I'd say they worked well, especially in light of the fact that they are BAKED, not FRIED.

BUT WAIT! Before you dismiss them, writing them off as not worthy of your time in anything other than a fried state, let me say this: they were better than 75% of the wings I've had around town (Chicago, fyi), and WAY EASY.

Here's the recipe*:

10 chicken wings, separated @ the joint (Most grocery stores will sell these already done, or you can get wings and use a knife or kitchen shears to DIY. Think: empowering!)
6T butter (I used salted sweet cream butter, but unsalted is fine.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1t salt
1/2c. hot sauce (make sure you pick a fiery one if you want a lot of heat OR add 2t/as desired red chili powder)

(I know, not SUPER healthy, but: BAKED, not FRIED!)

In a large pot w/ a steamer basket, fill w/ 1" of water. Bring to a boil, then turn to med-high heat, add wings to steamer basket, and steam wings for 10', covered.

Line a baking sheet w/ paper towels. Place metal cooling rack over the top.
Lay wings out on cooling rack and pat dry w/ paper towels.
Refrigerate 1h.

Preheat oven to 425F.
Replace paper towels lining baking sheet w/ parchment paper. (This is good to soak up the chicken juices as they bake off, though not absolutely necessary.)
Roast wings 20'.
Flip wings over, roast another 20' (until skin is dried, more golden).

While wings are roasting, in a small saucepan melt butter, garlic, and salt.
Remove from heat, stir in hot sauce.

When wings are finished, pour into bowl along w/ sauce. Toss to coat.
Serve warm with ranch and/or bleu cheese sauce, celery sticks, etc.
Lastly: go ahead, lick the bowl. The sauce is that good.

*Thank you, Alton Brown.

Happy (almost) new year! (Should that be capitalized? As in "New Year" - as in, its own specially labeled day or something? This is going to bug me. It's like when you know what something should be grammatically, but conventionally it's all sorts of wrong, and you just look like an utterly lame nerd for trying to be grammatically correct? E.g., good v. well, "too" preceded by a comma, etc.)**

Regardless, I say: so long, 2009! Learn from the bad, celebrate the good, and hope for an even better 2010. That said, that's more than our typical New Year's sentiments here. It's really all just an excuse to eat and indulge in late nights and "quality" TV.

Bring on the wings! (I'm making them myself. It's a first, I'll let you know how they turn out.)

*Note: I have a soft place in my heart for exclamation marks. Many, many exclamation marks.
**I am also overfond of parenthetical notes/comments/asides. ***
***Add " / " to that list, too.

Head of household, sole breadwinner, king of the castle: Hottie McHots. You may read posts mentioning/about him from time to time, though I assure you that my writing will in no way do justice to his complete awesomeness.

Fruit Loop: Our first-born, Fruit Loop is a brilliant, expressive character overflowing with personality. (And by that I mean yes, absolutely, we have discussed adopting him out. Or exchanging him for the pizza we're having delivered because the day was WAAAAAAAAY too much for me to whip up any kind of enjoyable (or even edible) dinner. You know THOSE kinds of days? Oh yes. Indeed.)

Cracker Jack: Our second child, still a littl'un. Far more serious than Fruit Loop, it will be interesting to see how this one turns out. One of our favorite things about Cracker Jack at this point: he sleeps through the night! (Aaaaaaaaand...THERE, now I've done it, that right there is a pretty much guaranteed FAIL at sleeping through the night anymore.)

The pet: a surprisingly hardy carnival fish. We hope to fill this section out a bit more in the coming years, primarily with a dog. Or two. Or ten, really, why not? I'm also really liking the idea of some sort of working farm, and our future menagerie keeps growing (in my head, at least). So far it includes chickens, sheep, a cow or two, horses, the requisite barn cats... Ooh, and maybe we could have a buffalo farm or something, yeah!!

But, for now, having kids is not unlike having pets. In fact, Cracker Jack has a penchant for chewing on DVD cases and shoes. And while I try to feed them a well-balanced diet, shoe leather is not a part of that. Pardon me, there are some shoes that need saving!

I'll keep this short and sweet as I still work out the design kinks.

It's not that life knocks me down - rather, I knock myself down, and sometimes it takes me a while to find those proverbial bootstraps, pull myself up by them, and get back on track. This blog is one big attempt (really, multiple, multiple attempts) to do that.