A dreadful dinner!

[Marc Naimark]

Went to the movies last night (Happy Go Lucky, hated it). And it was after 10:30 when we got home. I had planned to make a salad, but somehow had a blockage about:
1) emptying the dirty dishes to get at the big salad bowl
2) cooking up some chicken to put in the salad
3) making a vinaigrette
Do you ever have this experience where you had planned to make something, but when it came time to do it, you just couldn't bear the trouble? Even if doing something else is just as much trouble? Anyway, that's what it was like for me last night.

Still, BF needed feeding, so I took this upper chicken thighs I had in the fridge, and decided to pan fry them and serve with pasta or rice and some sort of improvised sauce.

I started in on this, getting the thighs frying, before I realized that for the first time in my life I had neither rice nor pasta in the house. Nothing but a bit of semolina, and not enough of that. Panic! Ah, relief, of a sort. Some instant lasagna pasta in the back of the cupboard. Break into pieces and boil it up. Situation sort of saved.

Now for a sauce. In the frying pan I browned some chopped onions and garlic. And looked for any tomato sauce or pesto I might have. Nothing. I did have plenty of cherry tomatoes, so I chopped them up. Not bad, but not all that either. So I added some fromage blanc. Ugh. Too acidic. So a bit of sugar. OK, but not very flavorful. Aha! In the back of the cupboard, I found a can of baby peas. This idea might have been good, but I used the entire can, far too much in the pea department, and as they cooked, they gave off so much water, the sauce became a soup. So I used the cream cheese nuggets I had bought for the salad to thicken and cheese up the sauce.

Result: undercook chicken thighs, and the worst sauce in the world on broken up lasagna noodles, which instead of nicely working as a taglietelle substitute, simply turn into slabs of starch. BF bravely attempted to eat this mess, but I ended up tearing the dish from his hands and flushing it down the toilet.

I'm still recovering from the 1-2 punch of a bad film and a worse dinner. Snif.

[nina]

OMG!! I am so feeling your pain... after a long sabbatical from cooking due to the whole moving thing, I attempted to make dinner tonight with the few kitchen items that we had in the house and it was awful! Besides being completely uninspired chicken with roasted baby potatoes and Brussels sprouts, the sprouts just did not taste right, and the remaining chicken and potatoes were just so incredibly boring. I can't stand eating for the sake of nourishment only - actually depresses me a bit! BF braved it.. he was starving when he came home from school and I think I could have fed him anything, but I just felt disappointed.

I cannot wait until my kitchen arrives from San Diego - first thing I am making is paella!! just to get the inspiration back in my blood.