How many Pinterest recipes have you pinned and NEVER made? For me, its like a thousand. One of my goals for 2014 is to make more of these pinned recipes. So when I was planning the menu for the week before my Sunday grocery shopping trip, I pulled up my trusty “Fooood” board and started to poke around.

I knew shrimp would be on the menu for Monday night (I made this…yum!) so I focused on chicken recipes and decided on Cooking Light’s Chicken with Olives and Lemons.

Anything with ten or less ingredients (I consider the 3 lemon parts to be one ingredient) is good in my book.

I started by gathering everything I needed before I got started. The only item I didn’t already have in the house was a shallot (and rosemary but I omitted it) so I made sure to pick one up while grocery shopping.

I completely spaced and forgot the olives…ugh. I love olives! I didn’t realize I forgot them until I started writing this post! Annoying.

(Source)

Anyways…

With the oven preheated to 400 degrees, I mixed the lemon rind, lemon juice, EVOO and garlic in a gallon-sized ziplock bag and put the chicken in to marinate for 15 minutes.

While it marinated I sliced the shallot and put a pot of water on the stove to boil for the orzo.

Once fully marinated, the chicken went into the pan and I covered it with the shallot, black pepper, oregano and lemon slices. Into the oven it went for 20 minutes.

While I waited, I cut up a “personal” sized watermelon and sauteed mushrooms to each with the chicken. Note: A “personal” sized watermelon could easily feed about 4 people but I could eat the whole thing…and probably will.

After 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven, the recipe said to crank the boiler up to HI and stick it under there for 3 minutes…so I did. And it came out looking spectacular!

When I make a recipe for the first time I try to make it as is. In this case, I did not add anything but I think next time I would throw some veggies in the pan to cook with the chicken.

I did omit the rosemary from this recipe because I didn’t have any in the house and unfortunately I forgot the olives so those we omitted as well (not by choice).

The only substitution I made was that I used some store-bought lemon juice along with fresh lemon juice because my lemons weren’t super juicy.

The Verdict: I would definitely make this again. It was light lemony and would only be better if I had remembered the olives!