Chicken Pesto Pasta

Pesto is such a versatile ingredient. You can use it on sadwiches, pastas, sauces, and many other things. The best part about it, is pesto makes any meal taste like you took hours to prepare it. Here's a short and quick recipe for a pesto meal, that if you have the pesto pre-made, can be whipped up in 15 minutes.

Servings: 4

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts
1 box pasta
Basil pesto (I buy mine at Costco)
Parmesan cheese to top (optional)

Directions:

Boil the pasta in a medium sauce pan. Meanwhile, cut the chicken into strips and fry with some olive oil.

When the pasta is finished and the chicken is cooked through, mix the pasta, chicken, and pesto together. You can easily eye how much pesto you'll need. Put a little pesto in and mix. If needed, add more.

You can serve the pasta with some sourdough bread, and a vegetable to make a complete meal.

Roma Tomatoes and Pasta with a Cream Cheese Sauce

Roma tomatoes and pasta is one of my most favorite recipes. I love anything with pasta in it, and adding tomatoes and cheese makes it heavenly. I also favor this meal because I can whip it out in 15 minutes or less. If you cook something enough you will become so good at it that you won't have to hang over the cook book anymore. When you've perfected a recipe you can usually cut the time it takes to prepare in half.

Anyways, here's the recipe for a very easy, and simple pasta dish:

Oven: 400 | Servings: 4

Ingredients:
1 box of farfalle (or bow tie) pasta

4 roma tomatoes diced
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. basil flakes
1 tsp. sugar
salt and pepper to taste

1, 8 oz box of cream cheese
1 C. milk
1/4 C. freshly grated parmesan cheese.

2 chicken breasts cut into strips

Bring a medium size sauce pan full of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook about 5-6 minutes until aldante. You want this pasta to be more on the firm side because it will soften in the oven.

While the pasta is cooking heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the tomatoes and fry for about 2 minutes. Add the basil, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste (usually about 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper). Let simmer for 5 minutes until most (but not all) of the moisture is gone.

While the tomatoes are cooking, in a blender or food processor, blend the cream cheese, milk, and parmesan. You want it to the consistency of a a melted Wendy's frosty. If it is too thick add more milk. If it is too thin add more cream cheese.

If you'd like to add chicken you can stir fry the strips in a little bit of olive oil with salt and pepper.

Put the pasta in a casserole dish. Cover with cream cheese sauce. Mix half of the tomatoes in with the pasta and use the other half to top the pasta. Sprinkle dish with basil and Parmesan.

Cook in the oven for 8 minutes or until the top just starts to dry out.

Chicken Quesadillas

This is one of my most favorite meals. These quesadillas are tasty and pretty easy to make. They don't require a lot of spices, and you can use the leftovers for quite a few days. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 C. rice
2 C. water
1 tsp. salt

2 large chicken breasts
1 tbs. olive oil
2 tbs. chile powder
2 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (Optional. Add more or less depending on how spicy you like it.)
salt and pepper to taste

shredded cheddar cheese
flour tortillas
salsa (optional)

Bring water to a boil in a medium sauce pan. Add the salt and the rice. Let the rice simmer covered for about 20 minutes or until it has absorbed all the water and is soft to eat.

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan. Add chicken and cook stirring often. Once chicken is cooked all the way through add chile powder, cumin, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Fry for about 2 minutes until spices are fragrant.

Top tortialls with rice, chicken, cheese. Cook quesadilla on a skillet. Add salsa if desired.

How to Cut an Onion

Chopping onions can be hard. They make you cry so you can't see, and sometimes it takes a long time to chop it into lots of small finite pieces.

I found this video the other day that does a great job demonstrating how to correctly chop an onion. Once you do it this way you'll never go back.