It was lovely at the park yesterday morning.

 The groundsmen had just finished their morning rounds and joined us in the queue at the cafe for coffee.  Coffees in hand, we each found our own little corner of the park for a bit of quiet and a sit down as we prepared for the rest of the day.

Which, for me revolved around the curious anticipation over whether or not a recipe I found for one pot chicken pasta would work.  Long time readers of this blog will know about my love of the quick and easy for weeknight dinners and also of my love of slowcooker recipes.  Well, I’ve recently discovered wonderpot pasta recipes which are great for the nights when you’re willing and able to put more energy into dinner than turning on an oven or setting a slow cooker but also find it too overwhelming to decide what to get for home delivery and then have to stay in presentable clothing for when the delivery person comes and you have to meet them in person for the food and payment exchange.

The first recipe I tested out was the One Pan Chicken Alfredo from Number 2 Pencil’s dinner saving blog. The blog is full of quick and easy recipes that I’m hoping to test out over the next few weeks.

Let your timer and stove do all the hard work in this dish.

The recipe is incredibly easy and the ingredients readily available. It’s the kind of recipe that you could plan for in your weekly shop because now that I’ve made and tasted it once, I will be making it weekly.  All you need to do is brown some chicken and garlic and then fill your pan with pasta, cooking cream, stock and herbs.  I used dried parsley instead of fresh so had to cook mine rather than use it as garnish at the end.

I did make a bit of a mistake with the volume of chicken stock.  It turns out that 14ox of stock is closer to 400 ml than the litre carton I poured in.  It was easy enough to drain off the excess once I realised my mistake and it didn’t affect the final result.  In fact, my sauce ended up being on the more liquid side of creamy which I personally prefer.

The sauce gets its richness from the 2 cups of grated parmesan you add to the pot after cooking and off the flame.  I then added a squirt of lemon juice to lighten the flavour as well as some extra ground pepper.

It was a huge hit with the both of us and much nicer than anything that could come out of a packet.

Shift – Target, jacket – J Crew, leggings – Costco.

Hope you’re having a lovely Friday.  I’m going to be living it in leopard.