Foster Farms frozen chicken is sooo not ready to cook.

I thought I was outsmarting the grocery store by buying a 6-pack of flash frozen, individually packaged, boneless skinless chicken breasts. Why? Because they were 10 bucks instead of the normal 12 bucks for 4 unfrozen chicken breasts.

I generally plan quick, easy, healthy meals for my husband and I to eat during the week. Tonight was no exception. And with my lovely flash frozen chicken, it was going to be even quicker!

Or so I thought.

The box said to cook the frozen chicken in a preheated 375 degree oven. Check. Put in shallow dish, apply seasonings of choice, and lightly cover with aluminum foil. Check. Cook for 30-40 minutes. Check.

I was making "Asian Chicken" (yes, that's what the recipe was called), which was a combo of soy sauce, vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar), brown sugar, garlic and some pepper. I poured the sauce on the frozen chicken, the sauce slid right off and pooled under the the chicken. Oh well, I thought, I'm sure it'll soak up some of the sauce as it defrosts and cooks.

I spent the next 30 minutes with my child and husband. The husband and I talked about random things, basically catching up with the day's happenings while our child ran around tormenting Zoe and eating fruit jellies, sometimes with a box on his head.

Right before the chicken was done, we moved into Mateo's room to start the bedtime process. I left my husband with ensuring Mateo goes to sleep duty so I could finish preparing dinner.

I took the chicken dish out of the oven, took off the foil, and was greeted with four mostly raw chicken breasts swimming in sauce and patches of solid chicken funk and fat. Normally this would make me ill and I'd not want to eat it. But it was actually smelling darn tasty, so I decided to just put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes and cook the heck out of it. Chicken jerky, anyone?

And this is how we ended up not eating the chicken or the Thai coleslaw I never made or the leftover potato salad for dinner last night, and how we did end up eating pizza. Because by the time the chicken was done, it was going to be way too late to make anything more as this lady's brain shuts down around 7:30 PM.

Lesson learned? Defrost the individually packed chicken breasts like I would any other frozen chicken. And don't believe everything I read.