I’ll be honest.  Sometimes I forget that dinner is right around the corner and that I’m head chef in our house.  Sometimes it just sneaks up on me.  (Too bad there isn’t something like a clock to warn me about things like that.)

That happened last night, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I’m a better last-minute chef than I used to be.  Back in my grad school days, I would have hunted down a pack of Hot Pockets and called it a night.  Fortunately for both of us, my husband cares more about dinner and health than that.

So last night’s rescue recipe was “Zesty Chicken Meatballs” from Sunny Anderson (via Rachael Ray, and you can click on the picture below to get to the recipe):

These meatballs cooked up really well (meaning quickly), and they didn’t even disintegrate in the pan–a common problem for meatballs and me.  That said, old habits are hard to kick, and one of my old habits is to read through the ingredients in a recipe without reading the actual recipe (until it’s too late).  I’ll be chopping and cooking and moving along, when I realize that I was supposed to marinate the meat overnight.  It’s happened on more than one occasion.

In this particular case, I didn’t see the recommendation to serve the meatballs with pesto until I had already bought marinara sauce (and was sans pesto in the house).  Oh well.  The lemony taste in the chicken meatballs was wonderful.  They really would be better with pesto than marinara.  I have to say though, still good, even with the wrong sauce.