Roasted honey chicken in pineapple juice

One of the easy ways to cook chicken that I recently learned is to roast them in the oven then season them with your desired flavor along the way. But to make the best roasted chicken I like to get the cut with lots of skin. The skin keeps the meat moist and juicy as you cook them in the oven. I personally love love chicken skin either when they're roasted in then oven or deep fried. Yes, I love the flavor and crunchiness of the skin.
It's pretty simple to just season my chicken with salt & pepper, cajun seasoning. Then I cooked them in the oven for about 30 at 375.

After 30 mins, I started pouring my seasoning over the chicken every 10 mins for a total of 3 times. My seasoning consited of honey, pineapple juice, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, and some olive oil. This process lasted for about another 30 mins or so. In the last 10 mins of cooking, I cranked up the oven to 400 to make my chicken skin crusty and charred just the way I would really enjoy it. To make sure your chicken cooked right, you should also check the temperature of the chicken before eating. The food thermometer should state around 165*F.

Since I flavored the chicken with pineapple juice, I made some pineapple chunks and zucchini stir fried and rice pilaf as side dishes. Everything turned out pretty well. I loved the flavor of pineapple in the chicken, will definitely make it again since Brett loved it too. It probably took a little while (about 1 hour) but it's surely easy to make and easy to customize different flavors each time I cook. I love recipes that you could customize and experiment with different seasonings that suit your taste.

My photography website

So I haven’t updated my blog these days, the main reason is that I spent most of my free time (which is very limited) to create my photography website. It’s nothing much, but it’s a good start to present my collections of photos on the World Wide Web, haha. All comments and suggestions are welcome as I’m building it everyday. Most of the pictures from my blog will be there in specific categories for viewers to easily see. I’m no professional just an enthusiast, that’s all. Enjoy and hope everyone has a happy holiday.

http://www.wix.com/cmckeon/mckeonphotography

or

http://www.chummymckeon.com/

So long to my camera

Happy December!!!

Just now, I realized that I only have 1 blog post in November. I can’t believe how fast time goes by especially near the end of the year. Mostly because we’ve been out for nearly 2 weeks for Thanksgiving sunbathing, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and eating lots of yummy Dole pineapples in Hawaii. When we got back there was so much stuff to do. I told myself that I have to get back on my feet and catch up on everything; I’m super behind with pictures from before the trip, on top of that I have almost 1,000 pictures (20G) from our Hawaii trip. Ok, I have a habit or ‘issue’ of taking multiple pictures of one thing; but I won’t bore you by posting all of them here.  Only the best will be shown, haha. 

Anyway, I wanted to dedicate this blog to my good ole camera, which I have used to take most of the pictures for this blog to this point in time. I just sold it on Amazon. The moment I posted it for sale, never thought I would feel sad to send it across the country to a total stranger. I really hope the new owner will enjoy it as much as I do. Just the other day, I laughed at Brett for getting attached to inanimate object, but I’m no different.  We’re one weird couple, haha. 

To say goodbye, these are some of the pictures that I took with this camera...

 

 Silver lake, Big cottonwood, Utah

The view of rice fields in Sapa, Vietnam.

A beautiful Hmong girl we met on our little trip to Sapa

 My blue eyes :)

And one of my favorite songs from Cary Brothers featuring scenes from Garden State, one of my favorite movies as well :)

Orange cream cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

I used this lemon cream cupcakes recipe to make my orange cream cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I'm so craving for some more right now. They are festive and oh-so-good! Yes, I'm super ready for Christmas to come; it's my favorite holiday of the year. That's why I'm learning how to cook and bake so I'll be able to throw big fat feasts for the family, haha.

1 cup butter or margarine, softened


2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 teaspoons grated orange peel

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups sour cream

FROSTING:

3 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened

2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar


2 tablespoons orange juice

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon grated orange peel

2-3 tablespoon whipping cream

Directions

1.In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add orange peel and vanilla; mix well. Combine dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream (batter will be thick).





Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups with 1/4 cup of batter. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.



For frosting, cream butter, and sugar in a small mixing bowl; add orange juice, vanilla, orange peel and whipping cream; beat until smooth. I added cream cheese to this recipe. It was a great addition to the frosting and very tasty! Adding more cream cheese made the frosting mixture thicker; hence I used heavy whipping cream to make it exactly how I like it. Great success for me as a first timer :)

Chicken bacon ranch pizza

My first homemade pizza had to be something with bacon. I chose chicken bacon ranch because it is my favorite to get from The Pie pizza, a famous pizzeria in Utah. It's quite expensive there so when I thought of this I was quite excited to make it and not have to spend too much for their pizza :) It cost about 5 dollars to make the whole pizza myself and it's very similar to the Pie. I just need to perfect my dough making because this time I made it a little too dense with a little too much flour.

My main ingredients: boiled chicken, bacon, tomato, cheese, ranch, garlic powder, and salt&pepper to taste. One great thing to make your own pizza is that you can choose whatever you like!

First I boiled the chicken in water and some salt until it's done (about 15-20 mins). Then, I cut them in small pieces and mixed in about 1 tbsp of my buttermilk ranch dressing and some salt and pepper. Before I arranged all of other ingredients evenly, I smeared about 2-3 tbsp of ranch dressing on the dough.

Add cheese and some bacon on top

Then some Parmesan and Asiago cheese for more flavor

 Then baked for 45 mins at 375 or until brown

Chocolate bread

I love the taste of chocolate bread :) I used the recipe to make French bread then just added 2-3 tbsp of cocoa powder.

Plain White T's Concert

On October 1st, Overstock.com celebrated their 11th birthday. Every year, they throw a concert party for this special occasion. These are the concerts that I've been to since the day I started working for them.

2008: Jason Mraz
2009: The Wallflowers
2010: Plain White T's

They were all so much fun. Specially, they were private concerts and free to Overstock employees. I can't wait for next year concert to come :)

Here are some of the pictures of the event:

Molly, Megan, and I with the main singer of Rhymth of love. His hair looked like Edward's, haha :) He might be a better looking vampire than Robert Pattinson, I thought.

Their new single Rhythm of love, it is such a cute song....

 

Most people know the Hey there Delilah song, but I also love the song Radios in Heaven. The lyrics are so sweet.



These videos were recorded from the concert





The dancing in the background by Overstock.com employees was very intertaining, lol.

Fall in Utah

On Friday, I had a chance to go up to Millcreek canyon for some S'mores potluck with my Overstock co-workers. I seriously can't believe how could I not know of this place earlier as I used to live only 10 mins away.

I just enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the fall colors so much I wanted to come back soon for some great pictures. But for now, please enjoy my iPhone pictures that did a decent job of capturing the gorgeous colors of fall.

 The drive up to the picnic spot was very pleasant as you can see here

Huntington Beach {California}

What a lovely Saturday today! It's been raining the whole morning and finally it stopped. The weather is supposed to cool down next week and snow in the Salt Lake valley. I'm not totally excited for that since the last time it snowed here was at the end of May. Oh well, I'm sure excited for the holiday season though as Christmas is my favorite time of the year.

Yes, I should have posted these pictures a while ago. I just haven't had time to process all of them yet. I finally finished that today although I'm still behind on a lot of food posts. I still have pictures from a year ago that I haven't done anything to. Also, I've been baking like crazy so stay tuned for some yummy delish bread, muffins, and cupcakes :) Just figure, I need to take care of this first...

After checking in to our hotel by the PCH, we went out for dinner at The Crab Cooker. One of the best seafood places in the area. Everything was so tasty and fresh. If I lived here I'd have to come here probably once a month or so. It's so good but could drain out your wallet in no time. We spent over 100 dollars just for 2 plates of seafood and a small bowl of clam chowder.

Snapshot of the chef making delish grilled lobsters  

Brett's plate: lobsters on a skewer, rice pilaf, and cold slaw. Seriously, the best lobters ever.

 My king crab legs were also very yummy

The mashed potatoes were also my favorite. It was so cheesy and delicious...

 
And a very interesting and good clam chowder...

They also sell fresh seafood for home cooking. I wish I could take some home with me.

 The store across the street

 After dinner, we rushed over to the Huntington Beach pier to watch the sunset.

One intersting thing I learned was the palm tree is not one of California's native plants, but it's everywhere and makes us feel like it is.

The pier

As we walked on the pier, we saw a man catch a small leopard shark and processed it right there :)

The paranomic picture of the pier: I took 5 different pictures to make this one