Oniony Chicken, asparagus and brown rice

The Meal:
I decided to try a new recipe. It's the recipe on the side of the French's French Fried Onions can for crispy coated chicken. It looked simple enough...beat an egg and dip the chicken in then roll the chicken in the onion pieces that you've crushed up in a zip top bag...so I did this. It says to press firmly to adhere the onion bits onto the chicken...well, I pressed as hard as I could and those bits weren't sticking in a thick coating like in the picture. But anyway, it tased pretty good. I cut up about 3 chicken breasts into strips and then coated them. The coating on the bottom never got crispy though. I sauted some fresh asparagus in a little olive oil and garlic which was very yummy (probably the best part of the meal) and made soem brown rice.

The Result:
Keep, but needs to be tweaked...not sure how to get more onion bits to stick...will have to work on this!

Baked Ziti

The Meal:
Tonight I'm making baked Ziti. I need to use up some various tomato sauces in the fridge and some ricotta before it goes bad. Plus I'll make a salad. Here's what I did:

Boil 8 oz of Ziti until al dente. Drain and return to pot then mix in 1 jar of pasta sauce (mine was half a jar of vodka sauce and half a jar of chunky marinera that had about 1/4 lb of ground beef already mixed in...like I said, leftovers) and about 15 oz of ricotta. MIx until combined, dump in a 9x13inch pan top with shredded mozzerella and some grated parmesan. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes...everything in there is already cooked, so it's just a matter of heating it through and melting the cheese.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

The Meal:
Being St. Patty's day and everything, I decided to make corned beef. When we were picking up the beef at the store, my husband suggested that I could corn the beef my self...ummmm no thanks (but, if you'd like to try it yourself, here's a recipe from Alton Brown)...so we bought the pre-corned beef and it's now in my crock pot simmering away. I'm also gong to make some rolls from some frozen yeast dough I have hanging out in the freezer. I think the beef, carrots, cabbage and potatoes with the rolls will make a pretty rounded out meal. Here's what I did with the corned beef:

In the bottom of the crock pot layered the following:
4 potatoes cut in 8ths
1/2 a head of cabbage cut in 12ths (in 6 wedges and then once across)
a couple handfuls of baby carrots
1 white onion, sliced

Then I laid the corned beef on top and sprinkled the spice packet that came with it (I think it's probably a Tbsp of peppercorns and a couple bay leaves) and a couple forkfuls of prechopped garlic. Then I poured a bottle of beer (Dominion Ale is what I found in the fridge) and then a beer bottle full of water on top of it.

Put the lid on and I'm going to cook it on High until its time to eat...so about 8 hours.

The Result:
NOT a keeper
Hmmmm...not so good...the meat was ok (probably hard to screww that up), but the rest I did not like. My husband said he liked the potatoes and carrots, but the cabbage was overcooked. Oh well, I decided next year I am making Shepherd's Pie!