Le mieux blog dans le monde!

A couple of weeks ago, once Baby hit five weeks, I felt I could handle doing more around the house, including experimenting in the kitchen with new recipes. I use the website Allrecipes.com to find easy, tasty, and healthy recipes to make. Bev's Orange Chicken is quick and easy to make. And my biggest food critic--my husband--thought it very tasty!

Here is the recipe:

Bev's Orange Chicken

Prep Time: 5 min Cook Time: 1 Hr 30 minutes [original recipe; I cooked mine for 45 minutes, which was enough time for the internal temperature to be the USDA recommended 160 degrees F for cooking poultry]

Ingredients

* 1 cup orange juice
* 1 tablespoon soy sauce
* 1 (1 ounce) envelope dry onion soup mix
* 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, or to taste
* 8 chicken thighs [I used chicken boneless, skinless chicken breast]

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a small bowl, stir together the orange juice, soy sauce, onion soup mix and garlic powder; set aside. Rinse chicken, and pat dry. Place chicken thighs into a 9x13 inch glass baking dish. Pour the orange juice mixture over.
3. Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour and 30 minutes in the preheated oven, basting every half hour. If using boneless chicken, reduce cooking time to 1 hour.

Nutritional information: Calories: 180 | Total Fat: 9.9g | Cholesterol: 59mg

Rusty liked the chicken but couldn't really taste the orange. I even added a little extra orange juice. Of course, I could taste the orange but that may be because I knew it was one of the ingredients. The website offers comments and suggested alterations to the recipe including shortening the cooking time, which I'm glad I did. Had I cooked the chicken the full hour and a half, the chicken probably would have been dry.

Not sure who decided that dogs are man's best friend, but I really think more men enjoy monkeys. Men seem to instinctively think monkeys are quite funny and cute, more so than your average woman.

Today I caught part of a documentary called Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History by filmmaker Allison Argo. It focused on the use of chimps in various forms of entertainment, as pets, and for research. Chimps used in movies lose their star appeal by about age 9, when they are no longer considered cute (chimps can live to be 40 years old). Chimps used in the circus often have their teeth removed and are given away once they are too strong for the circus workers to control, which is also the case with people who take on chimps as pets and realize that their strength is too much to handle. The chimps in these three scenarios are often sold to research labs, where they are isolated in cages and given various diseases to test vaccines and drugs to treat human ailments.

There are actually chimp sanctuaries in the U.S. and Canada for chimps who outgrow their uses in the above roles. These facilities have caring workers who soon learn that each chimp has its own personality and past to deal with. These primates may be scarred from losing their loved ones, from being isolated, or abused. They can form attachments to the humans that care for them, which is very touching. I also thought it funny that chimps eat similar food to humans (including fruits, vegetables, ice cream, pizza, etc), sleep with pillows and blankets, and may enjoy wearing clothing and being reminded of their past lives. These sanctuaries try to provide a little bit of freedom for these animals that have lived in captivity and could not survive being put back into the wild. These caretakers and facilities are to be commended for taking in these animals who have been stolen from their natural habitat and forced into unnatural circumstances.

I would like to visit one of these sanctuaries and observe these intelligent animals. If they were not wild animals, I could see the appeal for having a chimp as a pet.