Who needs Valium when you have a meat mallet?

      It's been a bit of a rough week over here. So while tonight's dinner was a real delight, it's preparation was wildly violent. With not one, but two elements of the main dish that needed to have the living shit beat out them, I got to channel my frustrations and use one of my favourite kitchen tools: The Meat Mallet.
     Pulling inspiration from a few different recipes, I made what I'll call Mediterranean Stuffed Chicken. Now, there are 2 methods for getting stuffing inside a chicken breast. You can butterfly the breast, cutting it in half horizontally, but that's boring. The second method, and the one I obviously chose, is to put the breast between two sheets of plastic wrap and bash it with your meat mallet until all the piss and vinegar has left you and all that's left is sugar and spice. It feels great. I for one hammered a hole in one of the breasts. Maybe I was a little more pent up than I thought. Deep breath.
      For the stuffing I sauteed garlic, mushrooms, roma tomatoes and onions(all ingredients finely diced) in olive oil. To that I added feta cheese and roasted red peppers. Most "stuffings" require some sort of bread crumb in them to soak up moisture and bind everything. You can use stale bread to make breadcrumbs, but the only stale bread I had was also mouldy. I considered using it(you would too, don't lie), but thought better of it, and went with whole grain melba toast. Mostly because I didn't want to poison myself, but also because I got to put those guys in a baggie and bash the hell out of them too.

      For a side we had acorn squash from the garden. I didn't get to hammer it, but it did take a little elbow grease with a big knife to slice that baby up, and that was pretty fun too.
      I guess the moral of today's story is that when they say you should cook with love, it's a big lie. Tonight I cooked with all the rage and brute force I could muster. And it was delicious.