Happy Friday everyone!! I’m so glad it’s the weekend! Tomorrow is my birthday and I am looking forward to a fun and relaxing weekend with my family and friends! If you’ve read my blog, then you’ve probably heard that I hate going to the grocery store. Husband and I like to go once a week on the weekends and get everything we need for the next week so we don’t have to go back until the following weekend. This usually means that we have to have our meals planned out for the week which sometimes works out really well, and sometimes it doesn’t! This week is a good example of it not working so well. On Tuesday, I decided to just grill up some chicken. Yeah, it burned! The coating on my grill pan must have completely worn off because in just 5 minutes, our chicken was black! Husband was so sweet. He said it wasn’t too bad and ate some of it. I couldn’t bare the sight of it. He had to go and buy us dinner. Oh, and did I mention I have been sick all week? Yup. I have a lovely sinus infection so Wednesday’s dinner was homemade chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese.

Then this morning I realized that we had no meal planned for Thursday night. To the fridge and pantry I went to see what I could come up with. We had lots of chicken, bacon, asparagus, and pasta. DONE! I decided to try my hand at making a low-fat alfredo sauce. My husband loves chicken alfredo. I think it’s okay, but what I don’t like about it is how fattening it is! I made my own low-fat alfredo sauce using skim milk. The other thing I don’t really like about traditional alfredo is that it doesn’t have a lot of flavor to me, so I also added some white wine and lemon juice. We loved this dinner! Husband said I knocked it out of the park so it’s a definite meal that I will make again soon! This dish is great because you can toss in whatever you happen to have on hand. Any type of pasta, meat/fish, or veggies would be good!

Chicken Farfalle with Low-Fat Alfredo Sauce

Serves 4

Ingredients:

– 4 chicken breasts, cooked and diced into bite-size pieces

– 1 lb. farfalle pasta

– 1 1/2 tbs. butter

– 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

– 1 1/2 cups, skim milk

– 1 tsp. garlic powder

– 1/3 cup white wine

– 1 lemon, juiced

– 1 tsp. salt

– 1/2 tsp. black pepper

– Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Cook chicken breasts (I sauteed mine with a little olive oil and salt and pepper) and set aside. Cook pasta while cooking the chicken and set aside.

2. In a sauce pan, melt butter. Add flour and stir in with butter, cook for 1 minute. Whisk in milk, salt and pepper, garlic powder, lemon juice, and wine. Bring to a boil, constantly whisking. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 more minutes. Sauce should thicken.

3. In a large saute pan, add pasta, chicken, and any other desired additions. Heat pan on medium heat. Add alfredo sauce and toss with pasta. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and additional salt and pepper (if needed) and serve!

Notes: This recipe made more sauce than I really needed, but I liked having extra. This way, you can add as much sauce as you prefer!