Tonight we had Crockpot Sweet and Sour Chicken for dinner.
It was not great. Not sure if it was me or the recipe to blame!
I didn’t write down where I got the recipe, but I’ll share it here anyway!

Crockpot Sweet & Sour Chicken… EASY!

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 2 hours
Number of servings:
4

Ingredients:

• 1 – 1 1/2 pounds chicken, boneless, cut into one inch, bite-size pieces
• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 1 envelope Lipton Onion Soup Recipe Secrets mix

Directions:

• Mix the orange marmalade with the dry soup mix. Toss chicken pieces with marmalade mixture and place all in slow-cooker or crock pot for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (or longer) until chicken is cooked.
• Serve over cooked rice.

• *I like to double up on the marmalade & add in some grated carrot, onions,
• green pepper and about a teaspoon of thai chili sauce

First of all, the bottom notes were from the original recipe – not mine! And well, what happened with ours was, first of all, I didn’t plan ahead so the chicken was still frozen when we started. We couldn’t get it apart so we let it sit out for a while until my husband could get the pieces apart. Then we had to let it sit out longer so I could get a knife through to cut into pieces! Finally when that was all done I put the chicken in first – oops? Then added the marmalade and onion mix. However, I put a whole 18 oz jar of the marmalade in :p  I think that may have overpowered the onion mix making it too sweet and not sour enough (and really, to me, it was just kind of bland!)

Toward the end, my husband dumped in a bag of the frozen veggies I had prepared. I’m not sure a whole bag is what I wanted in there, but oh well. He also added water chestnuts – again, didn’t really want to add a whole can but I didn’t tell him until it was too late!!!

My husband also cooked some rice because, while I don’t care, he feels that a meal like this needs to be served on rice!

In the end, it looked pretty!

Allison really liked it as well! Check out how she’s chowing down in the background!!!

In other domestic news, yesterday I spent 8 hours at my in-laws house. We baked bread! It was so much fun! I’m getting the hang of it and I’m hoping to bake some of my own bread this week. The only trouble with baking bread, aside from the fact that it takes quite some time to actually do, is the fact that once it’s baked it’s only good for a few days! There are perks to the preservative filled grocery store bread – but it just doesn’t taste as good! (Mmm…. I’m thinking a turkey sandwich on my bread is in the cards for tonight!)

Anyway, I took some photos from the day to share!

Savana (my sister-in-law's BFF) making cinnamon bread! Spreading the butter around the dough with her hands. (She's a riot! She makes this face in nearly every photo!) Oh yeah, and that's my mother in law on the left.

Rolling up the cinnamon dough into a loaf. You have to be careful not to tear holes in the thin dough or risk your cinnamon spilling out! See the butter still coating her hands? That's used to slather around the outside of the bread after it is rolled up and "sealed" shut.

Jennifer (my sister-in-law) is scraping the sticky dough off the counter so that we can begin our next bread project!

One of the bread loaves that Jennifer made was Wild Rice. Looks like bugs to me! I didn't get a chance to try a slice of this bread. 😦

After the bread has spent about an hour rising comes the best part! Punching the dough! Because I'm such a nice mommy, I let Allison do the punching for me. Grandma helped her while I took the photo. (She was going for her second punch when I took this particular photo)

Ta-Da! Fresh bread! The left is basic white bread. On the right is my cinnamon bread. I went for the fancy "S" shape (literally, fold the dough into an S shape when you put it in the bread pan!) Because the kitchen was so warm and we were baking so much the dough rose an insane amount! So delish though! (Next time I plan on attempting to make braided cinnamon bread!)

In addition to the loaves of bread, my mother in law helped me make a batch of pizza dough and we made personal pizzas with home made sauce!

Yum! Here is my finished pizza! Because I like thick crust I used the smaller pan and made mine more of a deep dish pizza. It's mostly just cheese (Mozarella/provolone mix with a bit of cheddar.) The top section has a bit of green bell pepper and onion. It was soooo good now I want another.... Maybe we'll make pizzas for dinner again later this week!

And that was my day of bread! In the end I ended up with a loaf of white bread and a loaf of cinnamon. Jennifer had her wild rice bread as well as, I believe, Swedish Dill Bread. I wish I could have tried hers but I had to leave. Savana had a loaf of white and cinnamon. We all ended up with personal pizzas, most of Allison’s came home with us!

If you’re looking for a good book on bread making, the one I have that I purchased on the recommendation of my mother-in-law is:


There is another book simly titled “Bread” which is the exact same book, just with a different cover. You can find it here:

Until next time! 😉