What’s for dinner?

Thought of the Day…When you you’re fixing dinner and the little voice inside says, ‘Does this really make sense?’ LISTEN! ~me

My day doesn’t feel complete unless I’ve read my favorite blogs… I’ve been incomplete a lot recently… I’m still trying to get caught up from working long days and vacation…

…I’m closer each day… But I am cheating and reading current entries along with older ones… This morning’s The Pioneer Woman’s Cooking feature was Grilled Chicken with Lemon Basil. It made my mouth water…

I didn’t follow Ree’s recipe to the letter… She marinated her chicken, I didn’t have time – I wanted to fix it for dinner tonight, before I was asked What’s for dinner?

I stopped at the store on my way home from work and bought fresh chicken breasts, lemons, half-and-half and heavy cream. As I was driving home, I called and asked for someone to light the grill so that it would be ready when I got home. Fortunately, I made perfect timing and got the chicken on the grill literally as I walked in the door.

If you recall from my Coleslaw recipe post, I mentioned the slicer/shredder attachment for my mixer. I also have a juicer attachment and you wouldn’t believe all the juice a lemon has in it!

Remember that voice mentioned in the Thought of the Day quote above? Well, I knew better when I was juicing the lemons that I had too much juice. I make a great Lemon Loaf recipe at Christmas. The first time I used my juicer attachment, I had sooooo much juice the lemon loaf was WAY-WAY lemony…. almost to the point of too much (can you have too much lemon?)…

Well, although I quickly read Ree’s recipe this morning, I only printed the recipe in full-page using her link… it was missing the pictures…

…I usually do OK making other people’s recipes, well….

The printed recipe read “Squeeze in the juice of 4 lemons.”***… So as I said, I juiced my lemons with my juice attachment…. OOOOPS! BIG OOOOOPS! If you look at Ree’s full post with pictures you’ll see she HAND squeezed the lemons into the pot! OOOOOOPS!

Hubby said, “Did you taste this?” I stopped and said, “Dang it! NO! Chef Ramsay (Hell’s Kitchen) would yell at me for not tasting!” I then said, “It’s too lemony, right?” The Offspring said, “Yep.” I tasted it and it wasn’t too bad… LOL! It was REALLY lemony. Not terrible, but not really palatable… actually… yeah… it was not good enough to eat … 🙁

So, my instincts kicked in… I still had half-and-half, cream, butter and cheese… I dumped it all in and tried to dilute the sauce… it worked, well… it was better, but not perfect. The Offspring and I thought it was good. As I was eating dinner I exclaimed, “You donkey!” The Offspring and Hubby chuckled… (it’s another Chef Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen quote) The Chef calls people that when they make stupid mistakes, especially when they don’t taste their food before serving it.

Note to self… when that voice is in your head saying… this is toooooo much lemon…. it IS too much lemon!

Do you ever hear that voice, too, when you’re cooking? If so, what does it say to you?

***UPDATE: Ree’s blog post (http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/07/grilled-chicken-with-lemon-basil-pasta/) listed FOUR lemons, the TastyKitchen recipe lists THREE (http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/main-courses/grilled-chicken-with-lemon-basil-pasta/). I made this from her BLOG POST. It’s possible that at some point the blog post will be updated. I noticed that someone had made the comment that she only used 3 lemons. Leads me to believe that the recipe was updated on TastyKitchen.