Homemade Chicken Bites & Buffalo Sauce

On Sunday night, Matt and I decided that we were going to finally try the pierogis that our friend Jay had made and I really didn’t feel like going traditional with it so we decided to pair them with some homemade chicken bites!

First we got 2 pans going on a medium heat with bacon grease and canola oil.

This is the chicken breast that I cut up into strips, 2 breasts was way more than enough for 2 people! We created our own dredge with flour, breadcrumbs and seasonings such as milled garlic, reb robin seasoning (similar to a seasoning salt) and onion powder. Matt had the brilliant idea to put into dry, then the milk and egg mixture, then back into the dry again to make it extra crunchy!

We then dropped the chicken bites into the hot oil, flipping once nicely browned and left them for about 5-6 minutes per side.

Action shot!

We started the pierogis at the same time as the chicken as we knew it would take a long time since they are so big! We cooked from frozen until they were heated through and nicely browned with a great crust.

How the chicken looked while cooking.

Mmmm…these look delicious!

Voila!

With the homemade buffalo sauce!

Matt even created his own buffalo sauce for this which was amazing!  He used Frank’s Red Hot, worchestershire sauce, butter, red robin, garlic and onion powder and it was phenomenal!

This last picture isn’t the most beautiful, but it shows how great the food looked before I dug in.  Note the large side of sour cream, that’s the Ukrainian in me!

Matt and I have never made our own pierogis, but we are looking forward to having our very own kitchen in our first house to experiment in soon!! 

Ribs, Ribs, Ribs

If you read my blog, you know that I’ve made ribs before and shared my recipe..but this time I tried something completely different and it is worthy of a second ribs post within 6 months.

Our local coop has a great  selection of fresh meats from Alberta, the last time we went shopping these beautiful pork side ribs were on sale and we had to pick some up.  We had decided that since we just bought a house (OMG!! Yay!!), that we really need to save some money to buy all of the stuff we need to move in and we should eat at home as much as we can from now until our possession October 1st.

I prepped the slow cooker the night before by cutting up the ribs into pieces as it is easier to set them into the slow cooker that way and because I know they will be fall apart delicious at the end and it will be impossible to take them out if I don’t!  I layer them in the slow cooker making sure to season each layer as I am doing it.  I started with garlic powder, we bought this awesome garlic mill in the US while we were visiting for the state fair, Red Robin seasoning salt, onion powder and pepper.  I then poured in 3/4 of a bottle of Bullseye Chicken & Rib BBQ sauce, a few dashes of worchestershire sauce and 3/4 of a 591 ml bottle of Pepsi and watered it down a bit as well.  We left it to sit overnight in the fridge to soak up all of the flavour.

The next morning when I got up to go to work, I set it to low and forgot about it before I went through the door.  When I came back in the door 10 hours later, the house smelled amazing!  Matt cooked some rice to go with the ribs and dinner ( and lunch for the next day) was served!

I could NOT believe how well the Pepsi flavour came thorough!  I am already looking forward to trying this again with Root Beer because I think the flavours would be absolutely amazing!  I recommend doing this the next time you get a hankering for ribs!

Enjoy!

Himalayan: Nepali Cuisine Review

For this months BTD, it was Sarah`s turn to pick and you can always expect something a little different to get you out of your comfort zone with her picks, which is fantastic.

The June pick was…Himalayan.  I`ll be honest and say that when I read it was Nepali food, I had no idea what to expect. Immediately, I went on to scour the menu of course and I decided that there were at least a few things that I would like to try.

Judy couldn’t make it again 😦 It’s never quite the same when we can’t all make it, but it was a great night none the less.

For an appy, Jess, Leah, Sarah and I all got the Pork Mo:Mo and Melissa ordered the Vegetable Mo:Mo, I honestly think that I’m leaning more towards the vegetable version for a favourite, I really liked the crunch that it had although the pork was delicious as well.  The best part of this dish was the dipping sauce they were served with! Gorgeous cream tomato sauce, mmm. The restaurant also serves a complimentary serving of Papadum (it took awhile to google and figure out what they served) with 2 dipping sauces.  I wasn’t a fan of this, the papadum was pretty spicy and had a strange texture.  I didn’t enjoy the sauces either.  That’s alright, not everything is for everyone!

 For a main, I ordered the Garlic Shrimp, medium spicy.  The shrimp came in a bowl of tomato curry type sauce and it was served with saffron rice, flat bread and a traditional Nepoli side they called cold salad.  The shrimp was delicious.  I wasn’t expecting a curry sauce, but like I said, I really wasn’t sure of what to expect. The flat bread was delicious and great to dip in the sauce.  I also wasn’t a fan of the cold salad, it had potato and peas that I know of but not sure what else.

 Sarah had the Lamb Himalayan grill, the lamb was amazing!  I’m not sure if I ever had tried lamb before then but it was so good, it had a great charred, grill taste.

 For dessert, 3 of our group got the Mango Cream ice cream and I got the tropical fruit salad.  The ice cream was AMAZING.  The fruit cocktail was very different, but I enjoyed it.

 Dinner was great and I can’t wait to see where we are going next!

Edit: Forgot to comment on the fact that there is indeed parking at this location, so nice!!

What’s For Dinner?

In true Monday morning fashion, I ran around the kitchen this morning talking to myself, “Do I have anything to take for lunch? nope” “Oh my god, I need to take something out for dinner!” “What are we having for dinner?” then I saw the hamburger in the freezer and the hamburger buns and decided we were having hamburgers for dinner!  Quick, easy and delicious.

My husband and I always get home pretty late, I get off work at 5, then drive to pick him up at 6 and we usually don’t make it home until 7ish depending on what we need to do before going home, if anything. Tonight we just needed a few bunch of things at the grocery store, so we made it home at 7:15.

Now I don’t know about you,  but when I’m always home so late, I never feel like making anything that takes too much effort.  I like to leave big meals to weekends off when I can really take my time prepping and cooking and I can make things that take long periods of time to cook. So hamburgers ended up being a great choice and I decided to make some coleslaw as well.

I started off with some bacon, because let’s face it..what is a hamburger without bacon and cheese? I’ll tell you what it is, nothing I want to eat.  When the bacon was done, I left the fat in the pan to cook the hamburgers in, mmm bacon grease.  I mixed my ground hamburger with worchestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion soup mix, bread crumbs and an egg.  I made 4 good sized patties and fried them on the stove in the grease.

While they were cooking, I put together the coleslaw.  Now the coleslaw isn’t 100% homemade, but it partially is and that is all that matters, right?  When you are cooking for 2 during the week on limited time and 3 on weekends, sometimes you need to take some shortcuts in order to not waste a lot of food!  I used pre-packaged coleslaw veggies, coleslaw dressing, dill and some cholula for good measure.  The Cholula was Matt’s idea, but when it comes to food, he rarely has a bad idea so we went with it and it ended up being delicious.

We then topped the burgers with cheddar cheese and goat cheese and used whatever condiments we both like.  I am slightly obsessed with the Cholula and goat cheese pairing so of course this is a must.

That was our dinner, it was a great way to finish off a Monday because hello, it’s Monday and we need to make it better somehow haha.