What I'm eating this week

I'm always leery when I find a recipe on Pinterest and others have labeled "best ever," however, I found a pad thai recipe recently that others raved about and decided to give it a try. I had seen others before, but this one was appealing due to the simplicity of the ingredients and the likelihood I'd have most on hand already. I was hoping it'd be at least comparable to what I get at my favorite local Thai place.

I did play with the recipe a bit of course. I mixed up a batch of sauce and put in a bit of chili garlic sauce for some heat. I used this as a marinade for a chicken breast that I sliced into thin strips. I let it hang out in the fridge for an hour or two while I worked on other things. Another addition I made was some sesame peanut tofu I came across while exploring my new, local Wegman's. (The stuff I order locally generally comes with both meat and tofu in it.)

The downside to this recipe was the amount of dishes involved. Cooking went fast, so everything had to be prepped and waiting it's turn. Thank goodness for dishwashers!

Cooking notes:
- I didn't measure the lime juice. I just squeezed a whole lime using my citrus press.
- Since I added extra ingredients, I did have to switch things up a bit in the cooking sequence. I dumped the chicken and it's marinade into the pan after removing the mostly scrambled eggs. After about 3 minutes of cooking/simmering I added in the noodles and an additional batch of sauce. I also tossed in the chopped up tofu here so it could warm through.
- My noodles took far longer than a minute to get soft. Maybe I didn't soak them long enough?
- I should have waited to add the green parts of the scallions. Since the noodles took longer to cook, they became very dark and wilted.
- I really really liked it with the double sauce.

Not as pretty a picture, but wow was this good!!!

Another great recipe I made recently was Skinnytaste's Baked Chicken Parmesan. This is a pretty straightforward recipe, so I didn't really make any changes to do. I haven't been able to find any whole wheat breadcrumbs so I used some Italian style Panko bread crumbs. This really gave the chicken a great crunch!

Bon Appetit!