30 Meals in 30 Days: French Baguettes, Orange & Lemon Salad, & Maple Glazed Chicken / Eggplant

Tonight we were having some friends over so I thought I'd play this dinner fairly safe. Tonight the intention was to serve Maple Glazed Chicken with an Orange & Lemon Summer Salad and some French Baguette on the side to mop it all up.

As the Orange & Lemon salad became a reality, I switched it for regular ol' lettuce, cucumber & carrots and John made some smashed sweet potatoes to fill us up while he was cooking the chicken. That's right. My vegetarian husband is amazing at cooking meat.

So let's start with the one I'm excited for:

This meal option frightened me a little because we're talking about french baguettes. The real deal. The grown-up stuff. It takes about 1.5 hrs. of preparation and involves bread. Rising. Cue Jaws theme song.

Here's what it's supposed to look like.

This recipe comes from Honey Bee's Recipes - this is her final product.

Here's how to make it.
Normally I write my own rendition of how to make it because I often find the original recipe confusing, or made some changes to the original recipe. In this case, I followed the instructions to a tee including the part about being "ghetto" and "living in the olden days" and using the hand-clap method instead of the spray-bottle method, and a wooden spoon instead of a KitchenAid mixer.

That said, here's the recipe: Give the author the love she truly deserves!

Also, I did follow the trick where you put the ice bath at the bottom of the oven and it worked perfectly. I got very crispy crusts!

Here's what it really looks like.

It looks so dang good that I'm sharing multiple photos.

Thanks again to my wonderful husband for snapping those shots.

Here's how we're rating it.
Taste value: 10/10
Simplicity value: 8/10. Simpler than I thought it would be.
Appearance value: 14/10
Entertainment value: 10/10
Coolness value: 10/10. Never again will I buy a baguette. And bonus, we're having baguette-style french toast in the morning.

Here's how to make it.

Mix 3 tbsp maple syrup, 1 tbsp soya sauce, 1 tbsp lemon juice & 2 cloves of garlic in a bowl. Cook in a frying pan with the chicken. So.simple.

Can be substituted for eggplant.

Here's what it looks like.

Here's how I'm rating it.
Taste value: 8/10. I'm a sucker for sweet stuff!
Simplicity value: 10/10. You could marinate for 2 hrs but we didn't and it came out just fine.
Appearance value: 8/10. Pretty standard.
Entertainment value: 9/10 - I hope our guests liked it, but it was generally a clean prep & tidy up.
Coolness value: 3/10 - Again, standard meal but I hadn't made anything like it before so it was new to me!

You can tell something wasn't awesome if John didn't take a photo of it. Sigh. I'm very disappointed in this recipe & would not recommend it as-is, but would love to use it as a starting point for something similar. We're talking orange, lemon and olive oil: where did I go wrong?! I'm not even going to put my logo on this picture - seriously, I do not claim ownership. You have it.

I got this recipe from My Family Recipe Rocks and unfortunately it does not rock.

Here's what it really looks like.

The recipe itself is "sold" to you as a salad, but in the video the family who owns the recipe tells you it's a bread dipper. I'm going with neither - it could be a salad dressing, but it is really strong in taste (way too much lemon!) and almost tart.

Here's how to make it.
Combine the juice of 2 lemons, flesh of 3 lemons, flesh of 3 oranges, 5 minced cloves of garlic, 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp cayenne pepper and let sit refrigerated for 15 minutes before serving.

Here's how we're rating it. 
Taste value: 2/10. The orange is nice but otherwise it's way too lemon-y! And if I didn't enjoy garlic I'd probably say there was too much.. but I'm not sure there is such a thing.
Simplicity value: 4/10. Sure it's quick, but cutting the inner flesh from lemons and oranges without skin is surprisingly not simple. It's messy & juicy - hence the messy, juicy result.
Appearance value: 2/10. It's colourful which is good, but that's the only redeeming quality of this salad/dipper.
Entertainment value: 1/10.
Coolness value: If it worked out, I'd give it high coolness points! Loads of vitamin C in this! But for now, 0/10.