Dinner for 10, in An Hour

I am not known for my timeliness, or perhaps more accurately, I am known for (1) underestimating how long things will take, (2) being slow and (3) being late. I have very good intentions, so despite knowing this about myself, I often overbook, making my timing issues even worse.

You should have seen me on Tuesday afternoon. We got home a bit later than planned from the rose garden, with a lofty agenda: make dinner for our family (my parents included) and a family in town with a new baby and deliver dinner to new baby’s family. In the llittle more than an hour we had before it was time to drive to Ryan’s swim lesson.

This is me, moving as fast as I can:

2:45 p.m. Pull into driveway. Bring sleeping Noah up to his bed. Put on TV show for Ryan (AT&T is nothing but trouble – this actually takes me 4 minutes).

2:52 p.m. Turn grill on. Brush 10 thin chicken cutlets with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2:58 p.m. The grill must be hot by now, right? Put chicken on grill. Gather remaining ingredients from refrigerator and bring them out on the deck so I could be near my chicken.

Flip chicken. Cover bottoms of pyrex and Corningware with sauce. Transfer grilled chicken to pyrex and corningware.

3:05 p.m. Realize I am giving one of these dishes away, and that family should neither have my Corningware forever nor feel obligated to return it amid their new baby-ness. Transfer sauce and chicken from Corningware to aluminum baking tin. Pick fresh basil from the garden. Skip the ladybug. Rinse leaves. Chop.

3:10 p.m. Cover chicken with more sauce, chopped tomatoes, mozzerella and parmesan cheese and chopped basil.

3:15 p.m. Rapidly chop gigantic head of broccoli. Toss in baking pans with olive oil, parmesan cheese, garlic salt, and lemon. Nope, no lemon. Back to kitchen to look for lemon. I always have lemons. Just not today.

3:20 p.m. Chop giant watermelon and pack in two containers, one to give, one to keep.

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