Another September Recipe: Chicken with Quinoa with Veggies

I managed to squeeze in another new recipe for September. This must not be a good month for my cooking skills because it turned out a bit mediocre again. The upside is that I have some ideas on how to change things up for the next time around! I used a recipe I found via an Allrecipes daily email (link). I seem to always bookmark recipes from their emails but never get around to them. I decided that it was time to change that, so I went for this quinoa recipe. 

For the veggies I used: onion, bell pepper, zucchini, and mushrooms. I like that the recipe can be so easily modified to include all your favorite veggies. This is what it ended up looking like: 

So for the first "round" in the frying pan, I put in the onions, garlic, and chicken as instructed. The second round was the bell peppers, zucchini, and mushrooms as pictured below:

And then mixed all together!

The recipe was pretty easy to follow, but here are a few things to remind myself what to change up for next time:

1. The quinoa was too salty because of the chicken broth. Next time, I'll probably try either low sodium chicken broth or do a half water half broth sort of thing.

2. Cut chicken into smaller pieces and cook less. It was a bit dry because I was trying to make sure that they were cooked all the way through.

3. Omit feta. I do love feta, but on this dish, each bite that had feta was just extra salty. I'd rather just evenly salt the veggies and leave it at that.

All in all, it wasn't the most tasty dish this time around, but I have high hopes for the next attempt. Besides, I still have a bunch of quinoa lying around, so I gotta do something with it, right?

-jennkay

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September Recipe: Baked Avocado (Fail?)

September has been a hectic week for me. Toward the beginning of the month, I moved across the country from Boston to the Bay Area in California. But before that, there were some issues during which I felt like a homeless drifter for about a week jumping from friend's house to airbnb places and back around Boston & Cambridge. Anyway, I'm finally somewhat settled in California now. I even drove all the way down to LA a couple days ago to drop my brother off at college (aww, sad). I'm actually relieved to have fit in a September recipe at all with all this moving about. It's a simple recipe and I think I messed up, but it's the effort that counts, right? 

I can't remember exactly how I came across this recipe since I'm always on the internet anyway, but I saw this recipe for avocado baked with an egg on What Should I Eat for Breakfast (link). It just looked so simple and so delicious that I had to try it out.

Now, I will confess that this is pretty much a failed attempt. But there's hope because I was just being an idiot about simple things. First mistake: I cut the avocado into very uneven halves. Oh well. I do think I made the right move by putting the avocados into a madeleine pan since I didn't have a small baking dish to keep them from tipping over. 

Second mistake: Celsius versus Fahrenheit. So simple, so stupid. The recipe calls for 180 degrees C, but I spaced and set it to 180 degrees F. Of course, the avocado egg combo just sat there being slightly warmed. When I realized the whites weren't coming together, I figured it out and raised the temperature.

Which brings me to mistake #3: Baked too long! I lost track of timing after the temperature fiasco, so I let it sit in the oven for too long. The egg was therefore overcooked. Oh well, I don't like runny eggs that much anyway.

The fourth wrong thing was not entirely my fault. The avocado was not quite ripe, so there was some bitterness. Despite all these faults and mistakes, it didn't taste too bad! I liked how the baked avocado was kind of like a baked potato. I definitely will be trying baked avocados again soon. Now that I know some mistakes to avoid, maybe I'll go for something fancier than just avocado and egg. I'll be sure to post an update when I do!

-jennkay

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