Shadow and Flame with Magik

http://www.thepinningmama.com/easy-fajita-chicken-bake-recipe/

I was going to make another Fajita Chicken recipe but my wife knew there was a simpler version of it.  So I followed her advice and made the above recipe.  I take forever to cut or dice vegetables.  I like doing it, but I have to add 30 minutes to every prep time.

Instead of trimming the chicken breasts, I cut the chicken thighs into strips.  We were going to make fajitas, so we wanted to not have giant chunks of chicken in our wraps.

We, embarrassingly, were out of taco seasoning so my lovely wife looked up Taco Seasoning on Pinterest.  I settled on the one that said it was the equivalent of one packet of store bought taco seasoning.

http://www.nutritionwithnat.com/2013/09/favorite-taco-seasoning.html#.WZGy51V95hE

Whatever the recipe calls for, in the order it is listed in, is the order I pour the ingredients in.  Am I the only one who does it?  What is the alternative?  Unless it is a dry good and I’m pouring liquid onto it, then I go in that order.  Starting wet and putting the dry goods in later, never seems to get everything moist like it should be.

Once I poured the Cumin in, I knew it was going to taste mostly like Cumin – which it did.  I was just working off the image but now that I looked up the recipe (so I can get the link above for it) I see they offer to double up the chili powder – which I would have definitely done.  Gosh, I just printed it to make that change, and I see “1/2 T chili powder” I wonder if I did one teaspoon instead of one tablespoon.  Though, I do recall making sure I put a tablespoon on the counter, so I must have done that.  Cumin has such a strong smell, that I already knew it was going to overpower the other seasonings.  I looked at everything, and couldn’t figure out what would have given it that distinct taco seasoning taste.  I would have gone more pepper instead of chili powder but I knew that wasn’t right.  It still tasted good, it just didn’t taste anything like taco seasoning.  Looking for that recipe, my wife found a slew of other “Do It Yourself” seasonings that we might try out.

I cooked it for 40 minutes and that seem to be perfect, probably could have been done in 35.  There was this liquid at the bottom, I’m sure it was the moisture from the vegetables and probably even the chicken.  I drained that as best as I could, as there was a lot of it.  Not sure how to counter that, but that’s what happened to mine.  Done was the wiser, but I knew I had to drain it before we started spooning the contents into our burrito shells.

I also went with the Kraft Mexican blend of cheese, as Cheddar is nice but I prefer various cheeses to just one cheese, if I have an option.

. . .

I think I did master that breakfast potatoes recipe, so I probably get that uploaded this week sometime.

Where am I in my current shows?

I’m currently on The Girl Who Died episode of Doctor Who.

Our next episode of The Office is Season Two’s Christmas Party.  All I want to do, is work in dialogue from the Office or talk about a show that has been off the air for four years.  I kept thinking it was five or six years, but the show ended in 2013.  Nine seasons instead of the seven I thought it was.

I’m thinking of doing back-to-back episodes of Doctor Who and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as I’m on the second or third episode of the latter and should finish that episode.

No additional progress with Sherlock but I feel like Doctor Who and Sherlock, back-to-back, might be a bit much.

Turns out, we were completely out of the loop on Hollywood Game Night’s fifth season so we caught the first two episodes of that.  So far, so good – hard to mess up that show.  I do feel like there are only a handful of truly great episodes or segments but can’t really beat the pool of talent they draw from.

This weekend was mostly made up of watching Trolls and Sing with Trolls being watched twice, I believe.

I keep debating, once I finish Living Between Wednesdays, I sort of want to go back through Turtle Soup and compile a list of favorite moments – like I did for the Uncanny X-Cast.  I feel like I want to take on a giant project and I might end up with some additional free time soon.  By “soon” I mean in a few months, as I’m on episode 21 of LBW and there are a total of 104 episodes, so I”m doing it.  Its just slowly.  It is the only podcast, where I can’t hear it loud enough unless I have headphones on.  All of my other podcasts, I can turn the volume as high as possible, put my phone in my van’s cup holder and still hear it well.  I keep thinking that is going to change but it hasn’t.  So I mostly can listen to it at lunch and right before bed, if I’m not trying to work in the back catalog of Fighter and the Kid, which I’m tempted to give up on doing that.  Those episodes are so long.  Hey, does anyone listen to Mixed Mental Arts?  I saw they are on episode 270 (or so) and that’s another one, if I decide to give it a shot, that I’ll just listen to the current episodes forward.  I do enjoy me some Brian Cullen.

I thought I had one more television item but I can’t think of it.  The weekend went pretty fast, as it always does.