So There’s This Bag of Onions, See…

Yesterday, I was really feeling like chicken, and I still have quite a few onions left from the 5 pound bag I got on sale insanely cheap a few weeks ago, so I made them for dinner last night.

Sautéed Chicken and Onions with Teriyaki
Last night’s dinner–envious? 😉
I took a couple of the onions (they’re small), peeled and sliced them, and sautéed them in a little butter. When they were getting caramelized, I added a little sesame oil and tossed in chunks of chicken breast. I seared that well and then finished cooking it all. Once I was confident the chicken was done, the pan was removed from the heat, and I added teriyaki sauce to deglaze the pan. Oh, deglazing…getting all those little browned bits off the bottom of the pan. You don’t get that with non-stick pans, oh, no. You need good stainless steel pans for that. And let me tell you, those tiny caramelized flecks of yumminess make me confident my $400 investment in a set of Calphalon pans was well worth it. 😉 :yum:

Sautéed Chicken and Onions with Teriyaki Close-Up
Mmm…perfection…
It was torturous giving it some time to rest and cool a bit, but it was so good I was bouncing while I ate it once I did. I’m incredibly proud of my ability to cook the chicken just right–all the way through, but still fantastically juicy and tender. And the onions…oh, the onions. I can–and have–been perfectly satisfied with a meal of caramelized onions. Balance, what? I don’t care. There’s nothing on the face of the earth like soft-but-al-dente onions that have been cooked until their natural sugars are in full force, browned and rich. It’s a guiltless treat, I say–they’re vegetables! And sweet like dessert! Woo!

Inspired by Robyn‘s recent ramblings, complaints, research, and so on about her paper on Japanese snack foods and their “kawaii” quality, I’d been wanting to try the banana-flavored Koala’s March cookies my sister had about a week ago but couldn’t bear to save any for me to try they were so delicious.

Package of Banana-Filled Koala's March
Look at the happy Koala getting full of banana–for me! Mwa ha ha!
Adorable Koala Cookie
The cuteness of these cookies is too much!
Headless Koala
…But the cuteness is not enough to save him from being DEVOURED!
Suffering the higher cost here at the campus convenience store, I had a box in my possession after class yesterday. After opening the package, I was immersed in the scent of artificial banana flavoring. For someone highly allergic to and yet also highly fond of bananas, it’s about the closest I can usually get to eating them (cooked banana is okay, but since they have to be very thoroughly cooked, I tend to err on the side of caution and only eat even cooked ones when I’ve done the cooking and can be sure it’s well enough).

The first bite of one assured me that I would be fully satisfied with banananess and yummy-cookie-ness. The Japanese have an incredible knack for making cookies that are just a million times better than American packaged cookie products. And their creme fillings are perfect–in consistency and flavor–every time. For a processed, packaged food, they seem to come the closest to what I call the “realness” quality of homemade foods. When I eat an Oreo, it feels and tastes like I’m eating something that was pumped out by some machine in a factory. When a happy little Koala jumps in my mouth, it tastes fresh and yummy and delicious and oh, how I wish I could make these myself!

Today is my sister’s birthday. 🙂 She’s turning 21 already, which means I will no longer get requests for bottles of vodka or beer or anything else when I’m going shopping. We’re going out to dinner with the rest of my family tonight, and she’ll be able to order a drink for herself instead of just tasting mine. And after we get back, dessert will be had here, in the name of an amazing creation of mine that took four and a half hours of manual labor and the suffering of blisters, a deep cut on my finger, and impossibly sore arms this morning to produce. I’m sure it will be worth it, though, and you can bet photos will be forthcoming. 😉

4 thoughts on “So There’s This Bag of Onions, See…

  1. Oooh, the chicken and onions sounds lovely! I agree that the onions do look a little bit like worms, but that doesn’t mean they’re not yummy, LOL!

    Cute cookies! 😀

  2. It really was sooo good. 😀 One of my suitemates came home just as I was finishing, and when she walked into the suite she immediately got all wide-eyed and exclaimed, “What are you making that smells so good?!?!” ;D

    Japanese snacks are the epitome of cuteness, hee!!

  3. aah! i love those clouds of fake fruity smells that engulf me when i open a foil bag of japanese snack. especially the fake strawberry aroma.

    the banana milk on this packaging is just too much!

  4. Mmm, artificial strawberry… Another one of my favorites. ;] Heh.

    And it really is too adorable!!

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