Baked Chicken

A few days ago, I decided to make some baked chicken wings. Something simple and easy. I found this rub in one of our recipe books, but we didn't have all the ingredients. The recipe called for paprika, all spice, garlic, and some other ingredients. Surprisingly, the rub even had some spices that I wanted to experiment with and thought it might make the wings taste delicious. (That ingredient will stay secret. muahaha.) So I did some substitutions of my own and hoped it wouldn't ruin a good batch of chicken wings.

The outcome was super delicious. I baked it in 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. The crunch was just right to me. Next time, my husband wants me to try and fry the wings for a bigger crunch. Although I think I did a pretty good job in coating the chicken, I also want to try and do a better job. Possibly just double the amount so I have more to coat the chicken with.

Can't wait for the next time to test out this rub again.

Food Fest

I love my family. They're the ones that gave me my love for food. Every time we all get together to catch up, 99.9% of the time it is around food. Last weekend was no different. My cousins decided to have a mini food-fest at their house because my cousins from Sacramento were coming over. We wanted to celebrate their wedding anniversary and some birthdays. As expected, I came home with a satisfied and full belly.

 Tofu Salad - The only healthy thing on our menu.

Yummy, yummy crab.

Homemade Pot Stickers. Pretty garlic-y. Loved it.

Rice Noodle with Chicken Casserole.

 Sea Bass.

 Shrimps and Scallops.

 Taro and Egg. I loved the sauce that went with it too. Sprinkled with Scallions.

For dessert, we had Donut Sundaes.I made sure to get Krispy Kreme donuts. You can't see the donut, but it's underneath there somewhere. Topped with ice cream, whipped cream, nuts, bananas and maraschino cherries. I could do without the cherries and whipped cream. But, it was still good.

 Ira and I also bought a bundt cake to celebrate the birthdays. This was from Nothing Bundt Cakes. I love their cakes. Very cute. They have designs for all sorts of occasions. This bundt was white chocolate raspberry.

 To drink, we had a few shots of this Coconut Vodka. Surprisingly pretty good. It went down smoothly. We also had some of my cousins husbands home made Chardonnay. Best Chardonnay I've ever tasted.

Chicken Adobo

Mmmm. One of the staple Filipino dishes. Also one of the easiest to make. We didn't have garlic cloves, only garlic spice, so I wasn't sure if it would make a difference. Turns out it just made it a little more pasty than normal. I put the garlic spice on top of the saute'd onions rather than on the chicken. The taste probably would've been magnified if I put it on the chicken. I also used tons of onions. Next time, I'll saute the onions a little more too. Either way, my adobo dish turned out real good. I still want to master it to taste like my moms though. I think I added too much vinegar in this round. I love the sauce too, so I need to make more next time to coat my rice with. =)

Chicken Quesadilla

We had tons of leftover chicken, so we thought it would be be easy to just use the rest to make chicken quesadilla's. We had these tortilla's that were humongous! Seriously, I think it was bigger than my face. Lots of cheese, chicken, peppers and tomatoes make great quesadilla. We had these Serrano peppers though that we were brave enough to try and include. Not sure if that was a good idea. At least for me since I can't handle too much spice. My mouth was burning with each bite of a pepper. Next time we make quesadilla's, I'm going to opt out the serrano peppers. They made it hard for me to really enjoy the meal.

This was only half of the gigantic tortilla!

Chinese Chicken Salad & Tomato Basil Soup

We wanted something fairly simple and healthy for dinner, so we chose Chinese Chicken Salad and Tomato Basil Soup.The soup fit perfectly with the weather. Ira's version of tomato basil soup turned out real good. It competed with Safeway's tomato basil soup, which happens to be the best kind we've tasted yet. At first we thought it wouldn't taste as good because it wasn't as thick as we'd like. After tasting it a bit, I don't think it would have tasted as good if it were thicker. It had the right amount of tomato and cream. Next time we'll try more basil though.

The salad could have used more dressing, but it was still pretty tasty. We need a crusher for the ramen noodles. Super easy to make. Just cabbage, crushed ramen noodles and shredded chicken. I did cheat though and use the pre-baked chicken at Lucky's. Next time I'll make it all from scratch, when I'm less hungry.

Overall, a very yummy dinner. The only thing missing was garlic bread to go with the soup. I think I can eat this forever.