Week 1, Friday: Spicy Orange-Glazed Drumsticks With Green Beans

Because I was expecting my friend Carol, and her little boy for dinner tonight, I switched up the dinner so I could serve what sounded like the best (and most plentiful) dinner of the week while she was here. Unfortunately, my kids are sick this week (they were sick last week, too!), and when it was clear the fevers were not clearing up, I called Carol to cancel. We still got to eat the yummy dinner, though, and here is the recipe of what we had:


Week 1, Friday (Wednesday): Spicy Orange-Glazed Drumsticks With Green Beans


Yeah, this was our best dinner of the week, hands down. But I'll get to that in a minute. This was also the longest dinner to prep, but it took a little pressure off me because I didn't feel like I was a super-slowpoke. And because the chicken was in the oven, I had enough time to wash some of the prep dishes before we ate! The novel thing in this meal for me was fresh green beans. It's really sad that I've never cooked fresh green beans before, but there you have it. And now I've learned to make them really tasty (even Katie liked them!).


One thing I have made, and many times, is cornbread. So when I saw that the shopping list called for buying cornbread muffins, I thought, "Psh! Store-bought cornbread? Pass!" Finally, something I knew I could make without thinking too hard! And they came out great! Here's my favorite cornbread recipe: Corn Bread Loaf. I just greased a 6-cup muffin tin, and spooned it into the muffin cups. It took approximately 15 minutes to cook.


The chicken was also really, really easy, and though I cooked it in the oven, it would be great on the grill, too, and would take even less time to cook.


Here's the complete meal:


And my conclusion for the week:
We will make this meal again, and maybe try it on the grill next time. Definitely a crowd-pleaser. As far as my challenge goes, I'm happy with how well it's gone so far. We sat down as a family and decided whether to keep going. I read the recipes for next week, and got a resounding, "Yes, let's keep going!" So despite mixed reviews on the majority of the meals, everyone is happy to keep trying. We'll see how next week goes.