Stuffed Chicken with Prosciutto, Gruyere, and Arugula

Friday night rather than going out on our normal date night Tony and I decided to stay in. I found a recipe in my Cooking Light cookbook that looked interesting. It is chicken stuffed with prosciutto, gruyere cheese, and arugula with caramelized shallot sauce. I already had the chicken, prosciutto, and gruyere so I only needed to pick up a few items from the store for the rest of the meal. I started cooking a little after 5. The longest part of this meal is the preparation. You have to put the chicken between plastic wrap and beat it down to about a quarter inch thick. I never did this before and the first one I smashed a bit too hard and put a hole through it. The direction say so only layer the cheese, prosciutto, and arugula to just before the edge of the chicken. I was a little lazy and went over the edge but to make up for it I used toothpicks to seal the edges. I finally am getting ready to put the chicken in the pan when I look over at the clock and it is 7:00 already. Cooking Light way underestimated the time on this one. All I can think to myself is this better be one of the best meals of my life for how long this took. I could not find shallots at the store so I used a red onion instead. It turned out just fine. As I am going through all this hard work Tony tells me Mac and Cheese with hot dogs cut up into is one of his favorite meals. Nice! Thanks for not telling me this two hours ago. The meal turned out perfect. Tony loved it. The taste of the gruyere between the prosciutto and the chicken was amazing.

Recipe: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=344095

Our patio extension was last week. They did an OK job. There is an area that collects water and they splashed concrete on the siding. Tony has to call them back to fix those issues. We also finished the courtyard with patio block we moved. Well, it is half done. We still need to put the pergola over the courtyard, do a roof over the new patio, and tile the new patio. URG! Lots of money to spend in this area. We are just going to have to do it a bit at a time. One the bright side slate tile has gone down a lot since we tiled our kitchen. We plan on using slate over the patio. I still need to take pictures of the patios.