What Did The Connollys Have For Dinner Last Night? General Tso's Chicken! Pomegranate!

Because "What's for dinner?" is the most important question most of us answer every day.


Last Night: General Tso's Chicken! Pomegranate!
My bro sent me this online recipe and it turned out to be both easy and fun for the whole fam. I, of course, always enjoy creating Dishes That Don't Seem Like You Should Be Able To Make Them At Home and Oliver and Max liked the sweetness of this and also the broccoli. (For all the talk of kids not eating broccoli, it's one of the things ours will both reliably eat.) I served this with white rice and we had a pomegranate for dessert. I must say, although I consider the pomegranate to be one of the great underachievers of the fruit kingdom, watching your kid eat his first one is pretty heady stuff! We even developed a method of popping the kernels in Max's mouth so he could join the fun.

I followed the recipe here almost exactly with the exception that I used cut out the hot peppers (for the boys) and used chicken breasts I had in the fridge in place of thighs. I pretty much always buy whole chickens at CostCo and cut them up myself. This saves us--and I'm guessing here--about $3 million dollars a year. The savings derives from the fact that I can get three or four meals from a single chicken: one using the dark meat pieces; one from the breasts; and then a dozen or so uses of the stock from the bones and leftovers. I admit I'm a little spooked by the fact that we, as a society, can now raise, kill, clean, prep, package and ship a chicken that costs consumers under $2.50, but I find it helps if you think of "chickens" as vegetables.

The sauce in this recipe is simpler and less syrupy than what you'd get from your local bulletproof Chinese place and that's a big improvement.