So here's the short of it, 
Chinese Chicken 

And here's the long.

Tonight we had Chinese Chicken with Nuts and Vegetables for dinner.

When we were growing up, we might have been the only family in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky that regularly ate Chinese food -  with the exception of those who were wealthy enough to go to Lexington or Louisville and "eat out".  As Mom tells it, Dad came home from one of his business trips where the group had eaten at one of those restaurants bringing home canned chinese vegetables.  When she asked him what he planned to do with them, he said they were going to make Chow Mein.  There was a recipe on the side of one of the cans and so the experimenting began.  By the time I was old enough to remember, Chow Mein at the Howard household was a regular event.  Dad didn't cook our everyday meals until Mom went back to work, but he always was on hand for making special things, and Chow Mein was one of his specialties with Mom always right there as well.

So when I made it out into the world on my own, it was just natural that a bit of Chinese cooking would become a part of my repertoire.  I got a wok about the same time as Mom and Dad, back when they were very popular.  That was back when I lived in my little house across the Georgia line, and I had an electric stove with the old coil burners -- and then when Alan and I moved here we had a top of the line electric stove (well top of the line in the 50's when it was purchased)!  So we just woked along.  Then there was a time when the wok got put up on a high shelf, and any chinese stir fry got done in the skillet.  And then in due time, that top of the line electric stove got replaced with an electric stove with a ceramic top.

Well, tonight at the request of Liga, I decided to make an that old standby that Dad once described as an old recipe"handed up from the family" -- and I decided that I'd break out the wok.


The basic recipe for the dish comes from a cookbook I got years ago when I first got my wok.  I probably only cook two or three recipes at all from this cookbook, but the page for this dish is all spotted up with kitchen goodness.  Anyone who gets this book will surely know this recipe was used often.  Of course since I learned to cook from Mom, most recipes are just a starting place.

So even though woking ended up being a disaster (it has to do with the ceramic top according to my research afterward), and I ended up with a line of skillets to do the cooking, we all enjoyed dinner tonight.

Anyway tonight's dinner is a salute to my first, best teacher, of cooking and most of the rest of life, my Mom -- And to Dad who inspired my willingness to eat adventurously.