Grilled Chicken Marsala

By Nancy Bobbert

Ingredients

8 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

4 ounce can of chopped mushrooms (or fresh mushrooms if you prefer)

2 medium to large shallots

3 cloves of garlic

1 cup of Marsala wine

1 1/2 cups of chicken broth

1/2 container vanilla yogurt

fresh rosemary

sea salt

black pepper

crushed red pepper

Pat the chicken pieces dry with a paper towel.

Mix together 2 teaspoons of chopped rosemary, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and 1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes.

Rub the spice mix into each piece of chicken and set the chicken aside for a few minutes.

Finely chop the mushrooms. (my family does not like mushrooms so I try to hide them as much as possible)

Mince the shallots and garlic.

Preheat the grill to medium-high.

On the side burner, heat about 2 to 3 Tablespoons of oil until shimmering. Add the mushrooms, shallots and garlic. Cook until they become soft and very slightly browned. Season with salt and pepper if you would like. Add the wine and chicken broth.Turn the heat down to a simmer. and stir occasionally for the next 20 minutes. It should reduce and thicken by about a third or so.

While the sauce is cooking, place the chicken on the grill. Grill the chicken about 7-10 minutes per side. Use a meat thermometer to make sure it is hot all the way through.

Remove the sauce from the heat. Add the yogurt in with a whisk or just a fork if you don’t have a whisk.

Place the chicken on plates and then spoon the sauce over. Serve with Grilled Carrots or Grilled Potato Wedges (or both!)

Enjoy!

When the words won’t come.

By Nancy Bobbert

What do you do when the words won’t flow? I mean, I know that they are there, my head is filled with them. My brain is overflowing with the things that I want to say. They are pounding in my ears. Pressing against the backs of my eyes. My head is so filled with thought that I can barely function in the day to day tasks of life.

Sleep comes in fitful piecemeal bites. As I dream, I write. More thoughts fill my head. Seeking an outlet. Needing to be heard. needing to be READ.

But alas, I sit and ruminate. I can not find the flow. I want to. I am desperate. I NEED to communicate with others. I want someone to understand. ANYONE to understand. My life is unique. I need to tell you how unique.

But yet, maybe I fear that I am not as unique as I imagine that I am. Maybe I am just like so many others that have come before me. Maybe I am not so different from you.

Writing is how I have come to express myself. But then writing has become too hard. Do I verbalize my thoughts? Give them freedom? Allow them to forever escape my too congested head? Never to be brought to light again?

I don’t want to verbalize such precious words for fear of them being lost forever to ears that will never hear them again.

I need to write them out. To save them. Cherish them as something that has come uniquely from me. I have a great NEED to have them read over and over again.

I am a blogger. But then again, am I really? Am I truly sharing what is in my head or am I regurgitating what I think others want to read? Am I being my unique self? Showing you who I really am?

I don’t think that I am being true to myself. My writing, while technically me, is still not me. I am not putting my personality into what I write. I am acting as a reporter and nothing more. There is no feeling to it.

My heart is not in my writing. And without heart, it is not a true representation of who I am.

For this, I am truly sorry. I have done myself and everyone else reading these words, a true disservice.

Trying the unclog the flow between my brain and my keyboard is not going to be easy. I am afraid that once the words start flowing, my thoughts will become too jumbled to make sense of. That my thoughts, so clear in my head, will become forever scrambled and lost in a sea of confused garbled nonsense.

Technically, my writing may suffer.

It WILL suffer.

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to be a bit, well, fussy about sounding intelligent. It is a major character flaw. And yes, I do talk this way too.

It is my way of over-compensating for feeling inferior while growing up.

But that is for another day.

Another conversation.

Another blog post…