Dinner Pronto!

I cooked dinner on Mother's Day.  Maybe we should have gone out or gotten take-out, but we had been doing that all weekend.  So I really just wanted to make something at home.

I ended up going to Stop & Shop on Sunday morning (I also cheated last week and went on Thursday to get some beans and tomatos and cheese for cinco de Mayo) to get my groceries for the week.  It took me longer than usual since things are in all different places.  Which annoyed me.  Oh - and sidenote: I went to Target and they are rearranging that store too.  So nothing was in the right place!  What are my stores doing to me??!!

Anyway, I actually had a plan for dinners this week.  And according to the plan on Sunday we were supposed to have grilled chicken tacos.  Yummy! Doesn't that sound good??

Instead, we had pesto-grilled chicken with spaghetti and sauce and caprese salad. 

I really don't know what happened to the plan.  But I got some fresh mozz and basil at the store and really wanted that instead.  The pesto-grilled chicken just happened.  And I didn't take any pictures!  Everything came out really yummy, so I'll share:

Pesto-Grilled Chicken:

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 pkg Knorr Pesto Sauce

olive oil

Make a pesto rub according to Knorr's pesto sauce mix

Spread rub on chicken breasts

Grill until chicken is cooked through

Pasta Sauce*

28oz can crushed tomatoes

2 garlic cloves

dried crushed basil leaves

dried crushed oregano

1/4 C red wine

olive oil

Run garlic through garlic press and saute in olive oil until fragrant.  Add canned tomatoes.  Season with oregano and basil (to your liking).  Add red wine.  Bring to boil.  Immediately turn down to low and simmer until your chicken and pasta are done.

    * I am not Italian.  My husband is and therefore I have an Italian last name.  Despite this fact, sauce is not my strong suit.  So if you have a better recipe, I would go with that.  Also, you can omit red wine.  The only reason I threw it in there was because I had a bottle of wine sitting on my counter for the last week or so and the wine wasn't really that great.  I figured it would be better in a sauce!

For the caprese salad, I just sliced 2 tomatoes and some fresh mozzarella and ripped off some fresh basil leaves.  I layered the ingredients and drizzled some olive oil over it.  Since I like to include pictures in my posts, I found this yummy take on the caprese salad:

Ingredients

• 1 cup baby spinach leaves
• 1 large tomato, sliced 3/4 inch thick
• 1 ball of fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Directions

1. Spread the spinach out on a serving plate. Place the slices of tomato on the bed of spinach. Top each slice of tomato with a slice of fresh mozzarella. Sprinkle the basil over the salad and drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Enjoy!