I love you, Summer, but I'm ready for Autumn!

So I never want to be someone who wishes her life away: it's Monday, and you want it to be Friday.  It's winter, and you're yearning for spring. (that one, I think is unavoidable...especially with Cleveland winters!) Fall arrives, and you're looking forward to Christmas.  I try as best as I can to live in the moment and fully appreciate each day, and realize what a true gift it is to live it as a healthy, happy person with lots of loving people in my life.  All that being said...there comes a time with each season where I gleefully anticipate the next one and I want to put a lid on the current one.  As hard as I try, I can't avoid it!

So here we are, in August.  August is a hot, sweltering month.  Summer is winding down, but we still have a long way to to go.  At the beginning of August, we all start seeing advertisements for Back to School supplies.  When I was in school, I absolutely hated this time!  It was proof positive that the summer was winding down and I'd be back in school before I know it.  Worse yet, I'd be back in school in SEPTEMBER, which has always been my least favorite month of the year.  It's piping hot outside, but you're stuck in school.  The school year had just begun, too, so you had a lovely 9 months to look forward to before the next vacation.  In short, it was awful!

As an adult, I still pretty much dislike September.  You see, by around August, I start getting nostalgic for Fall.  Sweaters and jackets start showing up in stores, and though I know by the time March rolls around I will want to throw all of my sweaters onto a big pile and light the whole thing ablaze after wearing nothing BUT warm clothes for the past 5 months, I get excited when I see that fall is coming.  By September, I want to be wearing my fall clothes and enjoying apples and pumpkins and all the whimsy we associate with fall, but it is invariably 95 degrees out and I'm sweating while running after a classroom full of 2 and 3 year-olds on the playground.  Ick.  

I have a feeling my desire for fall will grow stronger this year because I'm already looking forward to it a very special component of it: cooking.  If you're like me, once it starts getting warm outside (and by that I mean once the temperature reaches the glorious 65 degree mark in Cleveland sometime around April or May) you spend most of your time cooking quick, light meals that are usually fired up on your grill.  And I love grilling.  I love summer food.  I love being out of the house as much as I can. I concede that nothing beats the taste of freshly grilled chicken or burgers.  But it's August now, and I miss cooking.

I miss stirring a big pot of beef stew, chili, or soup when there's a chill in the air and leaves are falling.  I long for the amazing smells of comfort food baking in my oven.  I return in thought to when I frequently have pots of homemade applesauce simmering on my stovetop.  And I think about those two glorious spices that, to me, signify fall and winter better than any other spices:  cinnamon and nutmeg.  Ahhh...I want my kitchen to start smelling like warm cinnamon again.  

But...if I were to try that now, I would alienate my husband, who would complain (rightfully so) that I'm trying to roast him.  It's hot enough as it is with our air conditioner on, and it gets unnecessarily hot when the oven is cranked up or the range is on full heat.  Even if I could stomach facing a hot kitchen on a hot day, who would really want to eat such hearty, heavy food in the middle of summer?  You never go over to someone's house in July or August and get served pot roast.  The very thought is appalling!  It's way too intense for summer.  And don't get me wrong, I love that.  Tomorrow I'm going over my in-law's house for ribs and corn on the cob...what's better than that?  

Still, I look forward to inviting people over for beef bourguignon or loaded baked potato soup.  I can't wait to throw a crusty loaf of bread on the table and encourage people to sop up their plates with it.  In short, bring on cooking season, baby!

And while I know it will be here before we know it (what does time do, if anything, but fly faster than we can ever believe?)  I decided to whip something up in the kitchen in the middle of the summer.  This particular recipe required both my stovetop AND my oven! 

Without further ado, let me tell you about Sicilian Lemon Chicken.

I got the recipe from Lake Erie Living magazine, and I figured it would be perfect to make right now.  Though it requires being pan-fried and baked, the overall dish is light and summery.  You think of lemon chicken, you think of summer.  The cook in me smiled in delight and charged out to the nearest grocery store to buy the items!!  Here is the recipe!

Sicilian Lemon Chicken

4 chicken breasts

Vegetable oil for frying

2 eggs

1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs

3 tablespoons milk

For lemon dressing:

4-5 lemons

1 tablespoon crushed garlic in olive oil

¼ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup Parmesan cheese

4 basil leaves, chopped

¼ teaspoon black pepper 

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together eggs and milk in a shallow bowl and set aside. Pour Italian bread crumbs into a shallow bowl and set those aside. In a small bowl squeeze lemons (remove all seeds). Add crushed garlic, vegetable oil, Parmesan cheese, chopped basil and black pepper and set aside.

Rinse and dry chicken breasts. Cut each piece horizontally into two and then fillet the half of chicken that is thicker into two pieces. When finished, you should have 3 pieces per breast. Pound chicken between sheets of plastic wrap.

Heat vegetable oil in sauté pan over medium heat. Dip chicken breasts into egg mixture and then into bread crumbs. Fry chicken until golden brown.

Place chicken into a roasting pan. Pour lemon sauce over all layers of chicken. Cover and bake for 20 minutes. Plate the chicken with lemon wedges and fresh parsley.

* This recipe can be made up to the point of baking and refrigerated the night before. Do not add the lemon sauce until you bake it. Remove from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking to allow it to rise to room temperature. 

I copied this recipe exactly as it was found on Lake Erie Living's website.  I made it recently, and it was perfect!  Better yet, I got my cooking fix: I chopped garlic and basil, squeezed the heck out of 5 lemons, filleted chicken breasts, and fried and baked.  Ahhh...I feel much better now.  Back to enjoying summer!

But first, please enjoy the photos of my lovely Sicilian Lemon Chicken!

Here are the three bowls needed for the lemon chicken. The one on the left is the egg and milk mixture you use to batter the chicken.  The middle is the breadcrumb mixture which then coats the egg-dipped chicken.  The third is the frankly amazing and tasty lemon sauce that you bake the chicken in!

Ahhh...the battered and pan-fried chicken cutlets.  Ready to be put in a baking dish and covered with the lemon sauce!

The finished lemon chicken! That's right...turn your head to the right and you'll see it.  For some reason, both this blogger program and my photo program think this is supposed to be in portrait instead of landscape.  No matter how many times I edit it and save it, it turns out this way! Bah! But hey, it's a photo of lovely lemon chicken, so I can get over it!  By the way, you'll notice that some of the chicken in my baking pan is more blackened than other pieces...to avoid this, simply de-glaze your pan inbetween the different batches you fry.  It will remove any residual bread crumbs and pan juices that create the blackened look.  We actually really like blackened chicken, so it isn't a problem for is.  And it accentuates the recipe rather than overpowers it, so it's not a big deal to us.  Your choice!