Cantonese ginger sauce

I have had different kinds of Chinese dishes. Except for the volume, I never liked Chinese food around campus. After going to some good Chinese restaurants and tasting home-made Chinese food, I know why. It was the difference between real Chinese and American Chinese, lol. One of my favorite style is Cantonese! I still haven't researched enough to say much about it but I know several Cantonese dishes I love. One of them is the Cantonese ginger sauce. You don't really need an exact recipe. Just mix up some oil with chopped ginger and scallions, and sprincle some salt. It is one of the BEST dipping sauces for chicken. You can dip anything other than chicken if you like.

Suggestions of others

I am not very good at expanding my food horizons. I am somewhat of a picky eater, so it's hard for me to walk into a restaurant and pick something random on the menu to try something new. In the cases where I really want something new, I depend on recommendations of others. Saturday was that sort of day. I went to a Chinese restaurant near my work that is decent (it's hard to beat Yau's and Joy's.) But I didn't want the same old stuff I usually get. The menu at this place is actually very small, but there are many things I hadn't had yet. Nothing really stood out to me as something to try though, so I asked the person who worked there to pick something for me.

I have discovered that this is actually an interesting thing to do, because obviously people working there won't expect it. I was kind of worried about asking because I don't want to put people on the spot with that sort of thing, but I had had conversations with this particular worker before and felt a little more comfortable asking her. In the end, she suggested Chinese-style kung pao chicken. It was great, and distinctively different from the American-style. This actually opened a whole new idea to me, I had never thought of asking for Chinese-style versions of dishes at restaurants before. I think I will do it more often! Of course I need to find out which dishes actually have a Chinese-style first.

Blackened chicken

It's always a treat to find a great deal on food. The other night at Kroger, I found these huge boneless chicken breasts for under two dollars! I wish I had bought the other two, because when I came back the next day the price had tripled. I'm guessing they were marked wrong, but their mistake is my tasty meat! I don't have anything fancy to cook with, or lots of spices, so I decided to grab some blackening powder and have blackened chicken. Cooking with blackening powder is always an adventure in my new apartment because it makes a lot of smoke and I have very sensitive smoke alarms. I'm glad I am friends with my neighbor or else she might get angry at my 2am smoke alarm cooking. Usually turning on the stove fan, and the furnace fan is enough to keep the detector at bay.

The chicken turned out amazing, and was eaten too fast to even take a full picture of it completed! I made potatoes and corn to go with it. The corn was nothing special, but the potatoes were great and I have a whole post planned to honor them. I dare you to look at the pictures and not be hungry!

Yakitori more like yummytori

Last night was our JSO welcome BBQ, and obviously with a name like that there's food involved. This is my favorite thing about JSO, no matter where we go, or what we do, we must eat! I didn't actually make these, Rika did them all the night before, but I did get to cook them! They were even more tasty than they looked.