Jolene's Recipe Journal

Trying to bust out of a cooking slump, I pulled this recipe from my to-try file on Sunday.   Unfortunately, I was outvoted by the guys pizza craving, and it got pushed to last night.    With the chaos of a weeknight going on around me, I'm not sure I gave it justice.   My kitchen was a disaster when I was finished, but I had a smiling happy family, and that's what really matters to me. First I got the chicken soaking.   Critical error- I'd forgotten to buy buttermilk.   No problem, I'll just use regular milk and some vinegar.    Uh, no white vinegar, only apple cider vinegar.   In it went.      I used Sriracha for the hot sauce component. While the chicken did it's thing, I made the waffle batter.   Bacon in waffles around here has been vetoed in the past, so I cooked it up to serve on the side.   I used dried chives instead of green onions, it's what I had on hand.    Someone had eaten the last of the cheddar, so I used a fiesta cheese blend.     Batter

Game day and we wanted a cheesy treat.    We've got several large bags of cheese sticks in the freezer, and visions of crunchy mozzarella sticks danced in my head.   I made up my assembly line, starting with a pie plate with flour in it.   Then a 2nd one with 2 beaten eggs.    I combined panko and regular bread crumbs, added some Penzey's Italian Herb Mix and put that in the 3rd pan.      Once they were breaded, I put them onto a half sheet pan and put them into the freezer.   For a test bake, I preheated the oven to 400º.  I sprayed a small pan with Pam, put 2 sticks on, sprayed the tops with Pam.  Baked 5 mins, flipped, then another 6 mins on the other side.     They were good, but I had left my sticks whole and they flattened out significantly.    I was missing that supercrunchy golden outside and oozy melty inside.   I had to fry. I heated about an inch of vegetable oil in a skillet to 350º and fried them in small batches.   When they reached the color I wanted, I mov