food and thoughts

I'd say the best thing about my dating experience last month was finding this new recipe that is AWESOME. He took me to this restaurant named Granite City, and I got Asian Chicken Salad and it was wonderful. I tried to recreate it last week based on this recipe I found online, it was pretty close, and super good.

First I marinated the chicken in pineapple juice, soy sauce, a bit of olive oil, and minced garlic. Then I made the salad base of shredded cabbage, romaine, cucumber, orange peppers, tomato, cilantro and carrot.

I bought this sauce because I didn't want to mess with all their ingredients in the recipe, and I stirred in some peanut butter

I made the lime and sesame dressing (altho I think I used plain oil) and I added some fresh ginger

I pan-fried the chicken its marinade

and then chopped it real thin like the restaurant did

Plopped it on the salad, and topped with the dressings. At the place they had the greens in the first dressing and the brown sauce swirled on top, but mine was too chunky with the pb, so I ended up just combining the 2 sauces and putting it on.

Oh my gosh, so good. Theirs was prettier and better, but mine was tasty too. I invited my friend Liz over to help eat some. And I got to make something good for her for once!

So this morning my mom called me and said she thinks she understands what he was talking about with the 'cynical' bit, at least with my humor: when we went up north last weekend mom and I were walking in to the rest area and I see a poster advertizing Flint as a tourist destination. (and all my MI peeps are like, whaaa??) So I make a comment to mom like, "Flint!?! Yeah, if they want to see gangs and America's fattest city" and she laughed for a split-second before giving me an elbow jab and telling me to be nice. So this morning she called and reminded me of that and said she thinks that could have been what he meant. And I told my mom that I thought it was funny, but it was also true.

I even found these facts this morning

2013: Flint was named the "most dangerous city in America" by Business Insider in June 2013, based on FBI statistics.

and

Here's a list of the 10 most obese metro areas, with those ranking highest having the greatest obesity rates.

3) Flint, Mich.: 33.9%

So yeah, I do appreciate my mom encouraging me to be nicer, and I think I only quietly said my joke to her, but anyway, to each his own I guess.