It happens…more often than I care to admit.  Partially because I experiment and other times because well…I don’t have things like A MEAT THERMOMETER!

Tonight it was both.

Dinner this evening was supposed to be a roasted chicken with mashed cauliflower made with roasted garlic and a side salad with toasted pecans, cranberries, blue cheese crumbles and a  balsamic vinaigrette (nailed the dressing!).

Turns out, neither Brett nor I like roasted garlic in our mashed cauliflower and my chicken was still raw on the inside!

The thing is, I LOVE roasted garlic, I LOVE mashed cauliflower and I make roasted chicken all the fricken time!  So needless to say I did not see any of this coming!  I thought the garlic/cauliflower combo would be divine!  I’ve hear people talk about making it that way before but to me, it did NOT go together at all.  The sweetness of the garlic combined with the cabbagy-ness of the cauliflower was downright torturous to my taste-buds.  I ate one bite, didn’t like it…took a second bite and couldn’t even swallow it.  Yuck! Yuck!  Yuck!

As for the chicken…that was totally my fault.  I usually start it at 425 degrees, then lower the heat to 350 degrees and tent it with foil.  This time I just threw it in the oven at 350 and left it alone.  Had I still owned a meat thermometer I would have known that it wasn’t done yet before I made the rest of dinner.  I mean, I stabbed it with a knife and the juices ran clear so I had no reason to think it wasn’t done…WRONG!  I took it out of the oven, let it rest while I put the salads together and as I cut into the breast to put a slice on the plate…RAW CHICKEN.  Ugh!

So now, the cauliflower disaster is in the trash, the chicken is back in the oven and I ate two salads…with burnt pecans.

They can’t all be winners….

I’mperfection!