Chinese Lemon Chicken Sauce

I love lemon chicken, but I have never found a recipe that makes it like the Mandarin Chinese restaurants do. I made some from a recipe that I found and it turned out nasty. Needless to say, it got dumped down the sink. I then proceeded to modify the recipe so that now it really is just a recipe that I came up with using the ideas from other recipes. Here goes:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 C cornstarch (flour will also work. Modify this to make the consistency thinner/thicker)
• 1 C white sugar
• 1 C chicken broth
• 2 - 4 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 - 2 tsp lemon zest
• 3 slices lemon (basically I used 1 lemon for these three things)
• dash of soy sauce, to taste

Directions:

1. Mix together the sugar and cornstarch. This is important to do because it prevents the cornstarch from clotting.
2. Add the chicken broth and lemon juice and mix well.
3. Pour into a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil. Make sure to stir almost the whole time or you will get burned sauce on the bottom. While you are waiting for the sauce to boil, zest your lemon rind and mix it in well.
4. Once the sauce is boiling, let boil while stirring consistently for at least 1 minute. After that the sauce should be thick. If its not as thick as you would like, make a flour/cornstarch slurry out of 1/4 C flour and just enough COLD water to make it pourable. Mix it well so that there are not any lumps. Pour in small quantities into your boiling sauce until it comes to a desired thickness. Once again, let boil for at least 1 minute to boil out the taste of the flour.
5. While it is still boiling, add the lemon slices and let boil for 1 - 2 minutes then remove them from the sauce.
6. Pour over stir-fried chicken or other meat of choice.

Hint: I like to double or triple my sauces and then freeze all of the extra to make it easier the next time we have the meal.

Wheat Pancakes

I've been trying to learn how to cook pancakes like my father-in-law does and today we tried a half wheat, half white flour pancake version of what he has taught me. These measurements are approximate because he taught how to measure things out by hand and not necessarily by standard cups and spoons. So Anyway, here goes:

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups fresh ground wheat
• 1 1/2 Cups white flour
• 2/3 C powdered milk
• 2 tsp salt
• 3 tsp baking soda (I use a regular metal small eating spoon and scoop out 1 heaping spoon)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder (again I use the same spoon as above and only get a tip full)
• 1/2 Cup white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 C vegetable oil
• 1 - 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 - 4 C water (basically add until it is a nice consistency)

Directions:

1. In a bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients together.
2. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the eggs, oil and some of the water.
3. Mix and add water as needed to get a nice semi-runny consistency. The batter might be a little lumpy, but that is not a problem. Just make sure that there aren't any huge pockets of dry ingredients hanging out in any of the corners. You also need to make sure to not mix it too much (don't use any electric mixers or the like) because then your pancakes won't rise at all.
4. On a preheated gridle (ours is usually set to between 250 and 300 degrees F) pour batter in little circles and cook. Once they are golden brown, flip and let cook until no longer gooey on the outside. If the pancakes burn and are gooey on the inside you definetely need to turn the gridle down. If the pancakes never really turn brown then you might need to turn it up a little (or there is not enough oil in the mix).

Anyway, this is about as good as I can get in explaining how to make Grandpa Smoot's pancakes. I have made bad batches and I have made decent batches. This last time (today) that I made them turned out really good. It takes time to figure out how you like your pancakes. Next time I am going to try and add a squirt of honey to it. :)

Note: Sarah hasn't been feeling well, and today she is SO much better than the last two days, but as you can see from the second picture she still isn't 100% yet. Regardless of how she was feeling she, along with the older two, ate these pancakes like crazy :) I guess when you starve them long enough they will eat anything. ;)