Month 6 day 5: Lemony chicken and lemony cucumber salad

Today was a cool, rainy day, totally mismatched with today's picnic-inspired menu.

Today I made:
Crunchy Lemonade Drumsticks, Food Network Magazine July/August 2010
Lemony Cucumber Salad, Cooking Light July 2011

These drumsticks are good, but they sort of take a while. While the prep isn't so bad (the marinade is quick to put together, then it's just a dip-shake), they're baked, not fried, and it takes a full hour or more to cook them. This is nice because I don't like frying, but I imagine that if this were a picnic-appropriate day, I wouldn't want to have the oven at 400°F for so long. They got nice and crispy on the top, but were really soggy on the bottom (even though you turn them halfway through, so the soggy part was once crispy). This might be more of a sign that I need to get a wire rack that is higher off of the pan, or it might just be inevitable given that there is a good amount of fat from the skin, fat, mayo, and still some liquid from the marinade probably dripping down as it bakes.
I didn't have enough zest (from two lemons), so only some bites had a zesty lemon flavor. Given that there wasn't enough zest for both the marinade and the coating, I feel like it would be better to give the full amount to the coating. The marinade has juice anyway, which is probably doing a better job of soaking in. I would definitely make this recipe again. Given the long baking time, it might be nice in the winter as a nice reminder of summer flavors :)

The radish loves you!

The salad requires a good amount of chopping, but it's not as bad as one of the reviewers makes it out to be. I didn't measure the parts for the dressing because my measuring spoons were already dirty by this point, but I just guessed. It ended up being quite peppery (in a good way). I liked this salad too. It was nice and fresh. Some of the reviewers said it gets too watery, so we'll see if it holds up well tomorrow or not.