So as I said, I do like to cook so cooking a good meal, especially while home, alone with a toddler, is to me a blogworthy accomplishment. So a few years ago I got a subscription to Cooking Light for Christmas. I was on WW at the time and I loved it. They take things that we love and make them lighter, they make some fabulous recipes and they give you all the nutrition info which made it easy for me to calculate the points and to menu plan. As of right now I have a gallon zip-loc bag filled with envelopes, that are filled with categorized recipes. Since I'm trying to start menu planning to make shopping and deciding what to make/eat easier I use this baggie alot. In a recent Cooking Light they had a recipe for Chicken with Lemon-Leek Linguine. It looked delicious and kid friendly and the time was 30 minutes. So since we eat about 30 mintues to an hour after my son gets home and I knew that 30 minutes magazine time was 45 minute real life with a toddler time I thought it would be a good thing to make.
So that morning I defrosted the chicken and then during my lunch break (one of the benefits of working from home) I pounded out the chicken and put it in the fridge until I was ready to cook. Before I went to pick up N from daycare I took it out of the fridge to come to room temp so it would cook faster when I got home. From there I just followed the directions! I did add more salt and pepper and garlic than they said (I like things a little bit more spiced) and for the sauce I added more lemon (3tbs instead of 2). I also was using dried parsley since fresh hebs go to waste in our house.
So the whole thing did take about 40 minutes. My son was FAB-U-LUS the whole time he kept himself occupied playing with books and trucks in the kitchen. The only thing that made me paranoid is that when you are pan searing the meat there is splatter that happens with the butter. So I had to be careful while the chicken was cooking that he staying on the other side of the kitchen.
So then N and I sat down to eat. I cut the linguine in half so it would be easier but he loves noodles so he enjoyed it all. The chicken was delicious as well even though it was just very simple. I think this coule be jazzed up even more. Even with the extra lemon and seasonings I added it still could have used a little something...I'll have to try it again to find out. Iwas thinking that this would be good with some asparagus as well, maybe chop it into chucks and saute it before adding the leeks and garlic. As with any pasta, it was even better the next day. At least that was was my husband said when he got home and ate all the leftovers!
I've meal planned for the whole month of February so far and there are a couple recipes I'm not so sure about. I'm sure there will be some epic type failures in the future where N ends up eating chicken nuggets and banana (mananana as he would call it) and I end up with a sandwich. This week however was a good one, I thoroughly enjoyed all of it, the cooking and the eating and N did too! Thank goodness he was able to occupy himself that night....
