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.