I don’t know about you, but I’m always wishing for more hours in the day. You get up, go to work, spend far too much time on a commute, get home, attempt to unwind, walk the dogs, cook dinner, goof around on the computer, go to bed.
Either I’ve got too much on my plate or I’m completely inept at time management. So most nights all I want to do is snap my fingers and have dinner magically appear on the table. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to conjure up that fairy. So I make my fallback dish.
Pasta.
In some form or another, we eat a lot of pasta in my house. It’s cheap. It’s easy. And it’s incredibly hard to screw up.
This may also be the reason why I gain weight. Ah, at least I’m happy.
So for this one, you need 5 ingredients:
farfalle (bow tie) pasta
pesto
chicken
olive oil
sundried tomatoes
(salt and pepper)
directions:
heat oil over medium heat.
dice chicken, season with salt and pepper, and cook in oil until browned.
meanwhile, boil pasta until al dente. drain.
once chicken is cooked through, add pasta, sundried tomatoes, and pesto.
toss together to coat well.
Optional extras:
crushed red pepper
minced garlic
And now you can go have that glass of wine you want while you unwind instead of wasting anymore time slaving over a hot stove.
Pasta, Pizza, Panini. Those are the holy trinity of lazy day fixes!
kitchenwitch- thanks. now i want a panini press. crap.
Pasta has a bad rep in the weight department. Usually, it’s not the pasta that makes you gain, it’s all the delicious cheese you put on top. Haven’t had pesto in a while, you may have just convinced me.
PS – thought of you when I ate at Farmburger this weekend.
Now, that will make you fat!
and the magic word is “farmburger”. i’ll be craving one of their burgers for the rest of the day.
Katie, your five ingredient fix sounds perfect. Although I’m also quite interested in the glass of wine you talk about. Yes, I lurvs me some carbs.
wendi, maybe we should rename this the 6 ingredient fix-and that last ingredient will now be wine!
I love yummy and simple recipies like this.
I recently just re-discovered my crock pot in an effort to gain a few more minutes in the evenings. I am loving it. I really love that you can throw frozen stuff in there and it doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s cooking away at my house right now. I got a pork loin and some BBQ sauce in there. Will have pulled pork sammies for dinner when I get home. I’m kicking myself that I haven’t been doing this sooner!
i used mine yesterday and it was awesome. while i made dessert treats, i cut up some veggies, threw a chuck roast in the crock pot and let it cook for the next 6 hours. It was awesome.
And i love the bbq pork sammies. Man I’m getting hungrier by the second!
I believe adding pesto to anything makes it fancy.
i believe you’re right. Even if I did just buy it in a plastic container.
Details.
Your pesto pasta sounds fantastic! A cold pinot grigio, and I’m there. Glad you’re back up and running. Hope you’re feeling much better this week. And did you hear on the news last week that eating COLD pasta is actually good for you? Well, that’s not really how they worded it. What they really said was that when you eat cold pasta, your body doesn’t process the carbs so it goes straight through without packing on the calories (or something like that). I’ll bet your pasta dish tastes pretty good cold, too. It’s worth a try, anyway.
Well nana b, you just made my day. there is nothing better than cold ziti! now I have to make some!
This sounds like healthy pasta to me! I am going to try this one on the Hubs this week and see if I can get him to go for it! (He is totally hooked on alfredo right now, which is killing my waist!)
alfredo is bad! mean! evil!
then again, so are the poptarts i ate for breakfast.
YUM! Bow-tie pasta is my fave. I know, they all taste the same but I still love ‘em. I was going to read this post after I got my chores done but you totally had me at “lazy”. This sounds so very good with pesto and sun dried tomato!
dionne, i feel the same way. i love the corkscrews. never was much of a fan of bowties, but i’m learning to love them.
My boyfriend makes a concoction like that. It’s really good with artichoke hearts too!
you had me at artichokes.
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I like the idea!! I’ll post it on my site
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Your “lazy day” recipe is very similiar to my twice a week (or so) routine. I usually use wheat pasta though. Sauté a meat (chicken or shrimp usually), add a veggie & pasta, and use different seasonings. I usually just do some extra butter & olive oil rather than pesto, but occasionally do use pesto too. Depending on the seasoning, I vary the other stuff too. Sometimes mozaralla to top it, sometimes feta. I switch up the veggies – broccoli, cauliflower, peas, etc…. The flavored tuna packets are good for this too – garlic & herb or lemon are my faves.