinda "date night" food. Well, if you use half the amount of garlic...perhaps! :-)

GO FOR IT! Cook something! If you can read, you can cook!

Ode To Chocolate Cake

This is totally a rambling :-)

Ode to Chocolate Cake

My House! (no map...sorry!)
My Street
My Town, Alabama

You cannot get more local than your own kitchen! When the mood strikes, I find an overwhelming urge to find a recipe and make some noise in the kitchen! This round of culinary combat found me baking a cake especially for a friend of mine! Not just any cake, CHOCOLATE cake! The recipe...well, I yoinked it from my cousin up in Savannah, Tennessee (THE Catfish Capital of THEE World, or so the sign says) and modified it slightly (that way I can grind her gears when I tell her that I didn't really take her recipe! Ain't I a stinker? Ha!) I am unsure if this recipe is in print and I will not divulge the recipe here. We may need it for our family cookbook someday! :-)

I will just give a quick ode to chocolate cake in a haiku

Chocolate Cake Haiku


This great chocolate cake
Tastes so wonderful to me
I may need more milk.



Thank you ::takes a bow::

I encourage you to go boldly into your kitchen and create something GREAT! If you can read, you can cook! :-)