Budget Eating.

Dinner tonight was delish - AND... free! Well sort of free - we cooked out of what we had in the kitchen and made a pretty tasty dish. I love orzo as a summer pasta option and we had a whole bag left over from some grocery trip long ago. We had chicken, thanks to Jake's awesome mom who made a Sam's trip and hit us up with a large pack of chicken. This took maybe 15 minutes to make and is adapted from Cooking Light so may even be healthy.

Lemon Pepper Chicken Orzo

You'll need...
2 chicken breasts, cubed
Orzo pasta
1 lemon
Garlic Powder
Butter
Salt/Pepper
Parsley (fresh would be nice but we used dried)
Parmesan cheese (fresh grated)

First, cook the orzo in water (1 cup orzo).

While that is cooking, in a skillet put a pad of butter and let it coat the pan, then take the chicken pieces and cook them, adding a bit of salt and pepper as you go.

The orzo will probably be done by now - add parsley and salt to that and set aside.

Once the chicken is done, take it and set the pieces aside, keeping the juice in the skillet.

Add a pad of butter, making sure not to let the butter burn. Once that melts, add the lemon juice (look out for seeds!) and let that simmer for a few seconds to mix. Then add the garlic powder (a couple of shakes) and pepper. Stir around, add the orzo in, and add your fresh grated parm. cheese. Stir in your chicken and you've got dinner.

A salad would be nice with this too - you could go with the lemon theme and do a fresh lemon juice dressing or you could do some sort of vinaigrette.

So all in all, a great meal, a "free" meal, a quick meal. I'd recommend it!