Whole Wheat Rotini with Chicken, Roasted Red Peppers, Fresh Snipped Basil and Buffalo Mozzarella

So, I said I would get one food post in before I took off again, and here it is.

We are in Operation: Clean Out the Cabinets. Our new cabinets will be in around the middle of August, so we have to gut the kitchen before the professionals come in and install all our shiny new appliances and wooden cabinets. I have amassed a lot of boxed dry goods since we moved, and now am given the dubious job of trying to use them all up before we gut the kitchen. This particular meal only used two items from the cabinets, the pasta and the roasted red peppers, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

The best part of this meal for me was snipping the fresh basil from my plant that is growing in a clay pot on the deck. It's so great to be able to grow something and then use it in your meals. This is the only piece of me that aches for the country. I love city living, but there is something to be said for growing your own produce and filling your table with your own bounty created from your own handy work. I also am not naive enough to think that I would actually have the time or the energy to sustain more than a few pots of herbs sitting on the deck, so I will continue to buy everything else from the grocery store.

Apparently CB thinks that the joy of growing herbs has rendered me stupid. Why you ask. Well, because as I was cooking dinner last night he waltzes into the kitchen to ask if I have washed the basil. "Why wouldn't I wash the basil?" I ask. "I don't know I just wanted to make sure that you did."

Whaaat.

Ok. Never has he asked me whilst preparing a meal if I have taken the proper precautions with the produce, but now because the produce came from the deck, the veritable fruit of my loins, I would suddenly think it to good to come in contact with the h2o, and whatever bugs have shat all over it are just additional flavah. Hmm. I am so glad I don't have dairy cows. Hey, is this milk pasteurized?"

Anyway this recipe came together in a snap. I cooked the chicken in olive oil with a little garlic salt, then added the chopped roasted red peppers and the juice from the jar, and let simmer until the chicken was done. I WASHED the basil and chopped it up into little pieces. When the pasta was cooked, I added the chicken and red pepper mixture to the pasta, and then tossed in the basil and buffalo mozzarella balls.

Mmm.




"Did you wash the basil?"