Saturday Night and We're Feeling Hungry!

If you're from the Midwest, you know that this winter has been cold, followed by snow, followed by colder, followed by more snow, then cold, then snow and so on and so forth.  Today I was supposed to go to the grocery store to get my meal ingredients for the coming week.  Joseph, Henry, and I, wanted to grab lunch first (Shopping 101 says you CANNOT grocery shop on an empty tummy) before shopping but by the time we went out, stopped at Costco for peanuts (Joseph's midnight snacks) then went and had lunch we were done with people.  It was snowing like crazy, people on the road were acting like they'd never seen snow before and we were all tired...so home we went.  Keep in mind, at this point we have little food, unless you want to count the 2 tons (yes TONS) of chili and cornbread we have leftover from our Super Bowl party, but since we had soup and salad for lunch that was not an option.  Since my menu planning goes from Saturday-Friday we have little to no food in the house. I decided to grab a quick chicken recipe from Pinterest since I had some thawed in the refrigerator.  I opted for Kalyn's Kitchen Baked Pesto Chicken I had pinned earlier in the day.  The recipe called for chicken, basil pesto, salt and pepper, and mozzarella cheese, all of which I had in stock...score!

My normal routine for trying new recipes is pretty easy.  I usually follow the recipe to the letter the first time through, except I usually have to 1/2 the recipe to feed just Joseph and I.  If I deem it good enough for a second run through, I do it my way, which usually involves a few tweeks to the original but the end result is pretty close.  So this recipe is done as the original author intended. 

The ingredients for 2 people (recipe cut in half):

 

2 chicken breasts

1/4 cup basil pesto

1 oz mozzarella cheese

salt and pepper to taste

 

 



I started by preheating my oven to 375 degrees.

 

I sprayed the pan with some non-stick spray then spread half the pesto on the bottom of the pan. 

 

I put my strips in on top of the pesto then topped with some salt and pepper (I used garlic salt).  I also cut my strips with the grain.  The recipe pics looked like she cut longways.

 

I topped the chicken with the remaining pesto, covered with foil and put in the oven for 25 min

 



 

I remove the pan from the oven, remove the foil, top with the mozzarella cheese and put back in the oven for 10 minutes (5 min in the heat and 5 min under the broiler to brown)

 

The end result

 

I should have taken a picture of the plate I made up.  We ate the chicken with tater tots and broccoli!  YUMMY!

 

I felt that the chicken was a bit dry but the taste was great.  Next time I make this, and I will make it again, I think I'll cut off 5 minutes of the cooking time.  Overall this was a great, easy dish!  I would recommend this for weeknight dinners as the prep is easy and cleanup is easy as well!

 

 

Taste:  B+ (would be higher but I thought it was a bit dry)

Kid Friendly: B (depending on their like/love of pesto)

Ease of Creation: A+  (can't get much higher than that!)