A Saturday Night

Have you ever read a recipe and thought to yourself "Wow!  That sounds fantastic!".  You read all the reviews and everyone says the same thing?  I did that yesterday. 

I love to look up and read recipes along with their reviews.  It tends to give you a real flavor for the meal along with some excellent ideas when folks have made adjustments and sometimes if there was a mistake in the recipe (which is easy to do).

We were staying in last night and the ingredients I had chosen out of the freezer and array of veggies were chicken and sweet potatoes.  I had not really eaten sweet potatoes growing up, I don't know why we just didn't but, Michael loves them, they are a great source of vitamins and minerals but best of all there is nothing like a baked sweet potato smothered in melting butter (which may reduce the health factor but....).

I had read a recipe for oven fried chicken awhile ago which I was intrigued with.  You simple take your chicken parts roll them in some Dijon mustard mixed with a bit of olive oil and then cover them with panko breadcrumbs which you have seasoned any way your heart desires.  So I did this, threw two sweet potatoes in a 350 degree oven for about an hour (I am always leery when the temperature is something other than 350) and went to figure out what vegetable to have with this.

Right now my freezer is absolutely packed with frozen veggies.  We have french cut green beans, whole green beans, peas, corn, cut spinach, broccoli, brussel sprouts and baby lima beans (I don't think I forgot anyone).  In case you are wondering about the over abundance of frozen veggies the secret is they were on sale.  That is the reason Michael comes home and finds the five containers of ice cream in there too!

The lima beans called my name (Colleen come cook us and eat us).  Michael had introduced me to the southern way of cooking vegetables like string beans and lima beans which includes bacon or some other fat pork meat.  I have to say they are delicious but I suspect totally unhealthy.  He started cooking them with beef bouillon which still tastes very good but is somewhat better for you. I considered doing this but decided that I wanted something different, something absolutely mouth wateringly delicious.  Off to the Internet I went.  I perused numerous recipes, assessing what I had for the recipe, if I could make any substitutions, if it went with what else we were having and what the comments were.  I finally came across it, the recipe I had dreamed of, I had everything that went in it and the comments were fabulous!  These lima beans were going to be unlike any we had ever eaten!

Off to work I went chopping and measuring and cooking.  I have to admit they smelt good!  Finally dinner was ready.  I put the chicken on each of the plates, cut the sweet potato in half (I have to buy the largest ones known to man kind for some reason) and put the lima beans in a serving bowl.  We sat down, Michael said grace and we dug into dinner.  By now I was so excited about the worlds best lima beans that I had to eat them first.  I carefully got a forkful, blew on them since they were still very hot and carefully placed these tasty morsels in my mouth......

Lima beans.  That's all they were!  No great explosion of flavor, not need to eat the entire bowl myself (as so many had said), no longing to drink the sauce the limas were in. I could have just cooked them in plain water and had the same results.

So the great lima bean recipe search will continue.  Until I find that one recipe that does the job, it will be beef bouillon and water for our lima's.