Dinner - Chicken Dumplings (aka Throw Together Meal #1)

Matt and I had no idea what to make for dinner last night. We were also quite lazy and didn't really want to cook, but we had to anyways.

Yesterday, I was bad and went record shopping for 45s and albums (again). So pardon if anything is off in this post. I am currently listening to a gorgeous Mary Wells album from 1963. Awesome.

Alright, well back to the food here. Anyways, the laziness that is record shopping led me to not want to make any sort of dinner. It takes a lot to go through all those bins, and I think I got home with too little energy. And thus, this strange, strange meal was created.

Matt and I picked up a package of frozen dumplings from the Asian food market "Pacific Produce" on S. 27th here in Milwaukee. We have been trying to think of something to pair them with, but dumplings are hard to pair (I think) unless you eat them as an appetizer or something. These particular dumplings were made by a company called Wei-Chuan and are of the "Vegetable and Chicken" variety. The dumplings were actually quite delicious, similar to the quality you would find when dining out (almost similar to gyoza). Not bad for a frozen food!!

We chose to serve the dumplings alongside some boil in the bag rice we got on sale, and some of the green beans we had left from another dinner (wow, I just thought of how strange boil in the bag rice is).

I cooked the green beans in the skillet, adding a bit of olive oil, a tablespoon or so of water, and 2 chopped garlic cloves. I let them cook uncovered a couple minutes, then threw the lid on and let them steam a good 8 minutes, stirring once or twice. I added a sprinkle of that Penzey's Fox Point seasoning we used the other night. They actually turned out quite nicely and I believe we will cook them again like this in the future.

We each added a little sprinkle of Japanese rice seasoning (bad, bad, delicious stuff...complete with dried seaweed, sesame seeds and my current arch-nemesis MSG) to top off our rice.
The meal turned out surprisingly well!