More Fun And Food At The Hawthorne Household.

Well, guess who blew into town Monday night with his brand-new-you-know-what?

If you guessed Youngest Hawthorne and his puppy you would be correct.

Beau Junior is a 9-week old Lab mix that Youngest Hawthorne rescued from a very bad situation.

And he's beautiful and cute as a button, and smart, and Dixie is pissed off. She thought she'd gotten rid of Beau and Giada and now this enters her little world. Oh, see the calendar on my wall? Marilyn, of FoodiesUntie blogdom gave me that and that's her picture of the coneflower for March. Can you imagine what major holidays are going to be like now? With Giada and Beau and Junior and Dixie, who's hating every minute, because she has to put up with those young whippersnappers? Kodak moments will abound. On to today's lunch:

Mr. Hawthorne made a quick, delicious lunch: A bed of my seasoned homemade tortilla chips, with some hamburger meat we had leftover from the tortillas we made the other day, and some corn salsa, creme fraiche, and lettuce on top. Oh my, but this was good. Do you find yourself at one meal talking about and planning the next meal? Mr. Hawthorne and I always do that. And Maxine and I do that, too. There's always something to look forward to- in our case, it's always our next meal. Let's get on to dinner, shall we? I thawed out some chicken cutlets.

My preparation for my lightly fried chicken cutlets: First, and most importantly, the chicken cutlets. Of course, I went and googled chicken cutlets and this is what I got. I'm nothing if not all about research, facts, and detail. It's required to support whatever one may be talking or writing about. So I researched a bit further and came up with this, which is way more what I had in mind. Back to my ingredients: Top left is 1 part flour and 1 part semolina flour, salt and pepper. Middle bowl is 2 eggs. Last bowl is Panko breadcrumbs. Now, I'm jumping to my side dish: Bacon and corn.

I scissored-up 3 or 4 pieces of bacon.

After the bacon was done, I poured in the drained corn, heated it up, covered the pan, and took it off the heat. Rosie hangs head. It was canned corn. Now you know I'll come to your house and hurt you if you use canned peas. But it's different with corn. Canned corn is acceptable. I'm really not a food snob. I have senses and sensibilities and a sensitive palate. Some things are acceptable to me. Other things are not. I'm a dichotomy that way.

I rinsed off my chicken pieces, blotted them dry, and salted and peppered. Now, heads up. FRYING TIP! This is SFP. Standard Frying Procedure.

First, dredge your meat in the flour, semolina, salt and pepper mixture.

Second, run it through the beaten eggs.

Third, cover with Panko crumbs.

I ran some Bertolli Extra Light Olive Oil over the bottom of my hot pan, waited for the oil to heat up, then placed the chicken pieces in. Maybe 2-3 minutes on each side.

Beautiful golden brown chicken pieces. Now I'm going to show you a wonderful sauce I'm making up.

After I sauteed the chicken cutlets, I mopped up the grease in the pan with a paper towel and deglazed the pan with white wine.

I poured cream in.

Added about a tablespoon

of Grey Poupon Dijon.

And my surprise, secret ingredient: 2 ice cubes of pesto. Mixed all together. And served chicken with cream/mustard/pesto sauce and the corn and bacon. The chicken was light and moist. The cream sauce was perfect. You could taste the wine, the mustard, the basil, the cream. The sweet corn and bacon was a nice accompaniment. Wonderful combinations. Youngest Hawthorne loved this. I loved it. He came back later and ate up all the rest of the chicken with the sauce. This was so good. All these flavors and textures played off one another and complemented one another. In this case, the dish was more than the sum of its parts. And I like it when I do that. Doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, I know it, and I like it.