You know what constitutes a nearly perfect Saturday for me? (Besides the Chinese Chicken Wings recipe below – ha!)
No schedule. Getting a morning run in. Grocery shopping and the obligatory trip to Target. A blog post. Early happy hour. And cooking a fun meal at home for my boys.
It doesn’t take much to make me happy and relaxed, but really, isn’t life all the better for small little moments of time like this?
This is just the kind of day we needed to end a busy week. I am on a mission to plow through a monstrous to-do list at the office because I’m leaving again for a work trip in mid-February. Teacher Man had conferences this week so that makes for a long couple of days.
But today, we can take a nap if we want, put work responsibilities out of mind, catch up on the little errands and some laundry, play a board game with Joe, and just breathe.
On the menu tonight: braised beef short ribs (oh my!), Parmesan risotto, and green beans. I’ve never made short ribs so I’m pretty excited to give this a try – recipe courtesy of The Pioneer Woman, of course.
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday tomorrow, I’m sharing a very easy chicken wings recipe that I’ve had in my recipe drawer for ages. I know I got it from my mom but I couldn’t say where she sourced it.
The original recipe calls for baking the wings for about 80 minutes, but yesterday I doubled the sauce and threw the whole bag of wings into the crockpot for nine hours. Then I transferred the wings to a baking sheet lined with foil, and broiled them for about 15 minutes (7-8 minutes per side). Delicious!
True Super Bowl fact: Americans will eat 1.3 billion (yes, billion!) chicken wings on Sunday!
And as long as we’re talking about the big game, here’s one of our favorite Super Bowl commercials ever. It might be because we’re a little partial to Star Wars, but really, who could resist how cute this kid is?
We’ll be rooting for the Denver Broncos tomorrow. How about you?
Lara
Chinese Chicken Wings
Ingredients
- 36 chicken wings or drummies
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- Arrange wings on a shallow roasting pan.
- Combine soy sauce and sugars; pour mixture over chicken.
- Bake 30 minutes.
- Turn each piece of chicken using tongs and bake for another 30 minutes.
- Turn wings again and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until very tender.
Notes
For the slow cooker version: double the sauce and combine chicken and sauce in a slow cooker. Cook on low for 8-9 hours or low for 4 hours. Then transfer the wings and a little of the sauce to a shallow roasting plan lined with aluminum foil and broil on each side for about 7-8 minutes.