For dinner tonight, I made Peanut-Crusted Chicken (for a similar recipe, click here; in particular, mine didn't call for lemongrass nor a hot/sweet sauce) .  I planned to make it a few days ago, but for one or more reasons I don't remember at the moment, it was postponed until tonight.  Strangely enough, I noticed the date the recipe was published in the Cincinnati Enquirer:  5/24/98, exactly 10 years ago today.

Saturday is the day I typically grind wheat, so it was easy enough to grind some dry corn kernels into cornmeal.  Too, I decided to grind some pastry berries (wheat) into flour to use that instead of all-purpose flour.  Little did I know how the clock was ticking.

First, DD2 woke up from her nap, and she and DS4 took turns interrupting me from dinner prep.  Then, when I went to grind the peanuts in my mini food processor, I read the instruction manual and realized the peanuts were supposed to be chilled first.  OOPS.  I forgot about that.    So I asked DH how long he thought I needed to refrigerate them in order for them to be sufficiently chilled.  He said he really wasn't sure, but then guessed half an hour.

Sooooo...I put the bowl of peanuts in the frig and found something else to do for half an hour.  Then I chopped the peanuts.  Easy enough. 

Then, when I finally had the oven pre-heated, all the ingredients prepped, and the three bowls staged with the flour, buttermilk, and peanut/cornmeal mixture respectively, DH came rushing into the kitchen saying, "I hear crying."  Eventually, we traced it to the basement half bath, where DD8 lay sitting on the floor in tears and bleeding.

[Before I go on, I must explain that our basement potty is one of those that was not pre-planned, so you walk up two steps before you can sit on "the throne" .] 

At first, it wasn't clear where the blood was coming from, but then she explained what happened:  let's just say she miscalculated on her dismount and leave it at that , and hit the back of her head either on the edge of one of the steps (that's what she thinks happened) or the edge of the sink.  In the end, the cut was very small and not gaping open at all; we just had to figure out how to get the blood out of her hair.

So after we finished tending to her, I went back to dinner.  It really doesn't take too long to "triple-dip" chicken like that, although I probably take a few more minutes than most people trying to get every square millimeter completely coated.  But soon, the chicken -- initially, covered with aluminum foil -- was in the oven and the timer was set. 

I took the foil off at the specified time, and put it back in the oven for the coating to bake.  I checked it when it should have been finished, but the coating didn't look golden brown yet  and still looked rather dry to boot.  So I put it back in for another five minutes.  I had to repeat this several times, as it just did not look done.  I don't know if my chicken was not completely thawed like I thought, or if it was because I used the whole-wheat flour instead of all-purpose (which probably made the crust a bit thicker).  I did notice in the online recipe, that it does say to cook it about 10 min. longer than mine does once the foil is off.  At any rate, it finally looked done enough, so I took it out.  Then it had to cool for a while in order for the crust to dry out somewhat. 

I think it was 8:45 by the time we ate dinner!

That is not unusual for some people, I'm sure, but for our family -- who often eats at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30 -- it was...

I thought about taking a picture of the chicken when it was finally on the table, but (1) there were some chunks of coating off, so it wasn't picture-perfect and (2) we were ready to EAT.