March 5, 2010 by Chad.

Cooking for a family is definitely different than for just a couple. Where my spouse is at least game enough to try anything I choose to make, the kids on the other hand are never all that willing to try new things. I remember what it was like as a child. If we only ate what the kids liked then all of us would subsist on pizza, mac’n'cheese, and hot dogs for most meals. Make this your mantra when trying new things because they will love you more as they get older because you tried to expose them to the myriad of tastes that are possible in a world of eating. On to the crux of this post…

Earlier this week my son was lamenting that the chicken he was eating was a little firm and chewy for his tastes. It was cooked on the George Foreman  so it was pseudo grilled. That was understandable. Since there was a good special on chicken at the local grocery store, I had a fair amount of building material to make some more chicken meals. With my cookin’ mojo surging, I dived into some new recipes.

The Crock-Pot is a much maligned object in our house. Some old standards use it but nothing new. There was the focus of my search. It had to be cooked in the Crock-Pot. Slow cooker recipe books are a lot like most other recipe books. They are cluttered with items in the recipe, though intriguing, often do no appear in our kitchen. Who keeps dry tapioca around anyway?…err…wait, I have that. Anyway…on a whim, after paging through a couple books, I opened an old Crock-Pot owners manual from my last slow cooker(Rest it’s foodie soul, as it took a lethal header from the top cabinet down to the wood floor a few years ago). There in it’s nine poultry recipes was my target, Sweet’n'Spicy Glazed Chicken.

(Below is the recipe word for word from the Rival Crock-Pot Stoneware Slow Cooker manual)

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6 – 4oz skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1 Tbsp Oil

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth

2 Tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp cayenne pepper

¼ cornstarch

½ cup water

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken and brown on both sides. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Put in Crock-Pot. In a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except cornstarch and water. Pour over chicken. Cover; cook on Low 7 to 9 hours(High: 3 to 4 hours).

When done, remove chicken breasts and turn Crock-Pot to High; cover. Combine cornstarch and water. Stir into liquid in Crock-Pot. Place cover slightly ajar on Crock-Pot. Cook until thickened (15 to 30 minutes). 6 servings.

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Now, as anyone who enjoys cooking knows, a recipe is a guideline for culinary endeavors not a cardinal rule. Here is what I changed from it….

1. Cut the soy sauce down to 1/2 cup and substituted water with the other 1/2 cup. That was A LOT of soy sauce for taste. In fact, the recipe reports a sodium count of a staggering 1879mg as it is written. OUCH!

2. With no chicken broth in the house I took a can of chicken noodle soup and used the chicken broth from it with added water to account for 1 cup.

3. Substituted lime juice for lemon juice. Once again, this was out of necessity since I had one and not the other.

4. Rather than pre-cook the chicken I simply put it in the slow cooker raw. In four hours it was going to cook completely and I was aiming for moistness.

5. After cooking I cut the chicken up into small pieces, poured it into the thickened sauce, and served on a bed of white rice.

When I do this one again… and I will because it was yummy… I will consider adding pineapple and water chestnuts because with the soy sauce it has such an Asian feel and really needs something crunchy and tactile in it. Otherwise I would not change anything else. Very good and easy to make. Thank you, Rival Crock-Pot. I knew I kept that care manual for some reason.

Oh, and yes, I still had a little child insurrection but it was worth it.

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January 4, 2010 by Chad.

After nine years in the IT field I am embarking on a new and exciting direction. A direction that will help redefine who I am. A direction that will use my skills, talents, and personality more completely. What direction am I going? I have no idea but thanks to the immortal (and now deceased) George Harrison, I have this lyric to apply to my current state, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

I am standing at the precipice of the unknown and enlivened by the opportunity to engage in new challenges as of yet foreign to me. It is truly thrilling to me that I am given the choice to change directions after 12 years of serial employment, but the downside of all this is my lack of recent experience in hunting for employment. Consider the rust of 12 years a possible governor to my zeal, keeping me from engaging in the hunt as a veteran hunter rather than a relative novice. After all, that which we hunt is still the same animal but the tools and techniques have been augmented by the continued assimilation of technology into every facet of our lives. In other words, I need to relearn how to search for a job and what I am looking for. Remember if you don’t know where your going(don’t have a clue what you want) any road will take you there.

Well, this is of course a great way to re-engage my writing on this blog. For those who may be reading, I appeal to your experience, your knowledge, and your guidance. Like a good recipe, the outcome all depends on the journey taken to it not the attainment of the finished product. If you show little care to the process, then your outcome will surely be crap.

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October 12, 2009 by Chad.

So today Robin was sick at home with strep. Her big plan was to make it into town and get the oil changed in her car. Well, it got to the middle of the afternoon so I decided to take the car in myself so she could continue to sleep off her ills. We have been going to a place on Highway 10 that has a good multiple change deal for a decent price when changing her oil. I tend to take thew car to Snappy Lube Plus because I am loyal to a mechanic there. The crux of this short post is just that. What motivates a person to go to a place where they get the best price when they might get better service elsewhere?

The economy is not yet recovered but it goes to show the level of quality people are looking for when places like Walmart are making a ton of money. The oil change I paid for was from a place where I know the people who work there. Was it the cheapest? No. It doesn’t have to be. Would the other place have done it well enough too? Maybe.

I guess I just like doing business with people I know and not with nameless, faceless corporations that can mass buy product for the cheapest price possible. I say this, but I also won’t deny I shop at places like Cub Foods, Target, and Menards as well. In those cases it’s convenience…which is probably another issue with modern society. I am not trying to fix that problem today. I just wanted to get people thinking about who they do business with and why. If there was someone you could trust but had to charge more for their products or services, would you go there? That’s a loaded question, I know. So, give it some thought and let me know what you think. Jeff Haskamp is my mechanic and I am more than willing to pay a little more to have him look at it. I trust him. That means a lot to me.

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October 12, 2009 by Chad.

I will pull through all the reviews I have made over the years but I will probably jettison the remaining content for a clean start of it. We’ll have to see how much I am able to recreate. Unfortunately I will most likely not be inclined to re-download and link the pictures originally associated with the reviews. Though it may be convenient for readers, it really has less to do with necessity and more to do with fluff.

As I readjust everything, please have patience. The blog is still hosted by 1&1 and will still be a Word Press formatting. As Sherburne County Backroads will now have its own domain, ChadGroetsch.com  will likely become more of a project site for me to play with a few things.

If you are reading this, please register again new as I cannot keep the user list from the old hosting package.

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