Now that Nolan has been eating with us for a couple of weeks, we thought it would be best that we plan some more meals. Ones that are somewhat healthy and that he could take a liking to. Since this child could live on cheese and bread alone, we knew that we are in for a potential picky eater. One day he will eat a bunch of strawberries and grapes and the next day they might as well be rocks as he looks at them with such distaste. I don't know how he decides what is acceptable for the day or not, but it's a learning process for him and us.
We really enjoy the Chicken Florentine Pasta Bertolli bag, so when I saw this recipe, I knew it had to be one to try. Supposedly simple and made with lots of yummy ingredients. One ingredient that I had been wanting to try was the Philadelphia Cooking Creme. I was really excited that that ingredient was in there. The recipe doesn't say exactly which one to buy, so we bought the Italian Cheese & Herb. We thought it was the one that made the most sense. Let me tell you, I will be buying more of these to add to pastas as it was absolutely delicious. The best bites were the ones where I got a lot of that mixture.
Another thing that excited me about this dish- which I didn't know until I started cooking- was that it called for a dutch oven or a big sauce pan. Scott and I had purchased a cast iron dutch oven over the holidays for a cool $25 when they were having all the crazy sales. Cast iron anything isn't cheap and most of the ones that I had looked at were at least around the $75 range, so this was an awesome deal we couldn't pass up. I'm sure I could have used this sooner, but this recipe actually called for it so I knew for sure it was the proper way to cook the meal. It cooked very very well and I will be using it WAY more often as we always feel like our pans aren't big enough for a lot of the dishes we make. I think it can be more versatile that we thought so it's being moved to the front of the cupboard. PROMOTION!
And finally, another little tid bit of fun-ness. My dad had sent me this "Great Ideas" email which had a bunch of you guessed it, great ideas! One of them that I wanted to try immediately was if you put a wooden spoon over the top of the boiling pasta, it won't boil over. I always have a problem with this and am constantly babysitting pasta when I need to be doing something else. I set the wooden spoon over it and it didn't even come close to boiling over. Not even remotely threatening to boil over. It was awesome and exciting and I was able to work on what was cooking in the cast iron the entire time. So, I would definitely say that this trick worked. I will let you know if it ever fails on me in the future.
This dish was really good. It was a tad hectic with a one year old and about three pans going at once, but once the chicken was cooked and I gave some pieces to Nolan, he was entertained enough that I could finish the dish. It calls for bowtie pasta or any small pasta so we just used the ziti pasta we had on hand. It had a lot of great flavors and Nolan couldn't get enough of it. He even stuffed stringy bits of spinach in his mouth which I was a little surprised about. Scott couldn't keep up with his demand of wanting more. So, I would say this is definitely a winner for all parties and one we will make again.
Recipe can be found here at Picky Palate.
Always enjoy your posts!
ReplyDelete