I liked the orange chicken more than I expected. I thought it was good. Dd thought it was "fine", but not really good enough to make again. DH isn't a huge fan of breast meat, so if I did make it again, I'd need to add thighs. He said it wasn't that flavorful, which is really just completely wrong. I don't know how he thought that. The leftovers are even better. I might see if I can find another orange chicken recipe to try that will just be a little different and try that. I liked that it's different than anything else I make. Too often new recipes are just similar to something else.
The red beans were good too, in that they're different. I use the same cajun spice mix on a chicken and pasta recipe, so when the beans were cooking, I though it would just taste like that, but it doesn't at all. The chicken recipe is a cream sauce and the beans are tomato based and it's just totally different. For the beans, I used chicken sausage that was "andouille style".