Semi-Homemade Spicy Orange Chicken Recipe

Estimated reading time for this post: 2 minute 49 seconds. Read it Later?

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

Sauce: (this recipe has been halved since I only serve two people)
1 ½ cups water
4 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/3 cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 cup packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
½ teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons chopped green onion
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water

Chicken:

Tyson Buffalo Style Popcorn Chicken Bites® (try regular if you don't like it spicy)

Added Fun-ness:
Frozen Peppers (I chop mine a little, but that is entirely preference)
Baby Carrots (julienned & boiled with the rice. Julienne cut carrots cook faster.)

Oh yeah, you'll want RICE with this dish since the sauce is awesome. I use the Uncle Dan’s® Boil-in-a-Bag® brand but I have used regular Minute Rice and boiling the carrots with it, didn't seem to affect how the rice turned out.  Of course, I likely over cook my rice anyhow. Gourmet, I ain’t!

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place the popcorn chicken on a cookie sheet and follow the cooking directions on the bag. So, in my case, I would put half a bag of the popcorn chicken on the sheet and cook them for 10 - 12 minutes. That should be enough for three people.

2. Grab a pot and boil your rice and julienned carrots, this works for me because the Uncle Ben's Boil-in-a-Bag takes like 10-12 minutes. Depending on the rice you choose, you may have to cook your carrots some other way or leave them out. (You can steam them in the Micro.)

3. NOW, while you have a second, start making the sauce. Pour 1 1/2 cups water, orange juice, lemon juice, rice vinegar, and soy sauce into a saucepan and set over medium-high heat. Stir in the orange zest, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, chopped onion, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Mix together the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water separately then stir water/cornstarch mixture into the sauce.

4. Reduce heat to medium low, fish out your carrots and add them and the peppers and simmer, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. (I go until the peppers look done.) The sauce thickens as it cools but you can add more cornstarch... not that I would recommend this, especially if you want to eat leftovers that don't look like jell-o.

5. Now while you were making the sauce, the Chicken and the Rice should have finished cooking. Perhaps the Chicken may have even cooled. You can add the piping hot sauce to the chicken and everything should warm back up.

I tweak my recipes nearly every time I make them. This recipe is a foundation to build on and make changes to so feel free to make them and leave them below as comments. I would love to hear how you have improved upon this.

Thanks!

2 Minute Book Review: For One More Day

Estimated reading time for this post: 2 minute 17 seconds. Read it Later?

Book: For One More Day
Author: Mitch Albom
Audio book read by: Mitch Albom

I usually try to steer clear from those melodramatic, tear-jerker best sellers because they are usually so predictable. You know the ones, they are written by authors with names like Sparks, Picoult, Hosseini, and Niffenegger. Somehow these books always end up on my checkout list from the local library. The public has a love affair with sad stories that may or may not even be realistic. These authors have the magic equation of 1 parts believable or relatable characters, 2 parts absorbing story, and 3 parts sentimentality.

That said, I just finished one of these stories, having been sucked in by a Mitch Albom book. He is just about the king of sentimentality, and I am not certain he has written a story yet that wasn’t a about the sad yet life affirming event of death, or at least one that was popular.

(I do get tired of seeing all of his books say, on the cover no less, “Author of Tuesdays with Morrie.” If he hasn’t made buckets and buckets full of money on his other books yet, they he’ll never be considered a Best Selling Author.)

Anyway, this book was called ‘For One More Day,” and I would have to say that the title says it all. You know things are going to get sad when you only have one more day. Needless to say, I knew what I was getting into with this one.

I was surprised only once in the entire story and it was at the very end. I won’t give it away, but it’s safe to say the story was about a man, spending one more day with his mother. Sort of a “do-over” the main character gets to be with his deceased mother for a single day, learning valuable truths and lessons about life and his mother’s biggest secrets.

The story held my attention, but I am a sucker for stories about families that have been split by divorce, coming from one myself. It was a short listen (Audiobook) and I was only left with one question when the book was complete. I’d say that is pretty good, all things considered. The story turned a little preachy, like most of his books usually do, and there were the standard quotable inspirational lines.I can't say that I gained any insight into my own mother but there were a few moments where I could relate, but I have a sneaking suspicion this is all part of his formula.

My final analysis of this book is that was not terrible, and I appreciated a little change-up in the ending. Would I recommend it? Probably. Would I go out of my way to tell people to read it? Probably not. For me, it was just OK. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for a mushy, meandering inspirational. My only defense is that I have a long commute and books on tape are better than the advertisements on the radio.

Feel free to leave me a comment. Maybe you actually LOVED this book and can't stand hearing anyone say something negative. Let me know.

Calculating Estimated READING Time for your Blog

Estimated reading time for this post: 2 minute 17 seconds. Read it Later?

It is nearly impossible to find a direct calculation method for determining reading time for a piece of writing. This made me mad, and made my head hurt trying to figure it out myself. So I am going to post this on the web, where I can find it again the next time I need it. (I know I had it on a Post-it® somewhere around here….) So here is how I estimate the reading time for my blog posts. This is specifically for my web articles but technically this could be used for any piece of writing.

Accepted average for words per minute that an average person reads:     200-250 wpm

Armed with this knowledge I give readers the benefit of distraction and possibly their sleepiness level. I use 200 wpm to do my calculations. If you read faster, then that is great. If not, then this is sufficiently low, as any lower and I would recommend Tim Ferriss’ PX Project for training to read faster.

So here are the numbers you will have to come up with:

• Choose an appropriate average wpm count for your reading audience. (On my work blog I use 250 because our audience is normally Graduate Engineers with Masters degrees or higher. For this example however, I will be using 200 WPM.)
• Total Word Count for the document/article/piece of writing

This blog entry has 455 words. Trust me, it does. So let’s use that as a word count. Here is your first equation.

455 tw / 200 wpm = 2.275 minutes

tw = total words
wpm = words per minute (average)

Now that’s all fine and dandy but what is .275 minutes? It’s not 28 seconds! So here is the last step to get the number into a for that makes a little more sense. Take that decimal part, .275 minutes, and multiply that by 60 because that is how many seconds are in 1 minute.

So:

0.275 minutes x 60 = 16.5 seconds

Since this is a decimal I would just round up and say 17 seconds. If you were incredible anal and thought milliseconds on the ESTIMATED reading time really mattered, you could do more. I, however, will go no further.

So here is the math equations in its entirety and the formatted solution.

(# of Total Words) / (Average WPM) = Reading time in Minutes

455 / 200 = 2.275

Take and remaining Decimal from the “Reading Time in Minutes” answer and multiply that by 60 to get your Seconds.

0.275 x 60 = 16.5

2 Minute 17 seconds to read this article. 

(Of course I include the disclaimer that this time is Estimated. ;)