A little disappointing...

Tonight my dinner was Orange Chicken in the Crock Pot with hot rice and Baked Crab Rangoon. Recipe as follows:

Orange Chicken:

1/2 cup soy sauce

1 can orange soda

1 pound chicken breasts

Mix soda and soy sauce in Crock Pot. Add chicken, turn to coat. Cover, cook on low 5-6 hours.

Serve with hot rice.

Baked Crab Rangoon

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 6 oz can crab meat, drained, flaked

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1/4 cup light mayo

12 wonton wrappers

Heat oven to 350. Mix first 4 ingredients. Place 1 wonton wrapper in each of 12 muffin cups sprayed wth cooking spray, extending edges of wrappers over sides of cups. Fill with crab mixture. Bake 18-20 minutes or until edges of cups are golden brown and filling is heated through.

This dinner was a little on the disappointing side for me. I was really looking forward to it because A) I love orange chicken and B) I LOVE crab rangoon. Let's start with the chicken. I guess that it wasn't really the chicken's fault, but to me, the texture was definitely not what I was expecting. When I think orange chicken, I think a thick gooey sauce. This was most definitely not thick, nor gooey. I had expected the sauce to condense up with lots of concentrated flavor, and that just wasn't the case. I could taste the orange in the chicken, but it just wasn't enough for me. Also, the chicken got ridiculously tender, so it pretty much shredded when I took it out of the crock pot... Again, not really the chicken's fault, but most definitely not what I was hoping for.

On to the "crab rangoon"... First of all - I could not find any wonton wrappers anywhere so I decided to use phyllo dough. BIG mistake. Texture was all wrong and the phyllo burnt before the filling got warm. The flavor of the filling was good - I really liked it and it tasted almost exactly like crab rangoon from takeout. It probably could have cut the mayo back to 1/8 of a cup to cut down on the wateriness of the filling. Overall it's hard to make a judgement on these because of the issue with the phyllo. I found the phyllo difficult to work with and it really didn't have the strength to hold up the filling. A couple of my rangoons "pooped" out the filling when I took them out of the muffin tins. I would try this again, but would go to the extra effort of making sure I had actual wonton wrappers.

So where does this leave me? Well I have two pieces of the chicken left (the leftover crab rangoon had to go in the trash) and I'm probably going to try to use those in a casserole or possibly add them to a lemon garlic green bean saute. Happy cooking!