Grilled Chicken with Oranges: Cooking with Kids

I just got a new grill pan and planned to use it this weekend to make Grilled Lemon Chicken, but when I woke up this morning the news said that here in southern California it would be a whopping 80 degrees… in March! There’s nothing my kids like better than dining al fresco, so I decided we’d uncover the “real” grill and get some chicken marinating. I had some organic boneless chicken breasts in the fridge, but they were very bulky and each piece was a different thickness. Enter the perfect opportunity to teach my kid a little something about the magic of pounding out chicken. I lined the counter with wax paper and placed the raw chicken breasts atop the paper and layered yet another sheet of wax paper on top of the meat. With the chicken sandwiched between the sheets of paper, I put my son to work pounding away. I had him use a French rolling pin instead of a classic pounder to avoid any issue of the meat shredding. He was delighted to pound away at the chicken and did a fantastic job of getting it all even. We then transferred the chicken to a large plastic baggie and washed our hands thoroughly. After we finished cleaning up, it was time to make the marinade, so I asked my son to grab a lemon from our fruit bowl. Instead, he grabbed an orange (he definitely knows the difference between the two, so I took it as a sign that we should try something new). We proceeded to make the Grilled Lemon Chicken exactly as the recipe stated, except we replaced the lemon with orange. Sure the flavor is a bit sweeter, but oranges impart a lovely citrusy taste, too, so why not? We let the chicken soak up the juices all day while we enjoyed unusually amazing sun-drenched afternoon. When it was finally time to grill, we had four evenly cooked orange-y breasts (all done at the same time!) thanks to the spontaneity of my little sous chef.