Grilled Ranch Chicken and Scalloped Potatoes

Since I'd been slacking off on the blog during my camera-less time, I thought I'd make last night's dinner a twofer and try out two new recipes at the same time. That'll teach me.

Basically, it got to be about 4 pm and I realized we didn't have enough leftovers for dinner, I hadn't thrown anything in the crock-pot, and I didn't want to reprise our last two dinners (burgers and tacos. Good stuff, but I like some variety in my  meals, unlike my husband, who would happily eat the same thing for several weeks in a row). So I looked at the contents of our fridge and pantry (not as closely as I should've, as it turned out), and decided on the following two recipes

Marinated Ranch Broiled Chicken
Three Cheese Garlic Scalloped Potatoes

First I mixed together the marinade for the chicken:

1 oz. packet Ranch Dressing Mix (Hidden Valley)
2 T. olive oil
1 T. balsalmic vinegar

Then I added the chicken and shook the bowl to coat. It didn't work so well. This picture is after a couple of minutes of vigorous shaking.

So I went back to Allrecipes and checked to see if others had had this problem. I saw where one reviewer had added water to the marinade, so I added about 1/4 c. That worked a little better.

Then I put the chicken in the fridge to marinate. I should've started the potatoes at this point. Let's pretend I did.

The recipe called for 1 1/2 lb. of potatoes. Here's what I actually had.

I sliced them in the food processor and layered them in a baking dish with:

2 T. butter
2 T. minced garlic
12 oz. evaporated milk
2 c. shredded cheddar (approximately)

Then I put it in the oven covered with foil for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, I was supposed to add Parmesan to the top. Unfortunately, I failed to realize that my husband had snacked his way through our shredded Parmesan. So I used mozzarella and some more cheddar. I put it back for another 35 minutes and started grilling the chicken on our George Foreman grill, since the oven was occupied.

When I pulled the potatoes out, they were still a little liquidy in the middle, but the cheese around the edges was getting browned, and I was starving to death. So I called it good enough and served things up.

Conclusion: The chicken was okay, kind of blah, nothing special, but definitely food and definitely cooked. The potatoes, on the other hand, were not even remotely done, and the cheese and butter and evaporated milk had kind of oozed into greasy globs of sort of cheese-flavored gack. I was upset. My husband, having had leftover Arby's sandwich to tide him over, was philosophical. I probably would have gotten a better result with the potatoes by a) using potatoes that were actually fairly fresh, that hadn't sat in my fridge for a month or so, and b) following the darn recipe instead of making substitutions. I'm gonna blame the snow on the roads.

I was still hungry, so I took the remaining piece of chicken breast and made it into a sandwich. It worked fairly well for that, since there were other flavors to complement it.

After I took the picture, I remembered I had bacon in the fridge and added a couple pieces. Bacon makes everything better.