Crockpot dinner, 1st attempt...

Meal: Teriyaki Chicken

Roselyn's Rating (based on a scale of "Licking Out the Crock Pot" to "Pitching the Whole Damn Thing"): Meh, could be worse! The other bag will get made but probably not until all the others are gone.  My reaction could most likely be attributed to the fact that any soy sauce based dish has sounded good to me before it's cooked and then sounds, smells and tastes disgusting to me once it's cooked.

Brian's Rating (based on a scale of "Licking Out the Crock Pot" to "Pitching the Whole Damn Thing"): Definitely better than expected!

General Reactions: The apartment smelled amazing as soon as we came home.  The new crock pot Brian bought me for Christmas worked very well.  Since it has a timer on it, I was able to turn it on before I left for work and it switched to Warm after 8 hours.  I'm wondering if maybe that could have been a contributing factor to my not enjoying dinner as much.  It's possible that everything had cooked for too long.  Which I suppose is better than not cooked enough :)

What I'd Change for Next Time: Because I do love teriyaki so much, I'm willing to try this again. (Especially if I make it AFTER the baby is born :) I think he/she is not a fan of Chinese/Japanese food!)

Next time I think I would save this one for a day when I'm going to be home earlier or leave later so the crock pot on for a total of nine and a half hours.  I know that having it change from Low to Warm means that it's not cooking at the same rate, but it has to be still cooking that whole time. 

I'd also like to try adding some more seasoning to it.  I think it needed more ginger and less soy sauce flavor. And maybe some garlic? Or I should say MORE garlic, there was some in there but not enough.

Next time I think I'll try cutting the chicken into smaller pieces before freezing it OR shredding the chicken after it's cooked.  And since it's served over rice, I'd like to try thickening the sauce before serving it.  The sauce was really runny and definitely would have been better if it had some substance to it.

The other thing that could have stood in my way of enjoying dinner tonight was that we got rear ended on the way home.  There was no visible damage to the Scion but it still shook us both up.  The kid who hit us looked like he was going to cry and kept apologizing.  He really didn't hit us that hard.  Neither of our seatbelts locked up and the car didn't move at all really. Brian's going to take the car to the dealership first thing tomorrow morning and get it checked out to make sure we don't need to turn anything in to the insurance.  We're both really okay.  Honestly, if we hadn't heard the noise of him hitting us, we wouldn't have known (mostly). That being said, I'm glad I have an appointment with Dr. Lamade on Thursday.  I just need to hear the baby's heartbeat again to make me feel all better. :)