ON THE FLY.

Food at the apartment is approaching critical levels. It’s definitely been almost two weeks since we’ve gone to the supermarket, and we’ve been eating out pretty consistently for the past few days. The plus side: got to sample a new restaurant as well as some additional menu items from previously-visited restaurants. The negative side: my wallet is really hating me right now.

In an effort to counteract the growing hole in my bank account, I threw together a little something with a few things we had lying around the kitchen. I ended up deciding to call this a Chicken Cheese Rotini Bake.

Chicken Cheese Rotini Bake
Serves 3 – 4 people.

~ 1 box rotini pasta
~ 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
~ 2 jars of spaghetti sauce
~ 2 – 3 chicken breasts
~ Salt and pepper
~ Oregano

Take your chicken breasts and first trim off all of the excess fat. When finished, season both sides with salt, pepper, and oregano. In a medium skillet, heat up some oil, and cook up the chicken over medium to medium-high heat. The key here is to cook the chicken all the way through, yet still retain the moist texture. It’s something that’s taken me a lot of practice to nail down just right; it’s still better to overcook it by a bit than to undercook it and end up with raw chicken.

While the chicken is cooking, start to heat up a pot of water to cook up the pasta in. Follow the directions on the box; most pastas will take around 10 – 15 minutes to finish up. At the same time, preheat the oven to 350 degrees as well. Once all of the chicken is done, begin to cut them up into pieces (rectangular or strips are perfectly fine, use your best judgement), and then set those aside. In a medium saucepan, heat up the two jars of sauce, and add in the chicken pieces. Adjust the sauce to taste with any spices you would like (I sometimes add in a little bit of chili powder for kick and some sugar to sweeten it up). Once finished, take out a 9″ x 13″ casserole dish and layer the sauce onto the bottom, followed by the pasta, shredded cheese, more sauce, and then more cheese. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and pop it into the oven for twenty minutes and you’re done.

With Thanksgiving break right around the corner (!), it’s hard to believe that I’ll be heading home soon. Not only that, but hard to believe that after break, the semester will be over in another three weeks. Once that’s over, it’s one more semester until I graduate (!!!). I’m trying not to think about that fact right now and enjoy the time remaining of my collegiate career.

COOKING IS MORE ENJOYABLE AFTER DOING HOMEWORK FOR FIVE HOURS.

This Fall Break was definitely a welcome relief to the past 7 weeks of being constantly occupied with homework and projects. Four days to just relax and not think about schoolwork (for the most part, anyways). The highlight of was definitely going skydiving on Monday. The weather worked out perfectly, with not being too many clouds in the sky and it not being overwhelmingly hot that day either.

So that’s what 10,000 feet above sea level looks like!

It was my first time doing it, and surprisingly enough, I wasn’t too terrified even as we were going out the door of the plane. Or maybe my mind was already numbed over from the nerves, but it was honestly one of the most thrilling experiences that I have ever had and something that I would definitely do again. Even though this weekend was really relaxing, I definitely should have started on working on some homework over the weekend to offset the workload that I had coming back to the school week. 

…And 5 hours later from working on one of my three homework assignments due Friday, I decided that it was probably time for a break and got to cooking some dinner. Food options are once again running a bit scarce in our apartment, but tonight I was able to throw a few things together and tweaked off of a previous dish I have made.

I elected to go with a rigatoni casserole dish, made only with pasta, pasta sauce, onions, bacon, and some shredded cheddar cheese. I mixed the minced onions and fried bacon into the pasta sauce that we had bought from the store, heated the oven to 350 degrees, and layered the casserole dish with pasta sauce, rigatoni, cheese, and repeated those three layers again. I threw the covered dish into the oven for 20 minutes, and when it came out, it looked really nice.

The cheese had melted over the top of the pasta, and the aroma coming from the pasta sauce that was on the bottom layers of the casserole really drew you in. It tasted great, with a nice mix of the spices in the sauce as well as the onions and bacon, and proved to be a hearty meal. Between four people eating it, it disappeared quite quickly. It’s a great dish to make on the fly, and doesn’t require an excessive amount of work to prepare it, which is really useful on a busy night when you just want to whip something up for dinner.

And now, back to the impending doom that is homework….