Not what I thought...

 Last night I tried a new recipe that sounded great, Bacon Wrapped Chicken with Blue Cheese and Pecans.  "Very tasty" I was thinking, but since I am the only one who REALLY digs blue cheese, I decreased the amount called for by about 1/4 cup.  Ok, now the recipe starts out telling you to butterfly the breasts and pound them out a bit(makes 'em cook a bit faster) I did ok with the pounding but the butterflying, well I reccomend putting them on a cutting board or a plate to do that.  I tried doing it while holding them in my hand and ended up cutting my finger(feel free to laugh-go ahead-I even had a feeling I was going to do such a thing!).  Obviously I don't do this very often to think I could do it by just holding them in my hand!  So after I bandaged my finger, I proceeded to pounding.  The recipe says to use parchment paper, but compared to wax paper, that stuff is expensive!  I used wax paper and it worked just fine.  I also used the industrial sized mallet from the garage, why buy a fancy-smansy meat tenderizer? 

It was fun. Just a note though, if you use one of these mallets, be sure not to pound too hard as there won't be too much left after you're done(this I have done before...).

Now the recipe says to sprinkle the blue cheese, pecans and the green onions evenly over the seasoned breasts.  I mixed them up and then put them on, if anyone can sprinkle blue cheese evenly, please tell me how!  BTW, I didn't even use all of this... I had a bit left over and I put it on a salad today, yum.... 

All-rightey.  Now, you are supposed to "roll the chicken, wrap each roll with bacon and secure with toothpicks."  Sounds easy, and in theory, it is.  However, when you mangle the breasts trying to butterfly them, they don't roll real pretty or easily.  Mine was more of a "fold and tuck" operation, though you can't really tell by the photo.  I did manage to get one done "perfectly"(I think that was the breast I finally put down to butterfly, go figure...).

 

While I browned the chickens, I fixed a salad.  Just some spinach, iceburg letuce, red cabbage, celery, red pepper, tomato and a hard boiled egg.  After browning, I put them into the oven for about 10 min while I made the "gravy" to go over the chickens.  I say gravy because you use the drippings from browning the chickens, add butter and flour and whisk in chicken stock, which to me is a gravy, not a sauce.  Anyhow, when it thickens a bit, I added 1/2&1/2 and a grainy mustard like the recipe said too.  Maybe my mustard wasn't the right one, or maybe it's just too much mustard- I don't know- but the gravy was too mustardy for me.  Here's the finished plate

The mac and cheese recipe, you can find here.  It is a slow-cooker recipe and super yummy!

When I fixed the kid's plates, I realized just how much blue cheese was really in them.  It didn't seem like that much, even after altering the recipe, but WOW it packs a punch!  So I ended up scraping it out of theirs and putting the gravy on the side.  The Rocket loved it( surprise!) and Sweetie Pie didn't, however she did eat every last scrap of bacon on her plate and wanted to steal it from the other chickens. She loves bacon!  S  had it regular with gravy and liked it, but said the pucker factor from the blue cheese was too much and ended up scraping most of it out.  I liked the chicken part, but the gravy... not so much.  Like I said before, it may have been the mustard I used, or just too much.  All in all, it was not what I thought it would be.  Oh well, it made a good sandwich this afternoon...

Tonight, I made some lemon iced shortbread type cookies.  I don't have a recipe for you, sorry.  They turned out pretty good(despite forgetting to put the vanilla in)and were just exactly as I thought they would be... refreshing!

Before icing them I noticed a little smiley face in one of the cookies...

 

and after icing....the smile would be on my face!

These would be really good in the summer, my favorite season. And since I'm missing it so much, I made them now.  My family will be lucky to get any...hehehe.