Cheater's Chicken Piccata

Photo from Food Network

Oh my little blog, how I've missed you. I have been pulled in some new directions lately - you know the kind that you actually get paid for?  I think they call it work.  It is not my friend.  Also I may have mentioned on Facebook that I was having some technical difficulties.  Now some of you saw that I posted a little something about a corn holder in an electrical outlet episode with the littlest Bell (who was, not that we're keeping score, in the care of Mr. Bell at the time).  In spite of many questions, I can neither confirm nor deny that they had anything to do with each other.

What I can confirm is that I have learned a hard truth about my family.  They sometimes prefer a mix to my homemade.  Case in point - Chicken Piccata.  I used to make this pretty regularly and I typically use the Barefoot Contessa recipe which you can find here.  Let me tell you something about one Ina Garten.  That lady can cook and her recipes?  Divine.  And no, she doesn't pay me to say that.  Like many others, she doesn't even know about me.  Now not to go off on a tangent here, but do not let the 4 out of 5 stars fool you.  This recipe is excellent.  What is not excellent is people who say that the problem with the piccata is that it is lemony.  Hello.  It's PICCATA.  Also not excellent?  People who review a recipe and say something so far off that you KNOW it was their mistake, or they made 8 modifications and then say it didn't work for them.  Um, it is no longer the same recipe.  This drives me crazy.  C.R.A.Z.Y.  Please don't do it.

So anyway, I bought a Chicken Piccata box mix.  Weird, right?  But I did it.  When I started to make it, I thought I'd use my own wine and fresh lemons.  But I was out of wine and that made me too irritable to squeeze fresh lemons so I did it exactly out of the box.  This, my friends, took "boxed wine" to a whole new level.  Guess what?  Every stinking person in my family ate it.  Without complaint.  It was practically a miracle.

I confess that I passed it off as my own.  And was rewarded with Mr. Bell saying it was the best Chicken Piccata ever.  Sigh....