The last time I was down visiting my mom, we went to a Chinese restaurant and she ordered the best orange chicken that I had ever tasted. It turns out that they make it the way they do in China, using dried orange peel (zest) instead of using orange juice like most places in America. They said using fresh is better than using orange juice, but the dried peel is even better. The great thing about it was the great orange oil flavor without all the sickly sweetness that you usually find these days.

As Laurie was arriving home last night, one of our neighbors asked if we wanted to go to a Chinese buffet that we had been considering trying, and we decided to give it a go.

In Massachusetts, there were some very nice lunch buffets in restaurants that sold regular sit down dinners. When I moved back to the northwest, I had hoped that there would be some good ones around, but the ones in Lynnwood were very disappointing. Laurie couldn't eat at those, and I didn't really want to.