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Pesto Chicken with Parmesan Noodles


Dinner on the fly, the mantra to every working family cook.  I have been cooking long enough that cooking dinner on the fly was an act of congress.  You'd come home from work, search the deep dark crevices of both the fridge/freezer/and your brain for a quick and easy, tasty and healthy meal.  If there was time to spare, a cookbook or two or the index card box of recipes would be rummaged.  My how times have changed.  Now all one working cook has to do for dinner in a pinch is pop onto the internet with whatever ingredients you want to cook with. 

Dinner on the fly was was how Easy Parmesan Buttered Noodles was found.  Dinner with veggies and noodles would have been sufficient but not for the table counterparts.  They needed protein to fill their voids so pesto chicken  breasts with parmesan was added.  Not bad for a quick 30 minute dinner.

Modifications Made:  
Noodles.  So many choices, so many textures, so many flavors.  Noodles can be just noodles when eating just noodles.  If eating chicken alfredo noodles must be fettuccine, if eating lo mein noodles must be thin spaghetti.  But noodles on the side can be any noodles even a combination of noodles.  Buttered noodles on the side are a perfect way to use up the odds and ends of noodles.  Therefore veggie rotini noodles were used instead of fettuccine.

Scaled for Likability: Great
Veggie noodles are great.  They are more tender than whole wheat pasta noodles, not bitter like lentil noodles (red or green), and more flavorful than plain noodles. They come in various shapes making meals a little bit more healthy in different noodle forms.  If there is a veggie noodle on the shelf at my local grocer, I am more inclined to buy it than regular.  Unless of course if plain is needed such as for lo mein.  

Normally when eating buttered noodles, tub butter is used, not real butter as the taste of tub imitation butter is preferred.  Real butter is for cookies, everything else tub butter with extra calcium.  Hey, gotta get the calcium where we can.  Tonight real margarine was used as I wanted the extra salt to pair with the salt of the Parmesan cheese.  Not having made a dish with the different butters to compare but having had plenty of experience with tub buttered noodles, I can honestly say real butter was the way to go with the cheese.  Salty, full of flavor, and just enough bitter from the cheese to offset the butter.  Paired with the pesto chicken, it was a perfect meal.  What was better was leftover pasta for lunch!

Edit Feb 3,2020:
Ate the leftover noodles cold right out of the fridge.  They were as good cold as they were warm.  

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