Chicken Pesto with Pasta

2 lbs of chicken, cut into bite sized pieces

Salt/pepper

Olive oil

1 lb pasta (I used bow tie)

About 3 1/2 cups of water

6 ou pesto sauce

6 ou spinach

Sun dried tomatoes, chopped

2 ou cream cheese

Parmesan cheese

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Saute chicken in olive oil until just about cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add pasta to the top but do not stir. Add water to the pot. Top with pesto sauce. Do not stir. Cook on High Pressure about 6 minutes with a quick release. Turn Instant Pot back to saute. Add spinach and tomatoes and stir until the spinach is cooked down. Add cream cheese and stir until melted. Top with Parmesan cheese.

This recipe was a last minute happy accident. My garden started growing mystery squash in the spring and I just let it go out of curiosity. Well, all the plants turned out to be spaghetti squash so we are over flowing. This was supposed to be a chicken pesto spaghetti squash recipe. I thought one of the squash was ready, but turned out to be mostly green on the inside still when I cut it open. Drat! So I changed my plans and made do with what I had in the pantry. Pasta it is. Well, I've only ever followed recipes for the Instant Pot so I had to do some research to come up with my own. How to cook pasta? So a couple of the websites I found just said to cook the pasta for half of the time the directions call for. (Ex- the box of bow ties said to cook for 12-14 minutes, so I cooked for 6.) As far as the water, multiple sites said to add water until it just reaches the pasta. You can always simmer off or drain any extra liquid at the end, but this advice seemed to work out just fine for this recipe. I used 2 large chicken breasts. I also used about half of a 7 ou jar of sun dried tomatoes. Per usual, add more or less. I was thinking maybe some artichoke hearts might be a good addition to this as well.

While I was disappointed my spaghetti squash didn't work out this time, I was happy at the way this recipe turned out. Stay tuned for a squash recipe in the future.