http://www.food.com/recipe/loaded-baked-potato-chicken-casserole-505862
I completely forgot, again!, that I was taking pictures of Sunday Dinners for this blog! So that’s a picture of Walker Dennis’ uneaten serving.
I had misgivings of baking it at 5oo degrees, like the recipe required. If I know why food had to be baked at certain times or what ingredients do recipes, like the science of it all, I could probably be better at cooking instead of learning by experience.
What I’m getting at is, the potatoes were baked way to long. Next time, I’ll bake the potatoes for 30 minutes, stirring them every ten minutes, instead of every 15 minutes for 45 minutes.
I will also cut down the chicken baking for 12 minutes and modify that to six minutes. That’s what I should have done last night, but I went against my better judgment and my instincts. I think I’m at the point now when I have to trust my cooking instincts. The potatoes around the edges were pretty badly burnt but there were some in the middle that were pretty tasty. This entire meal had a pretty nice spice to it. I figured it was going to with the three tablespoons of hot sauce, I went with Cholulua brand of hot sauce. It was that or Tabasco but I prefer Cholulua, myself.
It was a very tasty meal, I just wish the potatoes stood a chance. By the time the recipe called for cheese, bacon and green onions, my family was getting pretty hungry so I only cooked that section for three minutes instead of the four I was going to, for the 3 – 5 minutes requirement.
Heck, as far as I know, the potatoes were probably ready at the 30 minute mark.
I’m still not great at frying bacon, I think I just don’t have the patience for it, as it starts popping and I need to put salt down or something to prevent that from happening so I can get the bacon as crispy as we prefer. So I went with the Oscar Meyer microwaveable bacon. I prefer cooking with their bacon bits but my wife wanted to make sandwiches with the remaining bacon – which I completely support.
Which meant the chicken didn’t get to cook in the bacon grease, but again, I’m not sure if that meant it wouldn’t have been so spicy or does that mean it would have been as spicy but with that delicious bacon flavoring. I don’t think it needed that.
I also only went with six potatoes so I could keep five potatoes for breakfast this upcoming weekend. I’m hoping the potatoes last that long. I should post that recipe, once I have it mastered, as I keep modifying it. My wife is a big fan of fried potatoes and instead of buying the Ore-Ida Potatoes O’Brien, I’ve been trying to make my own. It was pretty good last time but I keep modifying times and such. Expect that one, one of these days. I was making it every weekend, for three weeks, but our schedule didn’t permit it for this last one.
. . .
I got some of my own television watching in this weekend, which I couldn’t believe. So I’m trying to learn more about Jodi Whittaker, the future 13th Doctor, and caught the first episode of ABC’s The Assets. I was going down a Wikipedia spiral that landed me on the cases of Aldrich Ames (the CIA double agent for the Soviets) and a slew of other spies such as Robert Hanssen, the FBI version of Ames, and subject of the film, Breach. So my two interests align – which is always fun when that happens.
I then watched the first episode of Broadchurch, well, up to the point where Tennant and Whittaker have their first scene together. My wife and I had watched this episode, months ago, when we wanted to compare Gracepoint and Broadchurch, as she had watched the entire season of Gracepoint. I knew Tennant was in both, so I thought it would be a fun exercise to see how different they were. She thought it was a pretty straight forward adaption of the pilot episode. So she didn’t need to watch the rest of Broadchurch. I opted to watch more of Broadchuch, but never came around to it.
I had to stop right then, as I realized I still haven’t finished The Empty Hearse episode of Sherlock, so I went back and finished that one. I’m sure the months in-between viewings hurt it, as it started off so strong but the case seemed to wrapped up so easily. I’m not sure when I will get around to watching the rest of the series – probably after I finish Doctor Who Season Nine.
Which, I was able to watch Episode 2, Witch’s Familiar. Apparently I was more than half way through the episode, which I didn’t remember that so I wasted some time watching that section again. I’m excited to watch the next episode about the underwater base and the ghosts.
I’m really going to miss Jenna Coleman when she’s no longer on this show. I know it is coming, just not sure when. I see Amazon has season ten but I rather not have to pay for it, so I have to track when that happens. It’ll be nice if it happens by the time I finish season nine.
So Doctor Who Season Nine, Sherlock Season Three and Assets – are the shows I have to finish.
We also got another episode of Person of Interest’s final season under our belts, I think we are nine more before that’s over and we’re two away from finishing Daredevil Season Two. So we’re doing it. Slowly but progress is happening. We’re also now on season two of The Office, which is fun finally delving into that show.
Oh, and I saw that Sing film, as of course, we have time to watch children films. I saw Sing and Moana, for the first time. My family had seen it already, fully, but this was my first time seeing it straight though. Now it is Monday and I got various clips of songs playing in my head. Mostly the chorus lines.
I picked out Jemaine Clement’s voice, so quickly, and I wish the Rock had done a voice for the film, like an accent or something, as for the first 30 minutes of Maui, I kept thinking about Dwayne Johnson in the recording booth. But one doesn’t hire Dwayne Johnson and then have him do an unrecognizable version of his voice. Clement had some change done to his voice, it wasn’t until he started to sing that I recognized him.
Not a bad weekend, at all, really. Wish dinner was a larger success but I have plans to make it again but with my modifications.
We also got our family portrait done, for our church’s directory, and our son was all smiles. Which we knew he would be, as that kid loves saying “cheese” and smiling big when we ask him for “big smiles” so it went quickly.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 