A confession: My only exposure to the food services industry was working as a busboy at a Bonanza steak house in the mall while I was in high school. One of my favorite dishes was their chicken catalina. I love catalina dressing. This is a cheap and easy way to do chicken. I tried to cook for the first time in a while and I made it with this quicky recipe. Thanks go to:
1. My complete and total lack of talent and cash.
2. Denise for advice and laughs.
3. Liz for leaving some of her cookwear behind (Thanks for the big wok with a handle!)
Here’s the recipe:
2 chicken breasts, boned and split (get the cheap boneless one’s on sale at the Ac-A-Me! 1 pound will do fine for 2 people. If you are a hungry fat ass’d couple, get 1.5 pound for 2 people.)
1/2 pkg. dry onion soup mix (I buy the generic)
6 oz. Catalina salad dressing (Or as much as you can stand. The more the better for my taste. Makes more juice!)
Put chicken in a casserole dish (one of them glass pyrex jobs) which has been sprayed with Pam (or just put some olive oil on a paper towel and rub down the casserole dish).
Good Old Standby
Sprinkle chicken breasts with 1/2 package dry onion soup mix.
Pour 6 ounces Catalina salad dressing over chicken.
Best if you let this sit for a while to marinate! Makes the chicken taste more Catalina’y. I also chop a handful of nasty stinky white onions into the dish. This makes it more onion’y and clears the sinuses a bit.
Cover (with aluminum “ferrl”) and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes. Good served with rice (the cheap stuff).
Yummo on yer cheap ass’d budget! Note: The catalina juice in the casserole dish is great to yum up the rice a bit!
Haven’t posted in while and I’ve got loads to tell you.
but I don’t feel like it.
so I’ll hit the big points.
Got caught in a blizzard in Springfield, IL after seeing Chad in Chicago. We had to cancel a show because we just couldn’t get there in time.
Next up was New Orleans, where we stayed at the Astor Crown Hotel on Bourbon St. ” Titties….Titties and no Cover. come on in fella’s and a girl will sit on your lap. Played a whole lot of Pool. Even won some.
A week of detox later and we are in FL.
Got to see my Mom, Grandmother, and my Brother in Pensacola, FL. They came to see the show. “Meme” said she got most of it. They had to leave the same night. Not enough time
Then there was Christmas at Disney World. Not Orlando. Disney World. Big difference. At the Swan and Dolphin Resort. I swam in many of the outdoor heated pools on Christmas Day. Didn’t feel right. Weird vibe the whole weekend.
West Palm Beach for one show. Then lots of worrying about my flight to Philly. Safe flight. And now, I’m home with C and G lapping it up before tomorrows travel to New Haven CT.
Now this I am excited about. New Haven used to be Broadway’s cradle. That is to say, the theater where we will be performing used to be where all the B-way shows had there tech rehearsals and try outs, and we are staying at the hotel across the street where all the writers and composers, and directors would stay while getting the show up.
It’s cool to think of Rogers and Hammerstein, or Kandor and Ebb feverishly writing and rewriting songs and lyrics and bouncing ideas of the walls in that same hotel.
Big producer people coming too. They made sure we understood that the New Haven shows had to be on point.
Just in case anyone tries to tell you otherwise, Christmas is NOT Jesus’s birthday. It was to celebrate his conception. So, really, its a celebration about a rape that caused a pregnancy. Nice!
It was also a Roman holiday hijacked by the later Popes in order to get the waining Roman citizens to convert easier to Christianity because early Christians celebrated nothing and the Romans where ALL about their parties…
So Happy Birthday Sun! A tangible God made up of hot burning gas, which has the REAL influence in all of our lives.
There is nothing like a door ding or a fall time kamikaze acorn bombardment to brighten the day of any car owner. Saw this nifty little trick and thought I might pass it on.
I may even try it on my almost vintage Honda accord a.k.a. the Green Machine to see if it really works. The only problem is that if it does, I’m on the hook for a lot of computer cleaners…
In the early hours of this Tuesday, the earth will eclipse the moon. What makes this lunar eclipse so special, is that it is just happens to coincide the Winter Solstice.
While it may seem like no big deal, this event marks the longest day of winter. After this, the days will gradually get longer, and then next thing you know…its time to break out the tight black wife beaters. So if you are out or up, drunk or sober, take a peek out the window and see if you can spot that red moon and know that we are still spinning on a rock with a ball of its inners, orbiting around an immense ball of hot gas.
Not a bad hotel but had a totally USELESS couch in the living room. It was like a small broken fold out bed love seat thing. The cushions didn’t even match the couch. It was like dumpster reject furniture. Word of advice for this hotel:
Look, you are a hotel in a very VERY cold city. People sometimes just want to stay in the room instead of go out into the “balmy” 10 degrees you got flyin around your streets. This means your TV’s/Internet will be used and so will the couch! If the couch sucks, don’t synthesize a passable one from other broken couches… THROW THE DAMN THING OUT!
This obviously didn’t occur to them because you couldn’t sit on the couch for longer than 5 minutes without severe back pain or a wedgie!
Other than the couch, the hotel was pretty nice. Beds were clean and comfortable and bathroom was clean and shower had great pressure. The view from the room was pretty cool too!
View from Comfort Inn and Suites Chicago. Click to download a better image!
Had a great visit to the skydeck at the Willis Tower (the former Sears Tower). It was 103 stories up. (And NO, the skydeck was not “calling to me” as the stupid website would say. I just like tall buildings. (Stupid marketing copyrighting dorks!!)) The elevator ride was wobbly and scary. The view was incredible. I took a few pictures and tried to make a “connecto picture” like I did in Atlantic City. This is out the north east side of the Willis/Sears tower overlooking the city with hancock tower (black tower), trump tower (silver tower), and lake michigan (big blue body of water!)
Northeast view from Sears/Willis Tower! It's a "Connecto-pic" ala cell phone! Click to download a better image!
Also did the thing at the tower where you can walk out on the glass box and look straight down. It’s really creepy. I found looking up at the very top edge of the building to be the most dizzying. Looking down at your shoes was pretty common:
Looking out the side of the glass box to the OTHER glass box made ya kinda queezy. Seeing the city from 103 stories up BEHIND other people floating on the side of the building was pretty sick!
In summary, had a great time. It was REALLY nice to see/spend time with Will. He made all sorts of fun arrangements so we could get around and see as much as we could despite the cold weather. (MY GOD PEOPLE, IT’S THE COLDEST PLACE I’VE EVER EXPERIENCED IN MY LIFE! I DON’T SEE HOW PEOPLE LIVE THERE!)
I must say, the ride to and from Chicago was really fun! I took 476 north from Philly then I-80 all the way across. Witnessed some very beautiful mountains and very bizarre weather patterns. My car looks like a salt lick right now (real pretty on a black car). It was an 800 mile commute one way. Took a perfect 12 hours each way. Not bad! Had to fill my tank 3 times each way.
Indiana still has the best turnpike with the 70 mph speed limit but their self serve “insert dollar into the sucker” tool booths suck.
Stupid Toll Booths
Ohio still smells funny and takes forever to drive through.
Stinky Ohio
And I still wasn’t “welcomed” by a sign or anything into Illinois!
NO! You are NOT welcome!
So there is my Chicago trip in review! Sorry about the reused graphics, but somebody has gotta recycle around here! Shiz!
