Leftover Thursday - Lemon Roasted Vegetables

Around about Thursday is when my dinner planning stops.  There are usually some leftover ingredients in the fridge that need to be used, and caution is thrown to the wind.  And that's where I found myself this afternoon, facing a half-full (or half-empty, depending how you look at it) container of mushrooms, a lemon that was nearing the end of its prime, half a bunch of collard greens, part of a head of broccoli, and two chicken breasts.  There are probably about a million combinations of those ingredients that would result in a delicious dinner (or, you know, at least ten), but this is the one I came up with.  

And don't worry, y'all - my new found love of early American cooking is still going strong.  Early Americans had a variety of poultry and fowl available to them, and Amelia Simmons has this general advice for the homecook choosing a bird: "Having before ftated that the female in almost every inftance, is preferable to the male, and pecularily fo in the the Peacock, which, tho' beautifully plumaged, is tough, hard, ftringy and untafted, and even indelicious - while the Pea Hen is exactly otherwife, and the queen of all birds."  I'm not even going to touch that "ladies are better than gents" statement, or make a broader analogy about peacocks or anything.  Though it would certainly be easy to do...

American Cookery, the first cookbook published in America by an American.