We hit a wall this weekend. It was getting late and we could not think of something to fix for dinner. We really did not want to go out and buy something, but nothing in the house sounded good. I went to the web to find some ideas, but still nothing caught my attention. That’s when it came to me…make something up.

I was thinking about what we had around the kitchen that needed used. We had open bacon (the turkey variety), green peppers and tomatoes fresh from the garden, and some chicken breast that was thawed. It dawned on me that I could use those ingredients to make light pasta, similar to something you would get in a restaurant.

Here’s what I did:

• Dice bacon and cook at high heat to get it crispy;
• Cut up one boneless, skinless chicken breast into small pieces;
• Add some basil (we used fresh, but we had it laying around);
• Add chicken to the bacon, turning down the heat to medium;
• While chicken is cooking, cut one green pepper into chunks. Add to chicken;
• Cut medium size tomato into small pieces (a little larger than dicing), and add to pan;
• Let everything simmer for a bit and then add cooked noodles.

The original plan was to toss the noodle with Italian dressing, but after seeing how good the chicken and veggies looked, we just skipped the dressing.

I know this isn’t exactly a ground breaking recipe, but it was kind of fun to just throw stuff together and hope it turned out. You know what? It was really good.

There were a couple things I would change for next time, and there will be a next time.

First, I would not cook the mixture for as long as I did after adding the tomatoes. I thought I was frying them to get something similar to fire-roasted tomatoes. What I really did was cook the tomatoes down to nothing. The flavor traveled through, but there were no pieces left and that was a shame.

I would have actually used a second tomato as well. This would have added more moisture and flavor to the final dish after the noodles were added.

Also, to keep as much moisture to mix with the noodles, I would have cooked them earlier. I started the noodles at the same time I started cooking the chicken. The mixture was done before the noodles and the final dish was a little dry. Being prepared and adding another tomato would solve this problem.

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