The food is lousy and the portions are small

My family, God Bless 'em, expects a home cooked meal every night.  And despite my lack of interest in cooking, I try my best to accommodate them even though *I* would be perfectly happy having a PBJ and a glass of milk for dinner.

I am Not Known for my fabulous cooking or ability to whip up a meal using whatever is on hand but usually, I can make something that everyone will eat. 

Okay, not always.  Take my spaghetti.  The only people who will eat it are TheManTheMyth and me.  Thing 1 prefers Alfredo sauce to my spaghetti sauce and Thing 2 prefers Chef Boyardee in the can.

Whatever.

Every so often I like to introduce a new recipe into the fold and sometimes those recipes are a Hit and get added to my repertoire and sometimes, they are Not.  Buffalo Chicken was a Hit.  Chicken meatloaf was Not.


And neither was last night's New Recipe.


I had noticed a recipe on the back of a bottle of French's mustard and I am all about trying out recipes found on the backs of bottles, cans and jars.  In fact, I actually have a cookbook titled, "Best Recipes From the Backs of Bottles, Cans and Jars."  I love cookbooks, I have quite a few of them and although I rarely actually cook anything found in them, I still love to read them.


Anyway.

This French's Mustard recipe for chicken breasts looked simple and tasty.


Simple, yes.  Tasty, no.


Mixing mustard with ranch dressing to pour on chicken should have been my first indication that, um, NO.  But I followed the super easy directions, mixed up a batch of sauce/marinade, covered the chicken with the sauce, let it marinade for about an hour and then baked the chicken according to the directions, which was 25 minutes at 350'.


Have you ever smelled a mustard/ranch dressing sauce that is heated to 350'?  It stinks.


Oh, and 25 minutes was so not enough time.  I had to up the temp to 400' and transfer the chicken to a baking sheet and let it cook for a total of 45 minutes.  For boneless skinless chicken breasts.  


Surprisingly, the chicken was not dried out and tough after 45 minute.  In fact, it was very juicy and tender.


And tasted like crap.


Okay, the chicken itself was fine.  It tasted like chicken.  That was covered in a nasty mustard/ranch sauce.

We scraped off the nasty sauce and decided that it was nothing that a little soy sauce couldn't fix.


Except we had ran out of soy sauce.  And everyone just sat there and stared at each other in a "Wudder we gonna do NOW?" way.


TheManTheMyth and Thing 1 bravely ate their slices of chicken, Thing 2 had just a bowl of rice and as for me, I took a few bites and then put down my fork and said, "I can't eat this.  I just can't."

So this recipe was a big fat FAIL.  

I think we'll be having spaghetti tonight.