Quick tuna casserole (p.96) and Stir-fried garlic chicken (p. 439)

This is going to be a picture-less blog until I get home in two months and post the pictures! Sorry! I wasn't sure what to do with TJOTJOC for two months--I'm in Japan and am not really able to TJOC (I recognize that isn't a verb but I'm going to make it one!). So do I abandon it for two months? That doens't seem like a good idea. So I'm going to turn it into my Japan blog while I'm here! If you aren't interested, send me your email, and I'll let you know when I'm TJOC'ing again--or check back in August.

For the last blog before that happens...

I'm going to be leaving for two months and I have a terrible feeling that Josh is going to eat Hot Pockets and popcorn every day. I tried to protect against that by doing what any good Italian would do--making a huge pot of sauce and freezing it for him (not a TJOC sauce though--an actual Italian sauce :) ). I also made two other recipes.

Josh loves tuna, while it absolutely makes my stomach turn. In fact, I can't even handle the smell of tuna from a distance. It always amazes me that people could place something that smells like that into their mouths (then again, I use fish sauce, so maybe that doesn't make sense). I knew that there was a tuna casserole recipe in TJOC and that it probably made quite a bit. So I made Quick Tuna Casserole (p.96). The recipe is easy--dump tuna into a bowl, dump other stuff including an enormous amount of peas in, some cream of mushroom soup, and some cooked macaroni. I have a hard time cooking with elbow macaroni--it always seems like I should be doing crafts with it.

I knew that Josh liked to crush potato chips and put them on top, so I was glad that the casserole had a crust (breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese).

Cooking this was the best I could do. There was no way that I was eating it. So I only have secondhand knowledge of the taste. He said it was good but there were way too many peas in it. I had a bad feeling about that--it did seem that a disproportionate amount of peas were being included.

I also made Stir-Fried Garlic Chicken (p.439). I like garlic chicken when I'm at the Chinese restaurants. The recipe was easy...

EXCEPT...

You know, you should always read through a recipe before you start it. And I DID read through it. But I apparently misunderstood a vital part. In this recipe, you make a marinade and dump the chicken into it (no problem). Then you make a hoisan sauce mixture (no problem). But you still have a bunch of other ingredients. I thought I was supposed to mix them together.

I wasn't. So I have this bowl with chicken broth, snow peas, onions, garlic, ginger, and scallions all mixed and they aren't supposed to be. It totally reminded me of the Simpson's episode where Marge is "untossing" the salad before putting it in the refrigerator. So I pick out the pea pods and onions and put them in separate small bowls. I strain out the broth. But there is no way I can separate the garlic and ginger...no problem, they are added together. The scallions are just going to have to be ignored.

It was good! Seemed to have too much liquid but maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. I used thighs because I like meat to have flavor--but you could use chicken breast if you like your meat bland.