Grocery store food

I wanted to make a quick dinner, en famille. I also wanted to use up some rhubarb puree, turning it into a rhubarb chutney, as a recipe test for my cooking class that I hope I am teaching next week - not enough students signed up, yet.

I bought some chicken tenders a while back, and stuck them in the freezer thinking they'd be a good vehicle for the chutney, pounded and dredged in flour and sautéed. I got them out to thaw this morning, thinking I'd make rice - sort of homemade rice a roni, with diced celery, carrots & onion, and little pasta like orzo or stelline, and broth or a bullion cube - and chicken and chutney.

There ended up being 4 of us, two teenagers, and two adults, and I decided to cook a bag of frozen french fries instead of the rice. I made the chicken into homemade fast food chicken tenders - dredged in flour, fried, and then finished in the oven. And I made a bag of frozen organic green beans, tossed with "fast" caramelized onions - onions cooked in a bunch of butter, a little sugar sprinkled over, and then soy sauce.

Everything tasted pretty good, even if most of it was salty - especially the fries. The green beans were a bit spongey. To me, the chicken with chutney was the best, with the beans a close second - I think everyone else liked the fries, and the chicken with ketchup.

The ironic part was that while I was taking innocent green beans and dousing then with salt, fat, and sugar, Terry Gross on NPR was interviewing a guy talking about how salt, fat, and sugar hijack our brains - hardwiring us to eat more salt, fat, and sugar. I think I wanna go have a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce now.