I cooked!

Missy Tippens

I had to use that title, because it seems like it's been ages since I cooked something new to post about. :)

This wasn't the best dish, but it was filling and easy. Plus, I'm still dealing with tooth pain and a broken tooth. Just found out on Wednesday that I will definitely need to have an implant done. Until then, I'm not eating crunchy or hard foods.

Saw this at the dentist and got a big kick out of it. :) 

So though the dish I'm sharing had chicken (which took some effort to chew), it was still mostly soft.

I looked at several recipes for orzo (my daughter had bought some and wanted to have it with chicken). Then I just made do with the ingredients I had on hand.

First, we cooked the orzo. The recipe called for 1 cup (uncooked), but next time I will double that amount for three of us so we'll have leftovers. Leave plenty of time for this. It's such a tiny pasta that I assumed it would only take a couple of minutes. We had whole wheat orzo, and it said it takes 8-10 minutes!

Then I cooked the cubed, seasoned (with salt and pepper) chicken in olive oil. Once it was almost done, I added chopped garlic and lemon juice. I didn't have fresh lemons, so used bottled lemon juice (several tablespoons). One of the  recipes called for adding spinach at this point, but we didn't have any. It would have really made the dish a lot better to have it! Mushrooms would also have been good.

Once the garlic was softened, I added the cooked orzo, a little pasta water, and shredded parmesan cheese (about 1/4-1/2 cup). I stirred that until it was melted, and then we served it.

I didn't think to take a photo until we had already sat down to eat! This is the little bit that was left in the pan. It was pretty tasty, although, like I said, I wish we'd had some vegetables to add. Let me know if you try this sometime!

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