Elyse's Philosophy of Cooking. On the menu: Chicken Mushroom Spinach Lemon Pasta

While I really enjoy cooking, I hate going to the grocery store (though we do love us some Publix down South).  I do not plan on what I'm going to cook throughout the week before I go to the store, and part of this is because I absolutely HATE wasting food (in the case that it ends up not getting cooked). So most nights I'm in the mood to cook consist of me scrambling to come up with a meal based on what's in the fridge.

This feat is even grander when you are married to an individual with an extremely small palette. Though, I will say that it has expanded drastically since we began dating!! I had warned him at the beginning of my pregnancy that I will need to cook more of a variety of healthy foods so he'd need to be prepared to have cereal for dinner from time to time :).

Typically, I take whatever main ingredients I have on hand that I'd like to use and generically Google for recipe ideas.  I rarely use just one recipe, but a compilation of several I find.  This has me following very few measurements, eyeballing a lot, and often has me never being able to cook the same thing more than once.

I must input here that I don't plan to do thorough step-by-step cooking instructions (nor list ingredients with accurate measurements), but a general idea of recipes I used, the outcome, and whether I plan to cook it again.  I'm way too high-strung in the kitchen to worry about that! But we'll see how this evolves.

So tonight's Google Search:  Chicken Spinach Lemon Pasta
(I intended to use Mushrooms as well but am comfortable with just tossing them into pretty much any pasta dish)

Several recipes of interest popped up, including some that I intend to try in the future:

Lemon Spaghetti with Chicken and Spinach (tons of pictures and looks delish!)
Chicken & Spinach Lemon Angel Hair Pasta
Easy Lemon Pasta with Chicken

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures during prep and cooking so only have of the final product (cut me some slack, I'm still learning!!).

Chicken, Mushroom, Spinach Lemon Pasta

Typically when I cook "one pan" pasta dishes I start with getting the pasta cooked and out of the way so there's one less thing going on (I'm an anxious cook). With this recipe, I used a little less than half a box of Angel Hair.

As the sliced mushrooms (roughly 2 handfuls) sautéed, I cut 2 chicken breasts into 1-inch pieces and seasoned with thyme, paprika, salt, and pepper.

I removed the mushrooms and cooked the chicken with the juice of half of a lemon. After the chicken cooked I removed it to start with a fresh pan and to remove the white goop that sometimes gets cooked out of chicken. Don't worry, I've researched this and it is protein that is more likely to occur with frozen chicken.

I returned the mushrooms and chicken to the pan with 2 tablespoons of butter and began to add the pasta.  I added some olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, and the zest of 1 lemon. Once the pasta was well coated I added two heaping handfuls of fresh baby spinach.

I turned the heat to low and tossed from time to time until spinach was wilted.

I topped it with shredded parmesan and served with garlic toast.

I thoroughly enjoyed this dish. I was looking for something light but starchy, and this hit the spot perfectly. Just what Baby P ordered. I will definitely be making this again!

One thing I would change in the future is the type of pasta I used, perhaps Linguine or Penne.  The Angel Hair seemed just a bit too flimsy.  If I use long pasta in the future, I'll also plan to cut it shorter so it blends easier with the rest of the ingredients. I'd likely add more spinach next time too.

Kevin's not a big lemon fan, so his initial reaction after his first bite was: "it's citrus-y".  It wasn't overbearing, I was actually wanting it more lemony (remember his sensitive palette), so he'll have to live with it when I make it in the future.... because I definitely will be!