Chicken Pesto Ranch in the Crock Pot

After I got my spiralizer I wanted to try new recipes that I could use zucchini as the noodles instead of pasta. My coworker told me about an easy recipe that is probably floating all around Pinterest. 

What You Need:
4 boneless chicken breasts
6 ounce jar basil pesto
1 package ranch dressing mix
1/2 cup chicken broth

noodles of your choice to serve over

What You Do:
Spray the crock pot with cooking spray. Place the chicken on the bottom of the crock pot. Sprinkle ranch packet over the chicken. Pour jar of pesto over top of chicken. Top all of that with chicken broth. 

Cook on low for 4-6 hours. 

*I served this over zucchini noodles and it went together perfectly. I used my Veggetti Pro spiralizer to cut the noodles. We saute'd them for a few brief minutes in olive oil. We have found that the zucchini and squash cook down a lot due to the water so we need almost an entire squash per serving. 






January Fun

Life really calms down after the holidays but we still had a few fun things going on. 

We had a date night to see Book of Mormon at the DPAC. It was hilarious! 

We went to Christy and Jonathan's for dinner one night and the boys watched The Revnant. I was glad Trey had someone else to watch it with him other than me.  Vegas enjoyed hanging out with Connor.  

We had game night at Mariah & Greg's  

 Lots of snuggles and frisbee time

 For Christy's 30th birthday we did a paint & drink party at Artistic Abandon and then went back to their house for pizza and Goodberry's. Such a fun night








 We got a Boston Butt on sale and Trey cooked it for the first Panthers playoff game




Snow Days

Winter Storm Jonas came through and we originally thought we would get a lot of snow. Instead we got a lot of ice, followed by snow. We spent a long weekend stuck in the house, it was pretty but hard to do much since it was so slick. We did a lot of snuggling, watching netflix by the fire place and playing frisbee with the dogs. 



We took the shutters down to paint them, the house looks so funny without them 

When I opened the garage door the snow/ice pile didn't budge. 



Sprializing Everything!

I got a spiralizer for Christmas. It is pretty awesome! We have made lots of things with it and I hope to replace noodles with zucchini, etc more often now! I'll try to post some recipes that we have used them with soon. 

 Sweet potato fries 


 Zucchini Noodles with Pesto Chicken

I got a Veggetti Pro spiralizer from Bed, Bath and Beyond. After sprializing them you need to cut them into shorter pieces as they will be really long. We typically saute the noodles for a few brief minutes in olive oil. We have found that the zucchini and squash cook down a lot due to the water so we need almost an entire squash per serving. 

Christmas 2015


We had a wonderful Christmas celebrating on Christmas Day in Raleigh with my family and then heading to the beach to spend the week with Trey's family after Christmas. 


Christmas Eve Trey made us a nice seafood spread





We got lots of great gifts!

Trey got custom designed New Balances to support the Wolfpack!


Another awesome gift - a dual elevated feeder for the dogs

We decided to recreate the photo of Tyson and Dad on Christmas day from 2010. He didn't fit as well this time!

Trey made this Mickey lamp for Mom & Dad.
Hopefully soon I'll post a tutorial about how to make it

We changed it up this year and fried a turkey... it doesn't look pretty but it was delicious!


Nana gave Tyson this hippo toy, it was a huge hit and Vegas has been stealing it from him ever since


After Christmas we headed to the beach. The weather was gorgeous for the first part of the week





Then it was pretty rainy for the rest of the week, we spent a lot of time lounging around 

We played board games



Went out for a movie and drinks

Did lots of cooking and baking





And played with my awesome gift, a Roomba!




Mandy and Andy came down for the weekend and the dogs loved having Matty around