Ok, so I know there's a whole hoard of you who are probably feeling bad for me and my friendless-ness...well, never fear! The Lord is good :)
So I was chatting with one of my coworkers today (he's on a hybrid work/vaca right now on the east coast, lucky duck) and he asked how the office was and I said quiet and lonely. Boohoo. He empathized since he is also a social-type but reassured that it would be alright...I begrudgingly agreed.
(in a good way, no worries, he knows I wasn't complaining or anything)
So anyway, I decided to use part of my lunch break to go to daily mass (right above my office, as I've mentioned before. score!) and prayed that the Lord would help me to appreciate this alone time and use it in whatever way He sees fit...and also threw in a little "but, you know better than anyone else how lonely I might get, so if you want to help me out a bit, it'd be much appreciated!"
The big man upstairs obviously heard my plea because when I went to the caf a half an hour later, I had barely sat down and begun reading a page of my book when a lovely missionary came up and asked if she could sit with me. And while I wanted to say yes, I told her that I haven't been getting any alone time...
JOKING.
I happily asked her to sit and we had a nice chat over our mutual salads :)
She was really sweet and it was so nice to have some human interaction.
I mean, Abe is a great listener and all, but after awhile, I feel like I'm just talking to myself...
So yeah. Good lunch.
The rest of my day went pretty slow but it was good overall...and my nice lunchmate gave me the confidence that maybe I could be the one to approach someone in the caf tomorrow...eek! It's so crazy to even think that I would be intimidated to talk to someone, especially maybe to some people who are reading this and know me as a person who can't. shut. up.
But I think the difference is that while I'm naturally an extrovert, it's super intimidating trying to break into a group of 400 people (literally. that's how many missionaries there are.) when they all know each other and I know maybe 3 of them.
So who knows, hopefully I can get over my fear of whatever it is that I'm afraid of (most likely rejection) and meet some new people. Stay tuned for more deets on that!
But so I came home after work and immediately watched the newest episode of The Bachelorette. I know, I watch trash tv. Get over it.
I'm a hopeless romantic and also enjoy drama (from the outside).
And somewhere near the end of the episode, I became hungry and was trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner...I knew I had a lot of frozen chicken but the most frequent way I cook it is with olive oil and lemon pepper on the stove...after 2 years of that as my main staple of protein, I'm sick of chicken cooked that way.
But for whatever reason, I got it into my head that some kind of ranch chicken sounded realllllly good...like a breaded, ranch-seasoned chicken. Doesn't that sound great?!
I googled "ranch breaded chicken" and chose the first recipe...SUPER easy and DELICIOUS!
Here's how I made it...not much to it and I actually didn't really measure some/most of it, so if you hate figuring-it-out-as-you-go, then don't try this lol
4 chicken tenderloin things (defrosted...duh)
1 cup corn flakes, un-crushed
some sprinkles of that powdered parmesan cheese stuff...Kraft?
dash of garlic powder (whatever that means)
1 TBS Hidden Valley Ranch powder
2-ish TBS melted butter plus some butter for bottom of pan
1. Crush cornflakes in small bowl (I used my hands but maybe you veteran culinary geniuses have a better method)
2. Add parm, garlic and ranch powder to crushed cornflakes
3. Get a pan big enough for your chicken and grease the bottom with butter, Paula Dean style ;)
4. Sprinkle a little bit of the cornflake mixture onto bottom of pan (I don't know why, but one of the recipes I saw said to do this)
5. Take chicken, lather it up with some melted butter and coat both sides generously with cornflake stuff and place in pan
6. When all of the chicken is in the pan, take excess cornflake mix and throw it in the pan...on top of the chicken, on the bottom of the pan...doesn't matter.
Bake at 375 degrees until chicken is cooked through...I still haven't figured out timing and all, so I just wait around the kitchen, cleaning and whatnot, while checking the oven every now and again...and I forgot to time how long they were in there for but I would guess maybe 15 mins? 20 mins? I have no idea actually...
And it was DELICIOUS! Yum yum yum
Okeedokee...time for bed. Thanks for reading! Love you all!
So I was chatting with one of my coworkers today (he's on a hybrid work/vaca right now on the east coast, lucky duck) and he asked how the office was and I said quiet and lonely. Boohoo. He empathized since he is also a social-type but reassured that it would be alright...I begrudgingly agreed.
(in a good way, no worries, he knows I wasn't complaining or anything)
So anyway, I decided to use part of my lunch break to go to daily mass (right above my office, as I've mentioned before. score!) and prayed that the Lord would help me to appreciate this alone time and use it in whatever way He sees fit...and also threw in a little "but, you know better than anyone else how lonely I might get, so if you want to help me out a bit, it'd be much appreciated!"
The big man upstairs obviously heard my plea because when I went to the caf a half an hour later, I had barely sat down and begun reading a page of my book when a lovely missionary came up and asked if she could sit with me. And while I wanted to say yes, I told her that I haven't been getting any alone time...
JOKING.
I happily asked her to sit and we had a nice chat over our mutual salads :)
She was really sweet and it was so nice to have some human interaction.
I mean, Abe is a great listener and all, but after awhile, I feel like I'm just talking to myself...
So yeah. Good lunch.
The rest of my day went pretty slow but it was good overall...and my nice lunchmate gave me the confidence that maybe I could be the one to approach someone in the caf tomorrow...eek! It's so crazy to even think that I would be intimidated to talk to someone, especially maybe to some people who are reading this and know me as a person who can't. shut. up.
But I think the difference is that while I'm naturally an extrovert, it's super intimidating trying to break into a group of 400 people (literally. that's how many missionaries there are.) when they all know each other and I know maybe 3 of them.
So who knows, hopefully I can get over my fear of whatever it is that I'm afraid of (most likely rejection) and meet some new people. Stay tuned for more deets on that!
But so I came home after work and immediately watched the newest episode of The Bachelorette. I know, I watch trash tv. Get over it.
I'm a hopeless romantic and also enjoy drama (from the outside).
And somewhere near the end of the episode, I became hungry and was trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner...I knew I had a lot of frozen chicken but the most frequent way I cook it is with olive oil and lemon pepper on the stove...after 2 years of that as my main staple of protein, I'm sick of chicken cooked that way.
But for whatever reason, I got it into my head that some kind of ranch chicken sounded realllllly good...like a breaded, ranch-seasoned chicken. Doesn't that sound great?!
I googled "ranch breaded chicken" and chose the first recipe...SUPER easy and DELICIOUS!
Here's how I made it...not much to it and I actually didn't really measure some/most of it, so if you hate figuring-it-out-as-you-go, then don't try this lol
Morgan's Breaded Ranch Chicken
4 chicken tenderloin things (defrosted...duh)
1 cup corn flakes, un-crushed
some sprinkles of that powdered parmesan cheese stuff...Kraft?
dash of garlic powder (whatever that means)
1 TBS Hidden Valley Ranch powder
2-ish TBS melted butter plus some butter for bottom of pan
1. Crush cornflakes in small bowl (I used my hands but maybe you veteran culinary geniuses have a better method)
2. Add parm, garlic and ranch powder to crushed cornflakes
3. Get a pan big enough for your chicken and grease the bottom with butter, Paula Dean style ;)
4. Sprinkle a little bit of the cornflake mixture onto bottom of pan (I don't know why, but one of the recipes I saw said to do this)
5. Take chicken, lather it up with some melted butter and coat both sides generously with cornflake stuff and place in pan
6. When all of the chicken is in the pan, take excess cornflake mix and throw it in the pan...on top of the chicken, on the bottom of the pan...doesn't matter.
Bake at 375 degrees until chicken is cooked through...I still haven't figured out timing and all, so I just wait around the kitchen, cleaning and whatnot, while checking the oven every now and again...and I forgot to time how long they were in there for but I would guess maybe 15 mins? 20 mins? I have no idea actually...
 |
| nommmm...everytime I opened the oven, my mouth would water hardcore from all the delectable smells :))) |
 |
| nommin' on some of these bad boys while I waited...thanks generous roomie! |
 |
| DELICIOUS! also, I think I know why you're supposed to have some extra breading on the bottom of the pan... when everything is cooked, the extra breading is more baked than the stuff on the actual chicken and it is suuuper tasty |
And it was DELICIOUS! Yum yum yum
Okeedokee...time for bed. Thanks for reading! Love you all!
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