My son and soon to be daughter-in-law had their wedding shower today. My contribution was to make Hawaiian Chicken - which I've never made in my life. Oh good.
I looked at several different recipes and zeroed in on this one. Here is the link to the actual recipe:
https://www.spendwithpennies.com/hawaiian-chicken/
In order to have enough, I quintupled this recipe - which turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. For one, cutting up ten pounds of chicken breast into small chunks was no small task.
Then came the yellow, red, and orange peppers. ~sigh~ I went to the store and actually bought only six of these, thinking it would be enough. I don't know. I have no idea what I could have been thinking. So, yeah. Nope! Diced, they only added up to four cups. I needed TEN. And the grocery store is 25 minutes away. Argh. So! Light bulb moment - I considered supplementing them with green peppers from my garden. My Voice O' Reason, aka Gregg, pointed out since OTHER people were going to be eating this, me monkeying with the recipe (again) was not such a great idea. So. Back to the store I went and bought 9 more peppers. 🙄
As for the pineapple, the quintupled recipe called for five fresh pineapples, diced. I know less than nothing about fresh pineapples. So. I did what I usually do - and altered the recipe (don't tell Gregg). I bought ten cans of pineapple chunks in pineapple juice (no sugar), figuring two cans would equal about one pineapple. I had nothing to base this on. LOL! I opened the cans, drained the juice, and that was that. It actually turned out fine. Woot!
Next came the sauce. It included soy sauce, brown sugar, rice vinegar (had to go to two stores to find), ground ginger, barbecue sauce, pineapple juice (saved from the cans), and minced garlic. For the minced garlic I used this garlic paste that came in a tube. I have no idea if minced and paste measure the same, so, once again. I guessed. (Is Gregg reading this?) I did have a fleeting thought of "Those poor people..." Meaning the ones that would be eating this, as by now the changes to the recipe were beginning to add up. Anyway, I was supposed to use five tablespoons of minced garlic. I ended up using four tablespoons of garlic paste. I don't know. It seemed to work.
After running back and forth to the store, chopping up mounds of peppers, and mixing the hopefully will work sauce, it was now taking a long time to cook all this chicken! Chicken, by the way, that was supposed to have some sort of golden brown crust to it. Nnnope! But I digress. In any event, I was beginning to panic. Shocker. 3 p.m. was looming, and I had to leave by 4. The chicken had no golden crust and - oh well.
I still had to put all the baby poultry in their pens (oh, did I mention THAT?), finish cooking everything, get dressed, and fix my hair. I took a break and got the babies in, then got back to cooking.
At this point, the no golden crust chicken was cooked but the recipe was still un-assembled, as I couldn't figure out what I was going to use to combine it all in. I was surrounded by big bowls filled with large amounts and thought - how? I finally decided to use my giant stock pot (the one I burn everything on the bottom of) to combine it all. I simmered it as long as I could (it didn't burn! Yay!) then pulled out my crock pot and transferred all that would fit into it. I put the rest in a lidded two quart glass container. Done!
Gregg and Rebekah thankfully packed everything up for me while I got cleaned up, changed, and fixed my hair. We all made it with time to spare to the shower, and I have to say the Hawaiian Chicken was truly a hit. Someone else brought a huge thing of coconut rice which was delicious with it. I'll have to get their recipe!
The shower went well and was oh so very sweet. We got home long after dark at which point I went hunting for my turkeys - which I found relatively quickly. Shew! Likewise my layers had put themselves to bed, though their door was of course still open. Thankfully the multitude of chicken (and turkey) loving varmints that reside here had not beaten me to it.
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