Sun Dried Tomato Artichoke Chicken

I was wandering through the grocery store trying to find something better for dinner than mac & cheese or frozen pizza when I found this package of Knorr French Onion Recipe Mix. There were two recipes on the back. One seemed kind of long and involved, the other one was Sun Dried Tomato Artichoke Chicken. And so:

I forgot to put the olive oil in this picture. Such is life:

I put all the stuff in, but because it's hard to walk with these glasses on I had them perched on my head when I was reading the instructions. I am going to use that as the excuse for draining the artichokes when the recipe said to not do that. After I realized my mistake, I added some water and extra olive oil. That was basically just to make the mixture more liquid, since the directions said to pour the mixture on the chicken.



It still wasn't very liquidy:



I smeared it all over the chicken, even tucking it between the pieces. It was a sun dried tomato extravaganza all over that chicken. I'm never going to eat four pieces of chicken, but that's what the recipe called for. I'm horrid with numbers so it's easier to just do the whole recipe than to try to figure out the math of just one serving.



I threw it in the oven, crossed my fingers and wandered off to practice my ukulele. With five minutes left to go on the baking, my neighbor dropped by for some chit-chat so when I took the chicken out of the oven I didn't get to inspect like I usually do with chicken. I'm always worried about under-cooking it. After my neighbor left, I cut open a piece to check it and it seemed fine. That was a relief because I didn't want to put it back in after it was sitting out. I don't know why, but it seemed like a bad idea. I don't understand chicken, so maybe it's an unreasonable worry.



I had some rice on the side. Thank goodness because holy shit was this stuff gross. It just tasted like the sun dried tomatoes. And they didn't taste that great. Until I had this dish, I loved sun-dried tomatoes. Now I'm not a fan.

Here's the thing about chicken: when I make it, it never takes on the flavor of whatever I'm cooking it in. I tried twice to make this orange chicken dish, and it was bland and tasted like plain chicken. Plain, sad, tragic chicken. What's the haps with this? The last time I made that dish I marinated the chicken overnight, and still it tasted awful. Should I, I don't know, poke holes in the chicken to get the flavored dressing or whatever in there? Am I not baking it long enough? Is the chicken angry that I'm a chicken snob and won't eat chicken off the bone? I don't understand.

And for this recipe it didn't really matter since I didn't like it anyhow. Maybe I'll scrape off the sun-dried tomato topping, cut up the chicken and put it on a sandwich or something. Damn.