winner winner...what's for dinner?

Alrighty, I'm a little late on the dinner post this week, but better late than never, right?  Right.

First up was a little something I threw together before we could actually get to the store this week.  It's kind of a cross between chicken picatta, chicken parmesan, and chicken tenders.  I like to call it: chicken picatta Tenders over pasta.  

To make this I just breaded the chicken tenders in Italian bread crumbs/parmesan cheese and then baked them at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, turning them halfway through.  Once the chicken was done I just slapped 2 tenders on top of some spaghetti and marinara sauce and then topped the whole thing with more parmesan.  Yum!  Oh, and I served it up with some of the sparkling red wine that my sister gave me a few weekends ago when I puppy sat for her.  It was the perfect combo.

The next thing I made for dinner was this:

Chicken Pesto Pasta

This is another fairly simple meal to make.  First, I cut up two chicken breasts into one inch cubes and cooked them in a sauce pan for about 3 minutes per side.  While that was going on I was also cooking up some pasta.  It doesn't really matter what kind you use...penne, shells, rigatonni, angel hair, whatever.  I chose a mixture, and it was delish.  After the chicken and pasta are done and drained, mix them together and add in some pesto from a jar.  Or make your own pesto.  I'd like to try that at some point, but right now I don't gots that kinda time.

I served the pesto up with this yummy greek salad that I make all the time.  It was, as always, a hit.

I also made this wonderful Mexican lasagna...

I found the recipe for this here

Last, but not least, I made this lemon basil chicken with shells and cheese and broccoli.  The chicken is my own recipe that I wrote about a few months ago, the shells came from a little blue box, and the broccoli was just steamed.

Shoutout to Ina (aka the Barefoot Contessa) for inspiring this lemon basil chicken!

I love this chicken.  It's kind of my "go to" recipe when I'm out of ideas or can't find anything that's jumping out at me on the Internet/in my cookbooks.

On a completely unrelated note:

Justin Bieber's Christmas album came out on Tuesday.  I recommend that you go out and get it immediately.  That's all.