College, cats, and chicken

Welcome to my blog about delicious awesomeness. I know there's a million other ones out there, but I wanted to create my own blogumentary, charting the roller coaster ride that is tasty, healthy(ish), and bitchin' cooking on a college-student budget and a less-than-million-dollar-home kitchen.

I guess I'm not technically a college student anymore, having burned out of grad school early in. Wrong field. Listen up, kiddies, you better know exactly what you want to do before starting grad school, cause it'll cost you (hello student loan repayment plans!). So I'm taking a bit to decide before starting the mental-mindmelt process again, and in the meantime, learning and having fun trying new things in the kitchen. My skills are rudimentary at best, but sometimes they work out. I have a brave and daring boyfriend who receives each plate with a smile, even though sometimes he should just bolt and run.

Well, I guess this wouldn't be a food blog without talking about food, now would it? I must apologize in advance, I am digital camera-less so I'll try to get decent shots from my Blackberry.

Last night I decided to grab that box of panko (pretty damn cheap, got mine at Smith's) and make some chicken. I'm super-paranoid about undercooking chicken, so i cut them up into smaller nugget pieces so they'd be less likely to be undercooked. Eggs beaten in a bowl, panko/parsley/parmesan in another. Taking a cue from The Yummy Mummy, I put the chicken pieces in the panko first, then into the egg, then back into the panko. This worked really well, I've done the egg first before and it was a crapshoot if the breadcrumbs would actually stay stuck or not. So after heating up the skillet with some EVOO (veg oil would work fine too, and it's cheaper), I put about five pieces in and let it go. Now, you would think I could just walk away for a few minutes......but there's something living in our house that consistently steals chicken.

Little Bitty Chicken Thief. (Her brother is the bacon-taker.) So here I am, walking around the house with a cutting board full of pankoed raw chicken, lest her little nose take her to the prize.

I let my first batch cook for about 7-8 minutes on each side. Bad idea. I ended up eating five burned-ass nuggets. The successive batches were watched until they were medium brown, then turned. So I'd love to give a definitive time for these, but my learning experience was just check them until you pin down the time that works for your stove and temperature. I'm using a gas stove and put the flames med/med-high, and it came out to about 5 mins per side. Anyway, the successful nuggets came out delicious, and we dunked them in spaghetti sauce and Grey Poupon.

This was one of my less adventurous attempts, but we had our anniversary the night before at he took me to the Melting Pot, a fabulous expensive fondue restaurant and we ate ourselves disgusting (not to mention the wine had us loopy after the first course). Anyhoo, these things are GREAT to make a whole bunch and keep around for snacking. (and yes, i snipped off 2 pieces of unadulterated chicken for the kittymeows.)