Making it Work

On Sunday it was Greg and my one year wedding anniversary. It's been a fantastic year, full of fun, exciting, new adventures, but I'm not going to say it was a piece of cake, because Lord knows that one-year-old-cake can be pretty gross - we know, we've tried it. But seriously, there are a lot of compromises that must go into a marriage and we both learned how to "make it work" this first year.

Cooking this year has been both fun and at times, unrewarding to say the least. This dinner that I made a few days ago was definitely a "make it work" moment. It looks pretty tasty, but looks can sometimes be deceiving.  It was supposed to be Garlic Chicken Stir-fry.

 At least this time I was prepared. I chopped everything first and marinated the chicken.

I heated the vegetables in the wok first and then removed them, cooked the chicken, then added the veggies back in the wok, along with the leftover marinade. Then I let it simmer.


The problem was that the recipe called for 12 cloves of garlic. I don't know about you, but I usually cook with maybe a clove or two of minced garlic on a regular basis - but 12, no way!! I wasn't trying to kill vampires or Greg with garlic, especially since this was a few days before the anniversary. So, in what I know now was a poor decision, I omitted about 8 of the 12 cloves of garlic.

It looked pretty good.

But it tasted like nothing. The soy sauce marinade was barely noticeable. Plus I hadn't pre-cooked the broccoli, so it was c r u n c h y as heck. So much for that. Oh well, here's another one that I'll be positive and call a "learning experience." As many times as I have messed up a meal, it is always because I haven't followed the recipe, but I still haven't learned. It turned out all right in the end, we dumped some soy sauce on it, and it tasted, well... fine. But not like garlic chicken stir fry. I guess sometimes in food and in life you just have to look for the positive and make it work.

And by the way, a cake tastes disgusting after 365 days in the freezer with saran wrap barely wrapped around a flimsy cake box. Bleh! The slices missing are from what Greg and I ate for breakfast the morning after the wedding, while we opened presents. Now that was a good idea. After the fact, I hear that there is a proper storage method for keeping the cake fresh for the entire year. But again, we had to just go with the flow. Honestly, we weren't hungry anyways, we had Creme Brulee for dessert that night, and it was perfect.

Thanks for reading my thoughts about food and making it work - one year later. I'll post a few wedding pictures below. Enjoy!