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I adore brussel sprouts and will try this. I adore brussel sprouts and who doesn't love bacon and cheese. Wow, what a combination. Thanks for the great recipe to try. I just happen to have some sprouts in my refrigerator at the moment. Thanks for the inspiration.

A brief tribute to the chief lunchlady at my school from grade 4-12. Mrs. Harwell fed about a hundred hungry kids every day. (towards the middle seventies she supervised two locations)

Almost all of the food was prepared onsite from fresh ingredients. NO surplus cheese or bunk food. Our school district was very small and had the benefit of being well funded. We paid a nominal fee for lunch.( I think it was fifty cents my senior year -1976). Potatoes arrived in a sack, were peeled and cooked from scratch.

In her kitchen the only thing that came out of can was condiments. She would come out into the lunchroom with a big pot under her arm of whatever was leftover about 20 minutes after everyone was seated and got many takers. The food was simple wholesome and fresh.

Pinto beans and cornbread from her kitchen was a feast I still remember.

Sounds and looks soooo good, I'm drooling, and seems like it's type II diabetes friendly & the sides too. I'm making it asap. Thanks for the recipes. I'm stoked it uses thighs they are my favorite piece of chicken.

Thanks for these recipes; I want to put together a plate that contains all three items ASAP!

It's interesting, I just the other day stumbled onto a recipe for Korean fried chicken, and the coating there was corn starch as well. I would never have thought to use corn starch.

my high school cafeteria had a really addictive lunch box: yukari (plum vinegar infused dried red shiso) rice balls with karaage. yeah not very well balanced, but so good... I suspected they used garlic powder in the marinade (because if somebody buys the lunch before lunch time, the whole classroom can smell like karaage, used to make us even more hungry).

My mom's version is simple salt and pepper, lightly dusted with flour. The yummiest part was the super crispy chicken skin... boneless, skin-on thighs are probably the most popular chicken part sold in Japan. In the US I only see either bone-less, skin-less or bone-in, skin-on. Do I have to become friends with local butchers?

I know this will sound overly dramatic, but learning how to cook changed my life. I was really depressed earlier this year, and a bunch of people suggested I take up a new hobby to make myself feel better. I thought about what I could do that would be both enjoyable and productive, and I soon realized that food is one of very few things about which I get genuinely excited. So, I decided to hone my cooking skills. I really enjoy the sense of accomplishment when I make something yummy, and I think that's helped my overall mood to improve.

I think more people should try cooking their own food, although I do realize that some people (like my mom) have tried and just don't enjoy it. It's like any other hobby, but in my opinion, all grown-ups should have at least basic kitchen knowledge.

@widget, i work til 1am... and i cook before i go to work (most of the time)

I think NYC is a different animal. I grew up in the Midwest, where a restaurant dinner was a very special occasion. And, everyone knew how to cook, including the "feminists" who simply micro'd dinners. In NYC there's other factors: working til 8/9 pm frequently, very small or non-existent kitchens in rental apts, quality of appliances (my stove had two temps: Inferno and lukewarm), etc.
On the other hand, here on SE we've seen stories of underground dinner clubs in NYC, so somebody's cooking!

Sometimes my husband and I will just take stale tortilla chips and toss them directly into our salsa and eat it with a spoon. Tastes pretty good that way.

Crush them and use as binder in a meat loaf.

I just toss the stale stuff. They are empty calories anyway, so I don't see the point in eating them if they're not enjoyable.

We usually only buy one bag of chips/etc. at a time anyway, so there isn't a second bag to open while the first goes stale.

On a very frightening side note, we got a huge bag of Doritos at Costco a few weeks ago and it was gone in less than a week. And we don't have kids!

@dhorst, in my house it's pickles. One poor, sad lonely pickle, floating in a jar... I've actually taken to "downsizing" things like that so that I don't have giant jars with one pickle here, ten olives there...

No one around here really eats snacks much. Crackers we eat with cheese, but they go from the package into an airtight, bug-invasion-free sealed jar. Nuts, I also repackage, but nuts are mostly for baking rather than snacking.

I don't think there's anything wrong with using up the last bits of anything, I just thought the example was kind of humorous -- you didn't finish your junkfood, so it's going on your salad. In most homes, the problem would be getting someone to eat the salad in the first place, and the crunchy stuff would be the incentive.

Good golly, sorry about the typos there.