Polenta Lasagna

I tried making polenta for the first time during the week before Thanksgiving. It turned out okay, but nothing to blog about. This week, with all the snow and Adam stressed about finals I've been trying to make plenty of comfort food. Lasagna fits two of the criteria for being comfort food; it's hot and it's cheesy. I also really like that I can fit almost all of the food groups into it in varying amounts depending on what I'm craving.

One aspect of lasagna that is often challenging for me is the noodly part. If I take a no-boil approach I'm often left with undercooked noodles in the middle which eventually soften up when I reheat the leftovers. If I boil them first they stick together before I use them or they rip or break and are generally unwieldy. My solution was to skip the noodles and use polenta. In hindsight, this probably would have worked better if I'd baked the polenta and then sliced it, creating noodle-like segments of polenta. Instead I tried to layer the polenta as it cooled, which resulted in lots of small dumpling-like pieces of polenta. It tasted delicious, but wasn't really layered like a lasagna. I couldn't come up with a better name for it though, so polenta lasagna it is!

Ingredients/Instructions: This has quite a few ingredients, but it's really pretty simple. I arranged the ingredients by group, giving the instructions as you go. Take it one group at a time, otherwise you'll end up with a counter full of ingredients and no where to cook. Also, you could easily prepare the sauce and polenta a day ahead of time, then mix up the cheese and put it all together when you're ready to cook it.

Step 1: Cook these ingredients over medium-high heat, move to large mixing bowl when done.

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 1 tbsp chili flakes
• 1 tbsp italian seasoning (or 1 tsp basil, oregano, parsley)
• 1 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp salt

Step 2: Cook these ingredients until mushrooms start to give up some of their water and zucchini become slightly translucent. Add them to the mixing bowl.

• 3 small zucchini (width of quarter, 4 in long, cut into half circles 1/4 in thick)
• 6 oz mushrooms, chopped same size as zucchini chunks
• 1 tbsp balsalmic
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Step 2.5: Add this to the mixing bowl. Mix. The mixture won't be very saucy, but don't worry. Since we're not using any of the moisture from the sauce to bake noodles we don't need to add as much liquid as if it was real lasagna.

• 1 jar pasta sauce

Step 3: Mix these ingredients in a second mixing bowl. Make sure the egg is well incorporated throughout.

• 1/2 cup mozzarella
• 1/4 cup Parmesan
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp salt
• 15 oz ricotta

Step 4: Bring water and salt to a rolling boil. Add polenta in a thin stream, stirring rapidly. Lower to medium heat and continue stirring until the polenta thickens to roughly the same consistency as mashed potatoes. Remove from heat. (Or, lots of stores sell ready made tubes of polenta that you can slice thinly and use instead if you're not too confident in your own polenta making skills!)

• 1 1/3 cup polenta
• 1 qt water
• 2 tsp salt

Step 5: Layer the ingredients in a large pan. I used my favorite 12-inch Calphalon everyday pan

(no, I didn't pay that price), but I'm sure a 9x13 pan would work.

• Spread 1/3 of the meat, veggie and sauce mix in the bottom of the pan.
• Spread (or drop/smush) 1/2 of the polenta, covering as much of the sauce as possible.
• Carefully layer all of the ricotta mixture from Step 3 across the polenta, again trying to cover the previous layer.
• Add the second 1/3 of the sauce to the pan. (This is 1/2 of what's left in the bowl!)

• Layer the second half of the polenta. If you prepared the polenta just before you used it (like I did) this may be tricky, since the polenta gets stiffer as it cools. Do your best to spread it evenly across the sauce, but don't worry if it isn't perfect.
• Add the last of the sauce across the top.
  

Step 6: Sprinkle these on top.

• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
• 1/4 cup Parmesan

Step 7: Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. The edges of the cheese should be browned and the sauce should be bubbly.

Step 8: Allow the polenta lasagna to rest for at least 10 minutes. This is important to make sure you don't burn your mouth and to let some of the sauce get soaked back up.

Black Bean and Vegetable Soup with Ham

Last week when it snowed a few inches I had a good time going outside and looking at the big sparkly fluffy flakes. Now, however, the snow and I aren't quite such good friends since it keeps piling itself on my car and sidewalks and then asking to be shoveled. In order to make yesterday's shoveling slightly less painful I rewarded myself with cooking this delicious soup.

We had two Thanksgivings this year, one with a turkey and one with a ham. I was lucky snag a quarter of the ham as leftovers but wasn't really sure what to do with it. You can only eat so many ham sandwiches, right? With this cold weather I knew I wanted to make it into a soup, but didn't know what kind. I dug around for recipes in books and online and decided to take advice from two very different recipes to create my own. The first recipe was for a black bean soup from Simply Recipes (my favorite food blog) that sounded a little spicy, very Californian with avocado and lime, and had a zillion ingredients. The second recipe was from the Joy of Cooking and was actually a recipe for navy bean soup with ham that only had five ingredients. I decided I wanted my soup to end up somewhere in the middle of the two.

I usually try to make substitutions in my recipes to keep them healthy. I have to confess, I cheated on this one and it was totally worth it. All of the recipes that I looked at for bean and ham soup used ham hocks or smoked pork of some kind. I had a fairly lean ham that really lacked the same smokey flavor of a ham hock but I didn't have any liquid smoke to make up for it. I did, though, have **don't judge!** bacon fat. We had cooked a little bit of bacon to go with our breakfast that morning and I hadn't cleaned the pan yet. It just sat there taunting me with it's smoky salty goodness, daring me to use it. And I did. And it was fabulous. I rationalized it by reminding myself that there wasn't much fat in the soup otherwise, and that I usually NEVER do anything like that, and then promptly got over my guilt once I tasted the end result. Don't worry though, if you can't bring yourself to indulge the same way I did. If you're vegetarian or just don't run with a bacon fat crowd, olive oil and liquid smoke can be substituted for the bacon fat and the ham can be left out but you'll need to add some extra salt.

Ingredients

• 1 lb dried black beans
• 5 cups water
  
• 3/4 tsp ground thyme
  
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 lbs ham
• 2 large parsnips (they look like white carrots covered in wax, usually near the turnips and rutabagas)
• 1 medium sized sweet potato (NOT a yam! These are white inside, not orange or yellow.)
• 2 medium sized carrots
• 2 tbsp bacon fat

1. Soak 1 lb black beans in a 6-8 cups of water overnight. From what I've read, some dried beans can get stale and soaking too long never hurts. I actually started mine soaking late at night and didn't get to them until late afternoon the next day, so they soaked almost 14 hours and turned out just fine.
2. After the beans have soaked, pour out the water, rinse, and strain again.
   
3. Place them in a 5 qt. stock pot with a thick bottom and add 5 cups water, bay leaves, salt, pepper, thyme, and baking soda.
4. The ham I used had a rind-like skin on the outside that had been glazed (ours was also about 1/4 the size of this one, if that helps!). If your ham also has a darker-colored edge (like the one above), trim it off with a quarter-inch of ham attached to it. If your ham is uniformly colored and textured, cut off 3-4 1/2 inch slices, no more than 1/4 of the weight of the whole ham. Add these to the stock pot.
5. Simmer on low heat until tender. This can take from 1 to 1 1/2 hours. For me it was just enough time to shovel our sidewalks and then prepare the rest of the ingredients.
6. Peel the parsnips, carrots, and sweet potato. Dice them into small cubes. (I recently made soup with my mom and we didn't cut the ingredients small enough so they were too big to eat with the spoon. Try to make these small enough that you could fit 2-3 in a spoon at once.)
7. Once the beans are tender remove the bay leaves and ham trimmings.
8. Heat a large saute pan with 1 tbsp bacon fat or olive oil. Saute the vegetables until they are almost tender enough to pierce with a fork. Leave the leftover oil in the pan, we'll use it later!
9. Add the vegetables to the soup, bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are tender (approx. 15 minutes).
10. Using a large measuring cup (I used my big Pyrex one), scoop 3 or 4 cups of the soup out of the pot. If you have an immersion blender, blend the soup in the measuring cup. If you have a traditional blender, blend the soup in small batches. Since the soup is hot, hold on to the top! Blend until almost smooth. Pour the blended stuff back into the pot and stir.
11. Re-heat the pan you used to saute the vegetables with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Dice the ham into 1/4 inch cubes and saute until very lightly browned.
    
12. Add the ham to the soup and allow it to return to a boil.
13. Eat! This would go well with saltines or some crusty french bread, or just on its own.

*Note: This makes a LOT of soup. Freeze half if you can't eat it all right away. It will reheat easily later!

Fast and Easy Chicken Enchiladas

Most of my cooking knowledge comes from cooking with my mom or watching her cook. Chicken enchiladas have been a part of our family dinner repertoire for as long as I can remember and it's one of the dishes that everyone looks forward to. My mom has cooked chicken enchiladas so many times that she could probably put them together in her sleep! This recipe is easy, economical, and soooo delicious. If you know you're not going to eat them all you can freeze them and reheat them later for an even quicker dinner. To make it into a whole meal we usually start a pot of "pink rice" (rice made with salsa for half the liquid) before getting started on the enchiladas themselves then heat up some pinto beans halfway through.


makes 12 enchiladas

• 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can Las Palmas Red Chile Sauce
• 1 can Ortega Enchilada Sauce
• 12 corn tortillas
• 16oz Pepper Jack cheese cut into pinky-finger sized chunks
• 16oz Colby Jack or Cheddar cheese cut into pinky-finger sized chunks

1. Place chicken in the microwave (yes, the microwave) and cook until nearly done. Microwaves vary in timing and power, so use any settings it may provide you with. Mine takes 3 minutes on each side.
2. Heat up the tortillas, one at a time. If you have a nice (clean) gas stove top you can turn the flame on low and place the tortillas right on top, flipping them as they start to get brown. For beginners or people with electric ranges heat your tortillas on a small non-stick omelet pan on medium-low heat.
3. When the chicken is nearly cooked (only slightly pink in the thickest parts) pull it apart into big bite-sized chunks.
4. Mix both cans of enchilada sauce in a large measuring pitcher or small bowl. Pour (or ladle) sauce to generously cover the bottom of a 9x13 pan. I usually use a Pyrex dish because then it can go in the microwave. The microwave in our apartment is too small, but they work just as well (only slower) in the oven.If you know you're going to bake the enchiladas to begin with you can use a metal pan.
5. Place one or two pieces of each kind of cheese and an equal amount of chicken in a line across the middle of a tortilla, parallel to your body. Fold the part closest to you over the filling and roll tightly to the edge of the tortilla. Hold the seam tight along the bottom and place the enchilada up against the edge of the pan.
   
6. Continue adding enchiladas to the pan, placing them fairly close together so they keep each other from unrolling. I usually fit 8-10 in one 9x14 dish.
7. Pour most (or all) of the remaining sauce over the tops of the enchiladas. The goal is to get some sauce on all of the tortillas so they don't dry out. You don't need to drown them. If you add too much sauce it can just end up floating the insides out of your enchiladas. Still tasty, but a bit messy.
8. I usually cut too much cheese to fit inside all of the enchiladas. If I haven't eaten it by now it gets broken up and sprinkled on top.
9. If you're baking, spray nonstick spray on one side of a sheet of aluminum foil, cover (spray side down), and bake for 20-30 minutes at 375. If you're microwaving, cover the pan with plastic wrap, leaving a small corner exposed to let the steam out. Some lucky people have microwaves with a "casserole" setting. Use this. Otherwise, 10-20 minutes on high will work, depending on how new/hardcore your microwave is.
   
10. With either method of heating, you want the edges and the middle of the pan to be bubbling and the cheese on top to be melted. I don't think I've ever overcooked them in the oven, but in the microwave it is possible to end up with enchilada mush if you cook them too long!
11. Allow the enchiladas to rest for 5 minutes before serving them. I usually can't stand to wait that long, but it helps to keep all the melted cheese from sliding out of the middle on it's way to the plate.
    
12. We enjoy eating these with beans and rice with an extra splash of leftover sauce on top. I was lucky enough to have some avocados last time I made this, so ours got some guacamole!

Cinnamon Apricot Muffin-Tops

My favorite way to procrastinate, or kill time in general, is either by cooking or reading. I've had plenty of free time lately, and the cold weather had made me especially excited to bake so that I can warm up the house while using the ovens. Today I was looking for something reasonably healthy that also only required the ingredients I had in my house. I've been making scones from Bisquick for years but today I wanted something moister and fluffier. Usually I just throw things in a bowl until it comes close to the right consistency, but today, for you, I measured. (You're welcome!)

• 2/3 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
• 2 1/2 tblspn brown sugar
• 2 1/2 cups bisquick
• 1/2 cup vanilla nonfat yogurt
• 1/4 cup water, milk, or soy milk

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees and spray a nonstick cookie sheet.
2. Mix wet ingredients separately from dry ingredients, then mix them all together.
3. It will be really sticky, so I recommend using a plastic mixing spoon and a silicone spatula to drop approximately 1/3 cup (just eyeball it) evenly spaced apart.
4. Bake for about 8 minutes, until they are slightly brown on the bottom and starting to brown on top.
5. I recommend these warm with some butter and/or jam.

Saturday Night Special -- Pizza!

I loooove pizza. I especially love it with a ton of different ingredients and when it's super hot. Unfortunately, when you order something like that from a pizzeria it gets more expensive the more ingredients you add, and by the time you get it home it's barely warm. The cheapest, easiest, and most delicious solution to the problem is to make the pizza at home. Most grocery stores sell pizza dough in the refrigerator section. I bought my dough from Trader Joe's before I had even planned on making pizza. With a price tag of under two dollars for a whole pizza's worth of dough I just couldn't refuse.

Next I had the yummy task of picking out toppings. As I meandered through the grocery store I realized I could make this as expensive (goat cheese, fresh basil) or inexpensive (turkey pepperoni, tomatoes) as I wanted. I went with an inexpensive but delicious mix of toppings: red sauce, mozzarella, diced tomatoes, turkey pepperoni, artichoke hearts and onions on half.

The pizza dough came with directions, so there was no guessing on how to prepare the dough. While the dough was rising on the counter for 20 minutes I was able to chop the onion and tomato and grate the mozzarella. Unfortunately it's now winter in Minnesota, and apparently the dough is meant to rise in a warm room for 20 minutes, not a barely tolerable energy saving apartment. Between the scarcely risen dough and the fact I rolled it out almost 6 inches larger than directed we ended up with a super thin crispy crust. I also rolled the dough in corn meal instead of flour, a trick that I learned from my mom. Another way to ensure crispy crunchy crust is to make sure the oven is preheated to the correct temperature before baking it off. Our final result wasn't the perfect, but it was cheap, easy, and piping hot. For extra flavor we added some Presto Pesto (you can use italian herbs) and red chili flakes for spice.

• 1 12" pizza crust (Some dough needs time to rise before you roll it out, so plan ahead!)
  
• 1 lb mozzarella cheese, grated
• 24-30 turkey pepperoni
• 1 roma tomato, diced
  
• 1/4 small white onion, sliced thinly
• 4-6 oz artichoke hearts, quartered and strained
  
• 2 cups red sauce (we used leftover Muir Glen pasta sauce)
• olive oil
• corn meal
  

1. Preheat the directions according to the directions on the pizza dough.
   
2. Roll out pizza dough, using corn meal intstead of flour to prevent sticking.
3. Move the dough to a prepared cookie sheet. Trust me. If you don't move it now, you'll never get it on with all the toppings on too!
4. Spread the sauce evenly, slightly thinner to the center and slightly thicker to the edges.
5. Place your toppings on the pizza. I like to do pepperoni and artichoke hearts first, then cheese, then tomatoes and onions on top.
6. Since I only put onions on half the pizza I put one pepperoni on top on the special half so that I can tell the two halves apart.
7. Drizzle pizza with olive oil. It only needs a little bit and this makes sure the pizza doesn't dry out. Also, it will add a fabulous shine and help the cheese brown.
8. Bake the pizza. Our oven took about 9 minutes, some will go as quickly as 6.
9. Garnish to taste. Try basil, parmesean, chili flakes, or even pesto.
   

Coconut Green Curry Chicken

It would be great if every meal could be tasty, healthy, and budget friendly, right? Also, some days I need it to be easy to throw together. One meal that I've been making almost weekly, even while visiting my sister and her family, is coconut green curry chicken. I always have a hard time getting the right mix of sweet, spicy, and tangy when I make anything curry, which means I spend about an hour getting the flavor right while the rest of the food gets cold or overcooked. Luckily, the wonderful people at Trader Joe's have noticed my plight and provided me with a solution. I am officially in love with Trader Joe's Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce. Now, I've been to Thailand, and even took cooking classes while I was there, so I will readily admit that this isn't the most authentic green curry sauce. But, for the price and the time-saving-ness I'm officially in love.

The first time I made this dish, I knew that I couldn't just throw the sauce on some chicken and call it dinner. I obviously needed some veggies and rice. I got the brown rice on the stove and then started digging in the fridge. We ALWAYS have carrots which have a great contrasting texture to the chicken if they're not cooked too mushy and a natural sweetness that complements the sweetness of the sauce. I also had one leftover tomato that didn't get used in the salad the night before and Adam and I had gotten a great deal on Yukon Gold potatoes a week or so back -- $2.99 for 10 lbs!

The biggest challenge for this dish was that everything needed to be cooked at different speeds but I wanted all of the pieces to take in the flavor of the sauce. By the time I'd realized this the first time I made Coconut Green Curry Chicken the chicken was already cubed and in the pan. Potatoes* are almost always successful in the microwave so I scrubbed them up and threw them in. Carrots, on the other hand, are almost never successful in the microwave (at least when I make them!) The only thing I could think of at the time was to boil them, which, looking back on it, was idiotic. The second time I made the dish I planned ahead much better and cooked the chicken in a preheated pan on one side, flipped it and layered the carrot chunks on, then lowered the heat and put the lid on. This way the carrots steamed on the chicken while the chicken cooked through. When the potatoes finished up in the microwave I let them sit until I could touch them without screaming in pain and then I peeled them and cubed them.

Once the chicken and carrots were done everything got piled into the pan with the chicken and the sauce was thrown on top. Since tomatoes get mushy so fast I didn't throw them in until the very end and they were nice and hot but still chewable. All of the flavors and textures worked really well together and the brown rice provided a nice base for the whole thing. It would go well with a garnish of fresh cilantro or basil, if you are lucky/well prepared enough to have some in your refrigerator. Adam, the carrot and salt addict of the house, also suggested a bit more salt to taste at the end, and I agree that it balanced the sweet and spicy better. This sauce is so good, though, that you could probably throw almost any mix of protein and veggies in a pan and end up with delicious!

*Some of you anti-carb people may be thinking "brown rice AND Yukon Gold potatoes? She must be CRaZy!" Each provide different nutrients to the meal and different kinds of fiber. Plus, if you know me, you know I try to fit as many carbs into a meal as possible!

**UPDATE!!
Here's the recipe in "recipe format" for those of you who don't want to search through the story for the ingredients and amounts!

• 1 1/2 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch cubes
  
• 3 Yukon Gold Potatoes
• 3 carrots, cleaned and sliced in circles 1/4 inch thick
• 1 large tomato or two small tomatoes, chopped
  
• 1 jar Trader Joe's Green Curry Simmer Sauce
• 1/2 tsp garlic salt

1. Preheat the pan for the chicken, then poke holes in the potatoes and microwave them.
2. Spray pan with non-stick cooking spray, then add chicken and sprinkle it with the garlic salt.
3. When chicken is cooked on one side, flip it over, layer carrot slices on chicken, cover the pan, and turn the heat to low. Cook/steam for 3-5 minutes until the chicken is done.
   
4. Hopefully the potatoes will finish before the chicken does! Allow them to cool until you can touch them, then slice them into cubes that are smaller than the pieces of chicken.
5. When the chicken and carrots are finished, add the potatoes, Simmer Sauce, and tomatoes. Stir it all up and wait for it to bubble, then dig in!
   

Burrito Soup

The weather here in Minnesota was gray and rainy today. Rainy days always make me want comfort food, like soup or chili. One of my favorite soups is tortilla soup, but it's a bit time intensive and requires a lot of ingredients. I always feel like chili has too many steps, too, and with all of the chopping and browning the meat there are dozens of dishes to do at the end. My goal today was to make something somewhere between the two, with a similar flavor palate to tortilla soup and the heartiness of chili. After a bit of internet research (and a trip to the grocery store) I came up with a plan without knowing exactly how it would turn out, a risk I don't usually take in cooking. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised with the Burrito Soup that resulted.

Many of my friends might wonder what Minnesota has done to me when they find out exactly what went into the slow-cooker this morning. Remember, though, that the groceries are currently being paid for by one indebted law school student and one temporarily employed teacher, so budget is a huge consideration when I'm choosing ingredients. If you have any qualms about using canned or pre-prepared ingredients, avert your eyes now. (Don't worry, though, no cream of chicken soup, EVER, I promise!)

The recipe for this dish is almost contradictorily simple compared to the flavors that develop. I had defrosted three frozen chicken breasts yesterday, so this morning I put everything together before going to work. First into the crock pot went the chicken, followed by one packet of taco seasoning (I used the low sodium kind), one can of black beans, one can of corn, and one 12oz jar of salsa (I used Trader Jose's Salsa Authentica). I included the liquid from the beans and corn because my main fear from cooking chicken in the slow-cooker was that it would dry out. If you're anti- canned vegetable juice you can easily substitute chicken broth. After putting everything in, though, I realized I had gone overboard with liquid so I threw in a still-frozen chicken breast hoping it would thaw and cook. I set the cooker on low and left it alone for eight hours.

Eight hours for chicken? Yes, that seems like a long time, but it worked, I promise. In fact, after eight hours, I pulled the chicken breasts into smaller chunks with forks and left it for another two and a half hours! One thing that kind of grossed me out was that, since I poured the taco seasoning directly onto the chicken initially, it was still stuck there those eight hours later. It easily scraped off into the broth with a fork and left behind some of the flavor in the chicken. At this point I also realized that there was quite a bit more broth than I had anticipated, turning it more into soup than really juicy chicken. Adam had the idea of making up some brown rice and topping off our bowls with some freshly grated cheese, both of which lent a great deal to the end result.

The first bite was instantly recognizable -- burrito. You know how sometimes you make a burrito so full that all the insides fall out of the tortilla into mushy goodness? It was like that. Absolutely delicous. I wanted mine a bit spicier so I added a couple drops of hot sauce, and when I reheat a bowl for lunch tomorrow I plan on dicing up a tomato to go on top, but I think that's part of what makes this dish so neat. Just like making a burrito, once you have the basics you can easliy add the accents so that it's just the way you like it. And, one of my favorite parts of the dish? Only the slow-cooker, rice pot, bowls and spoons to wash in the end.

**UPDATE
It SNOWED here today in Minnesota! Burrito soup was a definite must for dinner so that we could warm up from the inside-out. Here's the exact recipe I used today, an improvement from last time.

• 1 lb defrosted boneless skinless chicken (I used breasts)
• 8 oz hot chipotle salsa (for the spicy and smokey)
• 8 oz salsa verde (I prefer Herdez since it doesn't have onions)
• 1 can black beans (drained)
• 1 can whole kernel corn (drained)
• 2 cups chicken broth

1. Layer the chipotle salsa across the bottom of the crock pot.
2. Place the chicken on the salsa in an even layer in the bottom of the pot to cover the salsa.
3. Pour the salsa verde on top of the chicken.
4. Add the cans of black beans and corn.
5. Slowly pour the chicken broth into the pot.
6. Set the slow cooker on low. If yours has a timer, set it for 7 hours.
   
7. After 7 hours of cooking, use forks to pull apart the chicken. The chicken has hopefully only been in contact with the two salsas, so this will be the first time the layers all get mixed up. Add salt/chicken broth to taste, cook for 1/2 hour more.

I enjoyed this on top of rice, but you may enjoy it without as well!

Pesto Pasta with Chicken Meatballs

I'll readily admit to anyone that I'm a big fan of reality television, especially when it's food and fashion related. I love that the contestants get thrown into ridiculous, improbable challenges which cause them to freak out and fail or pull it together to create something fabulous. Some days I feel like making dinner is one of those crazy challenges, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels that way. Last night definitely felt like one of those challenges.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to get to make a trip to Costco with my mom to stock up my fridge. That means I got staples like chicken breasts and peanut butter as well as tasty splurges like pesto and hummus. So, when I got home and found out that Adam's parents were in the area, and none of us had eaten dinner yet, and they wanted to stop by....and I'm sure you know where that ended up. So, even though I had a fridge full of food, the majority of it was frozen and I had 45 minutes to whip up something tasty for four people.

When I was rearranging the freezer I'd moved a pound of ground chicken to the fridge, so I first thought to cook it up like ground beef and throw it in with some whole wheat penne and the pesto I'd gotten at Costco. Looking in the cupboard, though, I realized I didn't have enough penne for everyone so I'd have to go with rotini. Rotini has lots of ridges, though, so I realized that if I just cooked up the chicken in a pan and threw it in with the pasta it would get lost. I started the water for the pasta, then tackled the chicken issue.

I'd originally grabbed the chicken for an ingredient in my spicy turkey/chicken burgers, so my next thought went to meatballs. But chicken meatballs? Anyone who's worked with ground chicken before knows that it's very wet and mushy, so I knew I needed some oatmeal to help it stick together since I didn't have any breadcrumbs. I mixed all the ingredients together but it was still super sticky and I had a bad case of salmonella hand from mixing. I couldn't form the chicken into a ball shape, so I heated up the oil and tried to strategically place slightly rounded blobs of chicken in the pan so they weren't touching. When they were browned I flipped them, and when they browned on the other side I flipped them again, added some chicken broth and scraped the yummy brown stuff off the bottom of the pan. After that I turned the heat down and put the lid on to let them cook through.

When the meatballs were done, everything in the pan went into the pot with the cooked, drained pasta. I scooped some pesto in, mixed it all together, and served it with a simple salad of romaine lettuce, tomato, and some homemade balsalmic-lime vinaigrette. Adam's parents brought us some lovely flowers and a sourdough baguette that rounded out the meal. The food was tasty, the company was lovely, and I didn't have to do the dishes. I'll score it a successful evening.