Dinner and a song?

So, I sang in a trio this Sunday with some church members. We only practiced twice, but I thought we did pretty well. If you are a nice person and want to watch the video of it, enjoy.

Well, as if June was busy, August is about to kick June's butt. We have guests up the wazoo. We have lots of events. I had to take a picture of our fridge calendar just to see what I mean. First up, we have our friend Jeff coming into town this weekend from Dallas. He's going to see a concert at Red Rocks Thursday night, but he's staying with us Saturday and Sunday night. It's also my Dad's birthday on the 7th. Luckily I already bought him an awesome gift. Right after Jeff dodges out, in comes David's good friend Zac (and the great guy who encouraged me to start blogging me again). That weekend, Brandan and I are participating in the Muddy Buddy. David is in New Orleans later for his fantasy football draft. My mom's birthday comes up and then, just days later, my parents get into town. We're going to the mountains for a couple of days. Thus ends August.

I decided to make some creamy pasta sauce. In my opinion, there is no better smell in the world than sautéed garlic. I love the way it fills the the room with lots of flavor. In my opinion, you can almost chew the smell of garlic in the air. And, in turn, sometimes I find myself neglecting the pan of garlic as I'm sniffing the air. Tee hee. Here, I put some basil with the garlic in some olive oil. After it finally sautéed fully, it was time to add the cheeses.

And, by cheeses, I mean lots of cheese. I added cottage cheese, cream cheese and Parmesan cheese. That's right. THREE cheeses. That's when I knew that I was going to love this sauce. The chunks in the photo on the left? Yeah, those chunks are cream cheese. BAM. It's major cheese sauce. Which is probably why I was so excited to eat. However, I had lots more time involved in the sauce before it was done. :(

I added milk, white wine and some salt to the sauce. I brought it to a boil and then lowered the heat. Then, I realized I didn't defrost the chicken. Idiot moment #1 of the meal. We bought a microwave that was really cheap so it takes about 15 minutes to defrost two chicken breasts. Yeah. Don't get me started. So, finally after we defrosted the chicken, we were able to cut the chicken into small pieces. Then, as if defrosting took forever, something else that took forever was putting the chicken into the sauce to cook it. That took a while too. So, I had to add some milk so that the sauce wouldn't get dry.

Finally, the chicken was cooked, the sauce was thickened and the rigatoni was soft. We chowed down so quickly I didn't get a photo of the complete meal.