January Recipe

For January, I went Asian. Dakota and Alexsei had been begging for orange chicken. (They love the stuff from Panda Express.) And Dakota wanted Pad Thai.

I scoured the internet for recipes and looking at several different ones, found one for orange chicken and one for pad thai that I thought would work. On January 6, I began the Part 1 of my January New Year's resolution. I had shopped for ingredients at HyVee and didn't find exactly what I needed so I decided to make do. When Alexsei saw the canned bean sprouts I purchased for the pad thai, she made the disgusted face and suggested skipping that ingredient. So I did.

The recipe included a great deal of prep. Asian food always does. Lots of chopping. I also made Asian inspired mushrooms and asparagus so that was more prep. Cutting mushrooms and snapping asparagus stems.

Coating and frying the chicken in the wok was extremely time consuming, and I made a lot because leftovers are always good. I kept it warm in the oven while I worked on the pad thai (I also doubled that  recipe.). When things got crazy, Alexsei made the orange sauce, because stir frying the pad thai was constant work.

Got the vegetables in the oven. Everything was ready and then the plating began.

This is what the final product looked like.

Reviews:
Glen loved everything.
I loved everything.
Dakota loved everything but the asparagus. He especially loved the mushrooms and would now like to try pad thai in a restaurant. He also spiced it up with hot pepper flakes. A boy after my heart!
Alexsei liked everything especially the orange chicken. She also thought the pad thai was a bit too spicy.
Savana liked the orange chicken and the vegetables. She thought the pad thai was too spicy. She was very fond of the mushrooms.
Alaric didn't like anything.

Alexsei and Dakota have already requested that I make orange chicken again. I will. Just not as much. But it will be a recipe in our new cycle. I always like finding something new to add into the rotation.

These are the recipes.

Pad Thai
I could not find tamarind so I went with the change on the recipe. I thought it was too limey so I would add less next time. I also did not put in the canned bean sprouts. I would like to find fresh bean sprouts.

Orange Chicken
I followed this recipe exactly, but I doubled the recipe. It took a long time to cook all that chicken!

For the asparagus and mushrooms, I used baby asparagus and button mushrooms. I cut the stems off the mushrooms. (When I remade the mushrooms, I cut them in thirds.) I tossed the mushrooms and asparagus in soy sauce, olive oil, garlic (2 minced cloves), salt and pepper. I roasted them at 425 for 10-15 minutes.