Classic Lemon Pepper Chicken

Hey, a new post! It’s been a while. Sorry about that. It’s not that I never cook anymore, but rather that it’s pretty hard to find the time to cook and take pictures and then blog about the experience when you’ve got a baby. Normally, whenever I get a few free minutes, I spend them trying to frantically brush my teeth, clean the dishes, and do whatever else I can do around the house before Baby wakes up or needs my attention again.

But Baby is sleeping peacefully in her crib right now, and the dishes are done (because hubby picked up dinner on the way home), so I’ve got a little time. So I’ll share a super simple recipe that I found and tried out a few days ago.

When I’m strapped for time, baby or not, I look for recipes with few dishes to clean, few ingredients to use, and few steps to go through. This is one of those recipes.

First, start with a little bit of all-purpose flour.

Add a tablespoon of lemon-pepper seasoning, which you bought several years ago for a recipe and have barely touched since, and won’t toss out even though you’re not supposed to hold onto spices for long because hey, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Mix the flour and seasoning up.

Next, prepare some chicken breasts. Mine were big, so I used a big knife to cut them into thinner pieces. I failed at making them similar sizes. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Throw some butter in a skillet…

And then, one by one, dip pieces of chicken in the flour. Turn it so it’s coated on both sides.

And drop them in the pan. Don’t overcrowd the pan too much; do the chicken in shifts if you have to (and I had to).

After a few minutes of sizzling, turn the chicken over.

And that’s it! Take it out of the pan when it’s cooked through, and you’re done. Serve with some green beans and potatoes or something like that, and you’ve got a fairly healthy (except for the whole frying-in-butter part) and easy meal.

A nice way to use the chicken breasts that I always seem to have on hand and not know what to do with.

Source: Classic Lemon Pepper Chicken

Creamy Chicken, Bacon, and Tomato Pasta

Hubby and I are still staying with family for the time being, though we’ve signed a lease and expect to move soon. I’m still trying to alleviate the inconvenience of having us by making dinner when I can.

I’ve had this recipe bookmarked for a while but hadn’t gotten around to trying it. It’s actually fairly similar to Philly Shrimp, which is cool.

First, I got out some tri-colored farfalle pasta. I started to measure out the three cups that the recipe called for, but then I thought, “Screw that,” and dumped the whole box into boiling water.

Next, I cut up some chicken breasts. I used about twice as many as the recipe called for.

I also seasoned them with salt, pepper, oregano, basil, garlic powder, and a touch of onion powder just for fun. This wasn’t part of the original recipe, but reviewers thought it should be.

Put it into a big skilled and start frying it up.

Meanwhile, I started prepping the rest of my ingredients. I love being back in an area where we have Wegman’s! I opened one can of Italian-style diced tomatoes, as the recipe called for, but then immediately decided that since I’d already doubled the chicken and put in more pasta than I needed, I might as well double everything.

So I opened another can.

Then I gave my niece a piece of farfalle pasta, which had been cooked and drained by this point. She wasn’t sure what to think of it.

But she liked the camera.

Anyway, once the chicken was about done, I transferred it to a saucepan so I’d have room to add more stuff. I added those diced tomatoes first.

And then a brick of cream cheese (my favorite ingredient!).

The recipe called for a bit of water to be added, but I used chicken broth instead.

Once it started melting and mixing, it looked more like this.

It got creamier as the cheese continued to melt. I also noticed that the sauce was a bit watery and mixed up some corn starch in water to thicken it up.

Also, I just realized that I have no photo evidence of the bacon that I fried up, crumbled, and mixed in. It’s there, I promise, I’m just dumb and forgot to take pictures.

It was too much pasta for one serving dish, so here’s about half of the yield.

And served on a plate:

Creamy and with a deeper taste than I’d anticipated. I liked the smoky flavor of the bacon combined with the tomato. Personally, I could do without the chicken, but I know a lot of people would disagree.

Regardless, delicious. And the leftovers were just wonderful.