Moroccan Chicken

this morning i found myself less than willing to spend the entire day prepping and cooking dinner, an odd state of affairs for me. my solution: once again bring out the crock pot. i plunked 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts straight from the freezer into the bottom of the crock and sprinkled moroccan seasoning on it. a few weeks ago we threw the first ever Roundtree Casbah, a night of moroccan food and festivities. one of the upshots of this was about a table spoon of leftover moroccan spice mix that i had made based on a servey of mix recipes from the internet. if you don't want to mix a full cup of the stuff, as i did, you could just throw in about a half a teaspoon of cinnamon and a half a teaspoon of cumin and about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cloves. the thing about spices is this: to each his own applies. personally my family loves strong spices, lots of garlic and ginger in just about everything. my dad, on the other hand, could be very happy never eating ginger again. i advise using your nose, if you want to taste something you'd better be able to smell it. adjust to what you like best. just don't be afraid to try something once, cinnamon on meat may sound crazy to you, but it might end up being your new favorite thing. back to the crock at hand: meat, spices, 1 small onion diced, 2 cloves garlic diced, 1/2 cup lentils, 1/2 cup rice, about two cups of water, about 1/2 cup sliced dried apricots, about 1/4 cup raisins. put it on low and keep an eye on your rice. i'm not going to lie to you, i forgot about mine and it went to mush. very tasty mush, but mush none the less. as a solution for people who can stay at home i'd say you could let everything else go for about an hour then stir and add the rice. for the record, the lentils were perfect. for the salad i drained (see also:drank) about half of the juice off a small can of mandarin oranges and dumped the rest with the oranges into the bottom of my salad bowl, add about a table spoon of soy sauce, a slightly more generous table spoon of seasoned rice wine vinegar, a pinch of garlic salt, a pinch of powdered ginger, and a titch (slightly smaller than a pinch) of pepper. mix it up and toss with one head of romaine and one chopped cucumber, drizzle on a bit of olive oil and toss again. top with slivered almonds all the way around (chicken included) and serve.