3. Chicken With Pineapple

Weeknight dinner!

And one that nearly killed me (figuratively! Don’t worry–I didn’t set myself on fire). The preparation of this meal wiped me out. While I was making #3 I washed 2 loads of laundry, baked a cake, and wrote the previous post for #36 Baked Swiss Steak.

Oh, and somewhere in there I managed to shatter my big Corelle platter on the kitchen floor. This then required me to get on my hands and knees in an attempt to locate each and every shard of glass so that Brian wouldn’t step on anything and bleed (like I ultimately ended up doing).

Screw you Corelle and your commercials with the oiled runway and the clumsy models! You lying sack of poo, those plates break. They break real good. It was like freakin’ shrapnel.

I mean, it was EVERYWHERE.

Needless to say, after the cleaning and the baking and the cooking and the laundering, I was tired. How tired? BRIAN TIRED (see photograph below).

: Don’t worry. Brian did not die from heat stroke. This is just how he sleeps sometimes. Though the first time we found him like this, we thought he had.

But that is neither here nor there. What matters is that ultimately #3 Chicken With Pineapple was served. Let’s get to it.

This meal just screamed 1970s to me. I guess because the pineapple gives it a faux-Hawaiian feel and I associate Hawaiian prints with the 1970s. Perhaps something to do with Fantasy Island or when The Brady Bunch took that ill-fated family vacation to Hawaii with the cursed Tiki that almost got Greg killed while surfing. Yeah, you know the one. Peter almost gets bit by a big tarantula and there was a creepy Archaeologist who kept the boys hostage in a cave. It was all very Scooby Doo (or Guiding Light).

: Look at those prints! They’re so bright and…where’s Jan?

I started #3 at 7:00pm with the goal of dinner being served at 8:30pm. I dredged the chicken in flour, made the pineapple juice/bouillon mix, and sliced the onion. Then the platter incident happened. So that slowed me down.

It was right before 8:00pm that I got the pineapple into the melted margarine to brown. The pineapple was done at 10 after and the oil and onions went in. The onions took a short time to brown, about 5 minutes or so. The onion came out, the chicken went in. At 8:25pm the chicken, onions, and pineapple/chicken bouillon mix went into a Pyrex and then into a 350 degree oven.

In the down time while the chicken was baking I assembled the ‘relish tray’ which amounted to a few pepperoncini and cherry peppers because I didn’t have any other relish-appropriate items in the refrigerator.

So by 8:55pm the first 30 min portion of the baking had ended and I took the dish out to add the peas and pineapple slices. It looked really, really, soggy. So Cleve (yeah he was home by this tim) aided me in draining off some of the pineapple sauce.

At 9:00pm the fruit and the peas went into the casserole and it went in to bake for another 20 minutes (I also upped the temp on the oven).

While that was baking, the iceberg was plated, and the rolls (ok, the last few biscuits I made for the braised spare rib dinner) were warmed.

So Dinner is Served!

At 9:30pm.

It’s positively cosmopolitan of us to be dining so late!

I guess that this is pretty much what DiS! had in mind. It looks like card #3.

This wasn’t one of the better meals, although not inedible. It was still a little soupy for my taste. I think I would’ve liked this more if the meat was roasted and there was a pineapple glaze. Alas, that isn’t #3. That’s more like a Plum Barbequed Chicken, which will make an appearance in the future.

And now, Dessert!

Here’s what went down with the cake. I don’t know if there is a difference between ‘Marble Pound Cake’ (that’s what DiS! asked for) and Betty Crocker Marble Cake (which is what I made). But none of that matters in the end. There was a cake, which is an achievement in itself. I used one of my copper Jell-O molds and made it into the shape of a heart!!!!