Slow Cooker Experiment #2: Weird Chicken

For my second experiment with Gretel, I decided to check out a recipe I'd seen online for pineapple chicken. However, I didn't have half the ingredients (and they didn't look so good anyway) so I found other recipes online, looked around at what I had in my room, and ended up throwing the following into the slow cooker:

• Chicken (the precooked kind, from the foil-ey packages)
  
• Pineapple (canned)
  
• Mandarin oranges (canned)
  
• Green bell pepper
  
• Celery
  
• Lemon juice
  
• Agave
  
• Spicy mustard
  
• Onion
  
• Black pepper
  

I have no idea what any of these amounts would be; I just completely eyeballed the whole thing. I also poured in a bit of the juice from the canned fruit. (FYI, the picture is from an experiment a few weeks ago, because I couldn't find a picture that matched the recipe...isn't the gel lovely?)

These all hung out in Gretel for about half an hour on high, until it was time for my ~5 hour lab. I had a nice-ish dinner to go to with some classmates and a teacher about an hour after lab, so my plan was to finish the Southern blot as fast as possible then eat and go to dinner.

There was a twenty-minute break in the lab around two hours before the dinner, so I ran over to my room to turn on Gretel. Oops...instead of turning her off before, I'd set her to low! I mean, everything was fine, just very soggy. At least it wasn't the toaster oven or rice cooker. I self-consciously turned off Gretel, then ran over to lab. When I got back (fyi, the Southern blot worked! Yay!), I poured it on some rice and tried it.

Wow, really, REALLY delicious! The flavors blended together WONDERFULLY. I scarfed it down and had a lovely time at the Honors Institute dinner.

Lessons learned:

• Always double-check cooking appliances before leaving the dorm.
  
• Mustard is a simple, delicious way to add flavor, even to a meal that isn't eaten with the hands.
  
• If the plan is to make a dish entitled “________ Chicken” that is not a soup, one package of pre-cooked chicken is not enough to make a decent amount of food.
  
• Do NOT leave a dish like this on for most of the day, since the chicken will be overcooked (though still very eatable).
  

Conclusion: I am DEFINITELY making this again. I will have to figure out how to do the chicken next time (cooked? raw? whole? breasts?). I'll find an actual name for this recipe that isn't something inane like “Pineapple Chicken.”

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SOFI!!!!! I LOOOOOVE YOU!!!!!! HAVE FUN DRIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT!!!!