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Tonights Dinner: Orange Chicken

Many of you know that I have loved to cook as long as I can remember.  Some of my fondest memories growing are being in the kitchen with my friends experimenting with food.  We used to jar jellies, make tons of cakes and cookies, and even used to make our own candy.  On occasion we were slightly teased that this time in the kitchen wasn’t “boy like”, but it never stopped anyone from eating our attempts (well except the time we made “lady fingers” with tarter sauce instead of cream of tarter. Who knew there was difference.  I remember the dog wouldn’t even eat them.)

I have decided, in an attempt to update this blog more frequently, to post some recipes that we have found exceptionally good.  Hope you enjoy them:

Tonight we tried a recipe from Betty Sexton I found on allrecipes.com called Orange Chicken.  This was by far one of the better dishes I’ve made in quite a while.  Makes a very crispy oven baked chicken with just a hint of orange flavor.  A very easy dish ,with the only thing I would change would be substituting the stuffing with herb seasoned bread crumbs, as crushing up the stuffing was a much larger undertaking than expected.

Ingredients
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup orange juice
  • 1 cup herb-seasoned stuffing mix, crushed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
  • 1 tablespoon grated orange peel
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
  • 6 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
  • Orange slices
Directions
  1. In a shallow bowl, beat egg, add orange juice. In another bowl, combine stuffing mix, paprika, orange peel and salt. Dip chicken in to the egg mixture, then into crumbs, turning to coat well. Pour butter into a 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish. Place chicken in baking dish, turning once to butter both sides. Bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees F for 45 minutes or until the chicken is tender and juices run clear. Garnish with orange slices if desired.
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    This Last Weekend

    imageWow What a weekend!  We traveled some 680 miles and saw a lot of great sites.  Here’s just a little recap if you’re interested.

    Friday, 24 September 2010

    My son has no school today so he had a sleepover last night.  Not much work there.

    3:45 pm – Head out the door enroot to Longmont, CO for my Brother In Laws Birthday Celebration at the Eagle’s Grill. O.K. Food and Cold beer.  Joe Cool was playing, we’ve seen them before and they never disappoint. We stayed a bit longer than expected, but it’s hard to leave when you are having a great time.

    Full Gallery here

    [lg_slideshow folder=”/2010_09_24″]

    Saturday, 25 September 2010

    Up way to early, 5:00am, and it’s off the Guernsey, WY. for a visit with Troop 199, Colorado Springs to work on the Longs Peak Council’s Old West Trails Award on the Oregon Trail Ruts.  We took a short hike, which left me wanting a bit more, but it was still pretty interesting.

    Full Gallery Here

    [lg_slideshow folder=”/Trail_Ruts”]

     

    Second stop of the day was just a few miles up the road to the Register Cliff.  I was really looking forward to this stop.  I can’t tell you how many times I was just up the road training with the Air Force at Camp Guernsey or patrolling around the “old” F.E. Warren Missile Complex and never made it to this site.I was a bit disappointed that so many recent visitors had decided to scroll their name into the rock next to and on top of the old signatures, but it was still interesting none the less.

    Full Gallery Here

    [lg_slideshow folder=”/Register_Cliff”]

     

    Last planned stop was another 12 miles or so to the Ft Laramie Historic Site.  This was my favorite stop of the day.  Not only because it Public Lands Day and the admission was free to the park, but as someone who live at F.E. Warren AFB (Formally Fort D.A. Russell)  for seven years you could really picture how parts of the base had changed very little since the beginning.

    Full Gallery Here

    [lg_slideshow folder=”/ft_laramie”]

     

    After we finished at Ft Laramie, my son wanted to see some missile silos, so I decided to take the “scenic” ride home and rather than go North-West on US Route 26 to I-25, we headed South-East.  A short stop in Lingle, WY for cold drinks and a half a tank of gas, we then headed into Torrington, WY., where we began heading South on U.S. Route 85 towards Cheyenne, and into the missile fields of F.E. Warren. 

    NOTE: I wasn’t aware that between 2002 and 2005 the AF had decommissioned all the Peacekeeper missiles and all the sites we were looking at were “mothballed”, otherwise I would have stopped and took a few pictures.  But at the time I thought they were still active and I didn’t really want to answer any question from AF Security forces so all the viewing was done from the road.

    The first site we saw “well” was Sierra-2, right outside of Torrington, and my son couldn’t have been happier.  We drove for awhile and we didn’t see many more sites (not a lot on that stretch of 85), my son started asking about getting some Chugwater Chili.  My original plan of stopping in Chugwater , WY had been scrapped for this new route home, but I can’t say no to my son, so even though it added 20 minutes to our drive we diverted West onto Wyoming Highway 313 (which is in pretty bad shape).  We went past sites Sierra-7, (this was my first indication that maybe the missiles had been decommissioned as the weeds were pretty overgrown, turns out this was the first site “closed “ in 2002) Romeo-2, (site sign missing) and even past the Master Alert Facility R-1 (no vehicles, no U.S. flag flying (another indication this area might be “closed”)). 

    After a short stop in Chugwater, WY for some delicious Chugwater Chili from Horton’s Corner we headed South on I-25 to F.E. Warren where we got some more cold drinks, topped off the tank with gas.  We then headed home, where we were met by my mother–in-law and father-in-law, who decided to make a last minute trip to visit us and join us in out planned Sunday activities.

    Sunday, 26 September 2010

    Since we moved to Colorado Springs in 2003 we’ve made an annual trip to Pueblo, CO for the annual Chile & Frijoles Festival, and even though this weekend was packed full of activities we weren’t going to let that stop our “new” family tradition.  So it was up early on Sunday, and off to the festival we went.  Joined this year with my Mother-in-Law and Father-in-Law in tow and later with our friends the Waller’s with a couple of their friends from Pueblo made this year one of the best we’ve attended.

    Full Gallery Here

    [lg_slideshow folder=”/chilifest”]

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    Much Better Day

    Bowl of clouds
    Photo by kevindooley

    Well today was a much better day than the last few. Interesting what a simple change in the mundane routine of daily living will do. After taking the boy to the bus stop, I did my daily perusal of the job boards. Though there are a few jobs advertised, I’ve noticed the numbers continuing to drop and the requirements for even the most mundane job go increasingly higher, like needing a Masters Degree to change backup tapes on a server… incredible. After that I decided I was going out for breakfast, and I took my wife to "The Good Egg"… not great, but not too bad. My wife then went to work and I worked on a few things at home until it was time to get the boy from the bus stop. My wife and son went to "Old Chicago" for dinner with friends, while I had to go to a Scout Round Table (Monthly Meeting of Leaders)…I would have rather gone to dinner, but since I now help run the round table for all Cub Scout leaders I had to go. Anyway, it was nice doing something different… I may not be "out of the rut", but today got me closer to the rim.