One of my many many New Year’s Resolutions is to become a better cook so we all can eat more healthfully and save money by skipping readymade or take out foods. When the opportunity to shop for and try La Romanella products came up, I thought it would be the perfect chance for me to make good on my resolution. I ended up killing the perform more traditional wifely duties resolution stone, too. I’ll tell you why in a minute!

First, here’s the surprisingly easy and awesome recipe.

Ingredients

• La Romanella Organic Fusilli
• La Romanella Four Cheese Premium Pasta Sauce
• 2 organic boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• olive oil
• crushed garlic
• salt, pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, cayenne pepper, chili flakes

Recipe

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it, and set it aside. I cooked 2 dry cups of pasta and Hubby ended up eating about two thirds of it. The pasta was larger and denser than what we’re used to, but definitely delicious!

Searing both sides on high heat will help keep your chicken breast moist. Before I throw my chicken on the pan, I usually pierce it several times with a fork, drizzle it with olive oil, and generously salt and pepper it in a mixing bowl. When the olive oil and garlic have heated up in the pan, I transfer the chicken from the bowl straight into the pan. This time, I also added a few dashes of dried oregano and cayenne pepper.

Covering the chicken will help it cook more quickly while keeping it from drying out. At this step, to kick up the flavor, I added a pretty generous amount of red pepper chili flakes and some dried basil.

To make things easy on Hubby, I pre-sliced the chicken breasts and carefully transferred the sliced breast onto the plated pasta. Then, I spooned more sauce over the chicken and pasta and sprinkled the plate with dried basil and red pepper chili flakes.

Hubby actually said, “This is one of the best dinners you’ve made!” No, this was not scripted for the blog. Although…he was just back from a business trip and starving, so maybe that accounted for my high marks. Oh, forget modesty. I’m taking it as a straight up, genuine, unbiased compliment! Okay, and maybe a testament to La Romanella’s tastiness!

Hubby was so kind to provide you with a wine pairing:

So with this dinner, my New Year’s Resolutions of:

• More homemade cooking - check!
• Saving money on meals - check!
• Having a hot meal for Hubby on the table when he comes home - check!

Love it when the stars align and I’m checking off New Year’s resolutions right and left only one month into the year! I even did the dishes. Not the pots, pans, and utensils, mind you. I have to leave something for Hubby to do and something for me to aspire to the rest of the 11 months of the year.

If you end up purchasing La Romanella items from Smart & Final to be the most awesome wife ever - like me - don’t forget that you can go to www.smartandfinal.com/LaRomanella2012 and enter the code on your receipt to be entered to win some amazing prizes to make you an even awesomer wife!

• First Prize: a weekend trip to one of the most luxurious Italian inspired resorts in Las Vegas! (No obligation to take your husband).
• Additional prizes: (8) $100 SmartCash cards (2 per week given away) and (8) La Romanella Gift Baskets worth over $50 (2 per week given away).

PLUS, if you visit the www.smartandfinal.com/LaRomanella2012 site, you will be able to vote for your favorite La Romanella blogger recipe - meaning, mine! If you live nearby, I promise to cook you dinner with the ingredients I buy with the $100 SmartCash Card prize!

Happy Cooking!

Disclaimer: This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #collectivebias #CBias. This does not mean that I was told what to write by the sponsor(s) nor does it mean that the sponsor(s) wrote this post and I merely copied it onto my blog. The content of this post was created entirely by me and consists solely of my own unbiased opinions and/or thoughts, but I’m sure you could already tell!

Parents and friends: for more ideas, activities, and inspiration for #RaisingThinkingKids, click on an icon below to join us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and Twitter.

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Chrissy – who has written 424 posts on The Outlaw Mom® Blog - Creative Living in a Conventional World.

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