What a weird week, huh? Not sure if you heard, but our little Alabamian town got over 3 inches of snow over Tuesday night and a lot of it still hasn’t melted! The streets are lined with ice that has just begun to melt and the temperature has been slowly creeping back up from the below-freezing temps of earlier this week! The snow brought a day and a half off of work which was very welcome, as I started the week with a cold. I loved getting to sleep in and cuddle with my sweet husband a lot more than usual while he was home from school with me. This week was filled with a lot of cooking and, with it, plenty of time thinking about my blog strategy for the year. So, I’d like to announce something exciting…

I’ve decided to start a series called #hhtries52 in which I will share a new recipe every week this year! This is week 3, and I’ve gone back to number the first two recipe posts of the year. I’m so thrilled to get this going and to share recipes that John and I have made on our own as well as some that we’ve tried from Pinterest and recipe books. The first three posts haven’t been equally spaced apart, but I plan on posting a new #hhtries52 every Wednesday from here on out.

Now let’s get into this week’s exciting recipe! I got a sweet deal on our new spiralizer (below) and pretty much had a recipe in mind to try A.S.A.P. with one of my favorite veggies: zucchini. And as with most pasta recipes, I just had to pair it with my favorite homemade pesto recipe! For small batches, the food chopper below (middle) is my favorite because it is small and fairly easy to clean, but for bigger batches, I suggest our awesome food processor (right). This pesto recipe is actually a favorite of mine on my recent favorite kind of bread, Quinoa Multigrain Bread by Simple Truth. I love to toast it and spread a little sun-dried tomato pesto on it. Try it out if you have any leftover after making this recipe!

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Preparing the Zucchini Noodles 

Or Zoodles, for short! The first step is to cut them using a spiralizer like the one above, though you can also find some already made at some grocery stores! This spiralizer was quick to learn and didn’t take much effort to make this many zoodles. There are even more attachments that can be used to get different kinds of cuts, but we thought this was the most noodle-like.

Zoodles are an amazing way to save calories without losing taste! You can eat about 5 cups of zucchini noodles for the same amount of calories in one cup of regular noodles… which is pretty amazing, if you ask me! They also come with vitamins A, C, B, potassium, and fiber, and they are gluten-free. I did some research ahead of time about how to cook the zoodles, and decided it might be easier just to not cook the zucchini because there is a fine line in cooking them al dente and I didn’t want to mess with it on the first try. Cooking zucchini can also get messy, as the vegetable gets watery when heated. I decided to treat this recipe a little more like a salad and serve it cold, other than the chicken.

I was really craving some paneed chicken this week, and although I know it isn’t a very healthy way of preparing chicken, I knew it would taste great with this pasta I was making. It’s all about the balance, right? I pan fried the chicken in vegetable oil after breading it in some traditional breadcrumbs.

The last step to this recipe was throwing together a batch of pesto! Sun-dried tomato pesto is my favorite, with its little bit of extra zing! This comes together, so I suggest making it fresh right before serving! You can also leave out the tomato if you’re not a huge fan of them.

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PLEASE let me know your thoughts on #hhtries52 and this recipe! What’s your favorite zucchini recipe?