Chicken Pesto Cream Pasta

I think I can take credit for thinking this one up.  :-P  I first cooked this a few weeks ago but it was so delicious... and I had half a jar of pesto opened, we had it again last night.  :]

Chicken Pesto Cream Pasta

Ingrediants

- Chicken breasts (2 pieces)

- Garlic powder

- Dried oregano

- Dash of white cooking wine

- Jar of pesto  -- we happened to have some Sacla Classic Pesto

- 1/3 red bell pepper

- Oil

- Cream or milk -- (I used Whipping Cream)

- Pasta of choice -- (I liked Trader Joe's Fusilli)

Is it terrible that I don't use measurements?

So in this household, we brine chicken.  1 teaspoon of sugar + 1 teaspoon of salt to 1 cup of water.  Throw chicken in.  Adjust according to how much chicken you put in.  We buy Costco's 10lbs frozen chicken, so I usually rinse off the chicken and throw it into the brine frozen.  So it's a brine + defrost.  That's handy.

After the chicken defrosted, I threw on dried oregano and garlic powder on both sides, and splashed in some white cooking wine. 

Boil the water early and cook pasta as directed.  The pasta can cook away while you cook everything else.

Time to start the chicken.  Put some oil in a flat pan (large frying pan?) and pan-fry the chicken.  I am beginning to learn how to use stainless steel pots and pans.  (They require lots of oil so things don't stick!  I did buy a small non-stick pot so I can cook eggs and noodles in.  It's the Alvina pot.  :oP)

When you've got a good handle on the chicken, heat up the pesto sauce.  I only used half the bottle per meal.

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Cook pesto sauce on medium heat until it starts to bubble a little, then add some cream or milk.  Keep stiring.  Taste to see how creamy you want it.  Sometimes I put some cream and some milk so we are only a little fatty.  Because the first time I cooked this I didn't know what I was doing, I threw in the red bell peppers.  It worked for me.  :-P  Cooking the bell peppers in the sauce softens it up, cooks in the flavors and makes it nice and oily.  :-P

The first time I made it, I didn't intend it to be a cream sauce but I didn't think I wanted to use the entire $5.50 bottle of pesto sauce in one dish!  It would've been too salty and perhaps even too flavorful.  So I looked online and found this article that recommended adding milk (to cut the cost of pesto)!

Cook and stir and when you think the bell peppers are nice and soft and the sauce and milk/cream is well combined, put everything together!  I like to plate the pasta and ladle the pesto cream sauce on top.  (Though I suppose you can combine the pasta and sauce before plating.)  Then slice the chicken breast and carefully place the whole piece on top of the pasta.  For presentation.  haha.

It's pretty crazy to think how restaurants, granted they cook it much better, can charge you like $15-18 for a chicken pesto dish when our entire meal cost like... $5 (for both of us!)  The bottle of pesto was $5.50 and the TJ pasta was $1, both split into two meals, then plus the chicken.  Serrrriiiiously, sweet tasty deal.

What are some of your favorite recipes, and when are you sending them to me?  :]

                      

Good morning!!!

Hello, Fall  :]

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Maple-Cinnamon Coffee!

- Regular coffee set up (coffee + water)

- Ground cinnamon

- Maple-flavored or pancake syrup

Place coffee in filter in brew basket of coffee maker; sprinkle with cinnamon.

(They give measurements for 6 servings, I just eyeballed it.)

Pour syrup into empty pot of coffee maker.
(I chose to put the syrup in my mug incase it messed up my carafe.  :oP) 
Add water to coffee maker; brew. When brewing is complete, stir until well blended.

Pretty tasty!  The syrup wasn't really sweet.... I used pure maple syrup, so maybe it was... too pure?  haha.  So I added my usual sugar and milk.  I also skipped the cool whip on top because 1) I don't do cool whip and 2) it's like 930am.

It was really easy to make if you have those ingrediants handy.  Enjoy!
                     

Cooking



Good Afternoon

 

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Contrary to the current trend (two makes it a trend, right?) of recipe posts, this is definitely not a cooking blog.  :-P  I don't... cook.  Well.  I do now.  But mostly only cause the nice husband works and I currently do not so I have the time to cook.  During our interim stay in Ithaca this past summer, the husband mostly cooked every night.  Well, it depends if how you define cooking, since I chopped, sliced, and helped prep but he would make it hot.  :]  He enjoys cooking and likes experimenting and coming up with new things.  I enjoy eating.  :]

Through these past couple months, I've had to scour the interweb for new recipes and I think... I've actually come to enjoy this cooking business, and... I think I'm sort of better at it.  Practice makes perfect things edible!  :-D  The husband says he can still cook after work but if I want to eat at a reasonable time, I would have to prep most of the stuff before he got home (defrost chicken, brine chicken, marinate chicken, chop veggies, etc.)  And... if I'm doing that, it really only takes me like ~15 minutes to make the food hot... so why don't I just do it all.  :-P  So the weekends have become the husband's cooking time. 

My improvement in cooking at least relieves me that our future children won't have to wait for daddy to cook to eat a decent meal... that isn't stir-fried noodles or spaghetti.  :oP

                     

The knock-off Marlboro

Tonight was our first small group fellowship so dinner had to be somewhat quick.

So I opted to try to make The Marlboro Man Sandwich by none other than the Pioneer Woman  :]

The Marlboro Man Sandwich.  (Source)

It mostly made me think it kinda resembled a thick, more steak-like, hearty Philly Cheese Steak sandwich.  Though I might get beat up for saying that. 

If you look at the recipe, it calls for a whoppin' 2 sticks of butter (for 2-3 lbs of cube steak, spread over 4 sandwiches).  That's a lotta butter, woman!  Since I used the recipe as more of a "guide" than following it step by step, I cut out most of the butter.  :oP

I used a sirloin steak that we got from Costco, which has the flakey consistency of philly cheese steak.

Sauteed this onion in EVOO (instead of globs of butter).  And we apparently have a mutant blue knife!

Goooo Cow go!

Meet my sandwich.  I slathered a LITTLE bit of homemade butter on ONE side of the bread and toasted it (in a toaster oven).  Piled on the beef and onions.  And those are two sad pieces of provolone, that were just hanging out in the bag from yesterday's sandwiches.  :oP

It turned out a bit salty, most likely from the combination of the seasoning salt plus the Worcestershire Sauce.  Which were both eyeballed.  So we added some lettuce before consumption and drank lots of water.  :oP

                

Hot & Sweet!

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Tonight I attempted to make this!  Hot & Sweet Drumsticks!  But... without the drumsticks.  :oP  The Husband is not a fan of drumsticks so I just put it over chicken breasts.  And halved the recipe since there is only 2 of us... and we don't need to serve 6.

This is the orginal recipe for Hot & Sweet Drumsticks, from Tasty Kitchen from the awesome* Pioneer Woman.

Ingredients

• 1 cup Apricot Preserves
• ½ cups Ketchup
• ¼ cups Soy Sauce
• 2 teaspoons Minced Garlic
• 2 teaspoons Hot Pepper Sauce
• 3 pounds Drumsticks (about 12)

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. In a small saucepan, combine preserves, ketchup, soy sauce, garlic and hot pepper sauce. Cook and stir over medium-low heat until preserves are melted. 

Arrange drumsticks in a single layer on a 13 x 9″ baking pan. Pour sauce over drumsticks, turning to coat. Bake, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes or until chicken is done, spooning sauce over drumsticks while baking. Serves 6.

Mine turned out like this:

Hot & Sweet chicken w/ sweet potato fries, green beans & corn

Less charred, roasty-toasty lookin' and more... jam-like I guess.  :oT  I guess-concluded that the chicken to sauce ratio was a little off.   But it was still tasty.  :]

* The Pioneer Woman is awesome because I am almost done reading her epic love story, "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" of how she met her now-husband, whom she calls The Marlboro Man (even though he doesn't smoke.  He's really just a cowboy.)  It's pretty long (and over many blog posts).  Though here's a put-together version of Chapter 1 to XXXI, which would've saved me a lot of grief of clicking around had I found it before I did it the "old-fashioned" way and clicked through each and every blog post.  >_<  After that chapter, go HERE to patch together the rest of the story.  It's really not that complicated, I promise.  Only read it if you want to read about a girl gush over her cowboy man for like most of the story.  :oD

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On a completely unrelated note, Lukas VanDyke, a SoCal based photog is giving away a nifty Nano iPod with multi-touch!  Until I read his blog post I did not know they had touch Nanos now.  Good job caveman me  :-D  But it looks pretty cool!  Go to his blog post here to read all about it!

                        

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ruffles and grays for this rainy day

Ruffle collar!  It looks pretty cute in gray too.  (Source)

It's shiny and gray.  What more need I say?  :-P  (Source)

Though I usually am not as fond of sweaters/jackets without buttons in the front, this one I LOVE.  Though not for $40.  But I really like it in this charcoal (though I love anything in charcoal these days).  It comes in 8 other colors (some nice bright ones!)  (Source)

And this one is just because we're having tacos for dinner tonight.  :oP  (Source)