Zucchini Noodles with Lemon-Garlic Chicken

One of the bonuses of our new evening routine is I am back to making dinner on a semi-consistent basis; and I'm not just throwing some BLT's together and calling it dinner...although I do love a BLP!  I am talking meat, plus a side or two, sit down at the table and eat dinner together.  You better believe I've had my happy butt scrolling through Pinterest looking for some delicious recipes to try out.  While I was perusing the pretty pictures on my pinterest feed, I came across a recipe for zucchini noodles.  We tend to eat a lot of zucchini and squash at our house because: #1) it's easy to fix and you can make the flavor whatever you want; and #2) if I forget to make whatever it was that I was going to make I can bake something with the zucchini and feed the squash to the dogs...they absolutely love it....so they never go to waste.

I decided last week to try out my first zucchini noodle recipe:

adapted from this recipe

What you Need:

1.5 tsp olive oil

salt and pepper

1-1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch cubes

2 garlic cloves, sliced thin and divided

1 large zucchini, spiralized

1/4 lemon

1/4 cup halved grape tomatoes

How to Make It:

1. Heat 1 tsp oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add chicken and season with salt and pepper.
2. Cook until chicken is no longer pink. Add half of the garlic and cook for another minute.  Set aside on a plate.
3. Add the remaining oil and garlic to the pan.  Cook 30 seconds then add zucchini noodles and cook 2-3 minutes, or until tender. The thicker your noodles are, the longer you're going to want to cook them.
4. Add chicken and tomatoes to the pan and squeeze lemon juice over dish.
5. Serve immediately.

Notes: 
-You can add some red pepper flakes if you want to add a little kick to the dish.
-I don't have a veggie noodle cutter/spirlaizer (not sure what it's really called), but I do have a Vidalia Chop Wizard that we were gifted for Christmas and had never used.  It took some finagling to get the entire zucchini through it (I ended up cutting it in half first), but the end result was zucchini noodles!

Yum!

This dish just screamed summer.  It was so light and delicious! Eric gave it 2 thumbs up, as did I.  It was super quick and had a ton of flavor.

I liked the zucchini noodles so much I decided to do them again this week.  I was initially going to make this recipe, but changed gears when I realized the zucchini noodles weren't cooked.  I ended up just sauteing them in the skillet with olive oil and Penzey's Greek Seasoning and ohmygoodness was it delicious! It might be my new favorite side dish (of the veggie variety that is!).  I think my next attempt will be some version of this recipe. I say a version because it calls for cherries and I have a husband who has a fruit aversion....crazy I know and challenging when it comes to cooking sometimes, but it just means I get to be creative!