Back on Valentines Day 2015 Jenn purchased a subscription to the food delivery service Plated. Basic concept is that they will send you 2 meals a week to cook. They accidentally sent us the wrong order for our first round in April and then with everything going on we didn't get to order anything until now. Crazy right? For the "trouble" we actually got two weeks free. So this is the first of four meals that we will end up cooking on plated. Before we get into the recipe here's a video I put together for unboxing our Plated box. 

One of my favorite kind of meals to make are the easy ones. Don't get me wrong I have no problem putting the time into a recipe if I know with a high degree of certainty that our dinner needs will be met. But often times these recipes don't turn out. So when I stumbled upon the growing popularity of one pan (or one pot) meals I began looking for recipes to try out. The first one we chose was a Garlic Ranch Chicken with an assortment of veggies. 

Since purchasing & selling the house all in the same year we haven't had a ton of time to try our new restaurants. Which is a shame because even more then cooking meals I love having professionals cook for me. What's even better is to go to a restaurant that makes things I'd never dream or have any desire to make like Sushi. This past weekend Jenn and I were out and about on Saturday and headed to Fashion Island (our old stomping grounds). We were thinking of hitting up Wahoos when Jenn proclaimed that she wanted Sushi for her birthday.

It's been almost two months since our last edition of Chef Joel & Jenn. But for anyone that's been keeping up on the blog you know that we sold our house and moved into a new apartment. Finding time to try new recipes just hasn't been a top priority. However we're back with our latest. A 5 ingredient pasta that might be one of my favorite recipes we've tried so far. 

A couple weeks back Jake came down on a Friday night which brought up the age old question, what's for dinner. We were really contemplating going to some of our favorite staples like The Crow Bar and Spaghetti Bender. But we finally landed on doing something different and went with Sol Cocina on PCH in Newport. 

We're doing it! After starting the year off slow, Jenn and I have regained our momentum and have now tried three new recipes in three weeks. Sure the first two didn't pan out that well. We had the Kung Pao Spaghetti which was delicious but just got old pretty quick. Then two weeks back we had the Chicken Tikka Masala which had the right flavor but the chicken completely dried out. This week we went back to yet another chicken dish, this time a Crispy Baked Honey Garlic Chicken, basically something you would get at a Chinese Takeout.