Not ruined, but not great

I don’t set out to ruin dinner when I cook. I just don’t always have all the ingredients that are called for. Especially getting ideas from chefs on the food network, some of these ingredients can’t be found out here in the country. So I look around my kitchen and think “What else can I use?” That’s when my famous substitutions come into play, and I’m not too keen on dragging three boys to the grocery store just to pick up some weird cheese that they may not even have.

I told Karen “I’ll make dinner” before she went to work, so I had to come up with something. Searching through our book of internet recipes I found this roast chicken with garlic and citrus that Karen had made before. The only problem was that Giada wanted me to roast the chicken whole, and it was already 5:30. I cut up the chicken and put the garlic, lemon, and orange slices on top.

It turned out very nice actually, and even the sauce was good. My only complaint would be that it didn’t brown in the oven since I stacked things on top of it. Who knew?

In other news, we did move the furniture back into the dining room. There are still some loose ends to tie up, but we did entertain on Saturday. The neighborhood got to watch, too, since one of those loose ends is to hang the blinds on the windows.   Karen has some pictures of the (kind of) finished product.