This going back and forth between my two blogs is feeling kind of incestuous already…

On Saturday, my first full day of retirement, I made a nice dinner for Music Man (he actually did the grilling) and blogged about it here. Today’s post is to talk about using up the leftovers in our refrigerator for Sunday supper.

I decided to make a baked pasta dish using the leftover chicken from Saturday and some fresh mozzarella that was at the end of its useful life. I also had a pesto container that had a crack in it and I needed to get rid of the pesto. Voila! I had the beginnings of a really good supper.

Now that I’m on the cooking with the grill kick, I decided to try baking the pasta in the Weber. I remembered I had a cast iron skillet in the shed and cleaned and seasoned it. I put together the pasta dish, put it into the iron skillet, covered it with aluminum foil and baked it at 350 degrees for about an hour. Since the pasta and the chicken were already cooked, I was just melting the cheese and heating it all up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of how cute the dish looked when served in the cast iron skillet. I was just hungry!

We also needed to use up a lot of bits and pieces of veggies, so I made a chopped salad and added the last of the spring mix. Finally, we topped off dinner with a mixed fruit salad.

Easy peasy once again! The whole meal took a little more than an hour to put together including pasta boiling time, and we enjoyed sitting outside feeling the breeze come through after a scorcher of a day. We also got two meals out of that lovely $5 chicken and used up stuff in the fridge that needed to be eaten. All in all, a win-win day.

Baked Pasta with Chicken and Fresh Mozzarella

1 bag whole wheat pasta (any shape will do)

1-2 cups cubed cooked chicken

1 onion, caramelized (I used the leftovers from the roasted chicken)

8 oz. fresh mozzarella cut into cubes

4 tbs. basil pesto sauce

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/2 cup chicken broth

Directions

Cook the pasta to al dente and drain. Combine all ingredients in a baking pan, cover with foil, and bake for about 1 hour at 350 degrees. Remove aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes if you want a crispy top. Recipe serves four with good-sized portions, but we split it into two halves and froze the rest for another meal in the empty nest.

I’d also be forever grateful if you also stopped by Retirement 365 and give me some follow and comment love! Since I get about 80 hits on Got My Reservations every day because of this photo which I did not even take myself, my poor new blog is feeling very lonely over there. 🙂