More cooking—a new-to-me recipe

This was so good I had to share.

I know when the Hubs retires at the end of this month, he will take over the primary cooking duties—yay! That means more time for quilting! But I’m still it for the next 27 days, and I tried a new recipe Thursday night. It’s a lot of prep work—in fact, the prepping takes longer than the cooking. That will typically turn me off from trying the recipe, but let me tell you my thought process on this.

Over 30 years ago and before I became a federal government employee, I worked for a law firm that consisted of three people: Tripp, Mary Jane and me. Tripp and Mary Jane were the lawyers, and I was the paralegal and office manager. We had other co-workers every now and then but for the most part, it was the three of us. 

We would shut down the office and go to lunch. At least every other week we would go to a Chinese restaurant in Park Plaza mall—Forbidden City—and had the most wonderful kung pao chicken I have ever had. I never ordered any other dish. Any time I would go to any other Chinese restaurant, I would order the same dish and I was disappointed. It wasn’t that it didn’t taste good, it just wasn’t what I loved at Forbidden City. Fast forward a few years to when I went to work for the federal government for which my office was too far away to have lunch with only 30 minutes to do it and, eventually, Forbidden City closed. It reopened in another location, under the name of Forbidden Garden, even farther west from the downtown area and I eventually forgot it I existed. A few years ago I learned that it had again moved even farther west, but I talked the Hubs into going one evening for dinner and there it was, the kung pao chicken I loved so much. I was a happy girl. Now it is an approximately 45-minute drive from our home, so we haven’t been there in a while. 

So I have been reviewing lots of recipes in the last five months. I subscribe to several cooking sites, and one email from Serious Eats snagged my attention with this recipe: Takeout-Style Kung Pao Chicken.

It was delicious, but I’ll be doubling the sauce amounts. Hubs made fried rice and I was in Heaven. It was worth all the prep. If I can find more recipes like this to where I would never have to order takeout Chinese food again, I would be thrilled. Here’s ours (no filters):

I promise this is not turning into a food blog. But I wanted to share with you the recipes I have made in the last five months that we have really enjoyed.

This past week has been full of activity—trips to quilt shops, collecting Ani, my Brother Luminaire from her first spa day (actually, just over a week), starting a secret project, making and sewing down a sleeve on the Tattoo quilt, printing and taping together a pattern for a top for me (!), helping Hubs with a planting project, dog training class—busy! But this coming week I’m on fire to quilt the Cabanas quilt, finish plotting the pattern for the secret project, cut out that top and, maybe, start hand stitching the binding on the Tattoo quilt. So stay tuned, and in the meantime, go make!