Chicken-Broccoli Mac & Cheese

I felt like a gourmet chef with this meal! I'm not a big fan of pasta but this was pretty darn good :) To go along with this dish, we found some AMAZING bread at Costco this weekend. Michael's was a roasted garlic and mine was a rosemary olive oil. I'm hopefully going to find a recipe for these and make them from scratch soon.

To go with the bread I handmade some garlic butter. To do that I took a stick of butter from the fridge and microwaved it for 8 seconds to make it soft. I then pressed about 3 cloves of garlic in to the butter and blended it together.

The original recipe called for a whole roasted chicken, we just use chicken breasts/thighs, which I cook ahead of time. You could do either, they both work well and taste great!

8 oz of uncooked rigatoni pasta
2 cups fresh broccoli florets
2 - 2 & 1/2 lbs cooked chicken
5.2 oz package semisoft cheese with garlic and fine herbs
3/4 - 1 cup milk
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• In large saucepan, cook pasta according to package directions. Add broccoli florets during the last 3 minutes of cooking time.
• While pasta is cooking, cut chicken into bite size pieces.
• In same saucepan, combine cheese, 3/4 cup milk, and black pepper. Cook and stir until cheese is melted. Add pasta mixture and chicken.
• Stir together and heat through. If necessary, thin with additional milk.