Balsamic Vinegar Chicken with Fresh Tomatoes

I think I'm *almost* caught up on dinners and then I can start posting them in semi-real time, or at least the day of while I remember how silly I felt while making them.

On this random day of the week, we decided to make this recipe found on Pinterest. Looked pretty good on the page, comments were pretty encouraging, so we gave it a shot.

This is what the website said it would look like. Not sure what the white stuff is supposed to be… chicken?

Everything assembled as it should be...

Mom lovingly skinned and de-boned the chicken. She froze her fingers because even though the package said "Fresh Chicken" it also in very small letters said "Previously Frozen"

Basil, ONE TEASPOON of vinegar, oil, water, and garlic in the blender. I'm not really sure how you can call it balsamic chicken when there's only one small teaspoon of balsamic vinegar in the whole thing. I probably would have put in 3 tablespoons if Mom wasn't looking. Although, she did agree it seemed like too small of an amount.

The "toppings." I really should have fried them a little first but we were trying to follow the recipe...

The browned chicken

The pesto-y looking sauce on top. Smelled really good. 

Layering the toppings...

Cooked product! Voila!!

We ate this with a mixed green salad as well but I was too hungry to wait for that to be plated.

Honestly, we all kind of felt this recipe was a dud. It had such promise and yummy smelling ingredients but it really just fell flat. Kind of bland, really. The tomatoes were the best part and were even better because they were roasted. It needed at least a little salt, which the author of the original recipe post said she had forgot to add to her recipe. I'm not really even sure salt could have saved this baby. It was also kind of pink in the middle which made us concerned the stated cook time had been long enough. We saved the pink parts and cooked them again the next day for lunch leftovers. God bless my parents for powering through and trying to stomach this one again the next day. I think my dad put a little of the avocado crema on it and tried to salvage it. Mom says it wasn't so bad in sandwiches. She said that with a frowny scowl so I'm not sure you'd want to try it based on that. I couldn't manage. I had ramen noodles instead.

Stuck to script: 100% much to our detriment...