Christina Cooks: Buffalo chicken strips

Posted by Gypsy on Mar 31, 2009

As anyone from Western New York knows, buffalo chicken wings are one of the best inventions on the planet. Deep friend wings plus a yummy hot sauce plus ranch dressing is a meal made in heaven. Unfortunately, without a deep fryer, chicken wings are a lot harder to make. Instead I made this fun variation that uses boneless chicken breast tenders.

Ingredients:

1 lb boneless chicken breast tenders
1.5 - 2 cups bread crumbs
2 eggs
3 tbs extra virgin olive oil
Frank’s RedHot Buffalo Wing sauce (it’s not too spicy but can be made hotter with tabasco sauce)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs in a bowl. Put bread crumbs into a second bowl. Dip chicken into eggs and then coat with the bread crumbs.
2. Heat EVOO in a pan until it’s about simmering. Cook chicken in pan for two minutes on each side. This won’t cook them completely through. It’s just to create a light breading around the chicken.
3. Place chicken onto cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes in oven.
4. Place on plate, coat with buffalo wing sauce and serve with your favorite dipping sauce.

Edit: So Kristen was bitching that I didn’t have any photos of them eating this awesome meal. So here you are: Allan, Kristen and Andy chomping down on my awesome Buffalo Chicken Strips.

Christina Cooks: A birthday cake for Charles

Posted by Gypsy on Mar 16, 2009

I really wish I could’ve gotten photos of the cake-baking process as it was the craziest thing to happen to my kitchen since we’ve moved in. A checkerboard cake requires two different colors of cake poured into cake pans with a separator nested in them. I chose to use a white cake mix and a strawberry cake mix. To pour the batters is difficult with just one person, so a second person is handy to hold it down and make sure the batters don’t mix on the bottom. This is where Kristen’s help came in handy. Once the batters are poured, the goal is to quickly remove the divider without so the colors don’t swirl together. That part turned out to be the easy part. The pouring not so much and Kristen and I both ended up with cake batter-covered hands. This really wasn’t a bad thing.

Unfortunately, the cooking process negated some of our hard work. The strawberry batter rose a little more than the white, expanding those parts into the white a little. So our perfect checkerboard pattern wasn’t so perfect. Upon reflection, it dawned on me that white batter only uses egg whites rather than the whole eggs, which would prevent it from rising as much.

Regardless, it turned out wonderful. I frosted it with vanilla whipped frosting and topped it with some fresh strawberries. And even thought the insides didn’t look like squares, it was still damn yummy to eat.

I got in!!!

Posted by Gypsy on Mar 13, 2009

I’ve been a little lacking on blogging lately. Things have been pretty hectic with me finishing up my last couple requirements for my bachelor’s degree. But last night, as of 10 p.m., that nightmare is officially over.

Then today, at 3 p.m., I found out the next nightmare will be officially starting this summer. I’ve been accepted into the M.B.A. program at my current school. I’m a little scared, but that doesn’t come close to comparing to my excitement at not only finishing one degree but having the opportunity to continue on to the next. Let’s just hope my brain can handle another two years of this.