Avocado Chicken Pesto Pasta

This meal started out in a group text with Don and Cate (my father and step-mom for future reference) with the good 'ol question: Whatcha cooking for dinner?

I suggested some kind of pasta and chicken dish and Cate went off trying to find one. We finally settled on an avocado chicken pesto pasta...

NOTE: This is from pinterest, gotta give credit where credit is due. I've copied the list of ingredients and directions below the image.

Ingredients:

• 1 box (12 oz) spaghetti nuoodles
• 1 cup pesto
• 2 avocados, halved and pitted
• Fresh lemon Juice (use 1/2 a lemon's worth of juice)
• 1 cup Sun-dried Tomatoes
• 2 cuups cooked chicken, shredded to bite size

Directions:

1. Cook spaghetti noodles according to package directions and drain
2. Mash avocados, lemon juice, and pesto together in a large bowl
3. Toss spaghetti with pesto, chicken, and sun-dried tomatoes
4. Serve

A few notes:

-In terms of timing, you probably want to start boiling the water first. 

-I grilled the chicken on the stove. Threw some olive oil in the pan, some salt and pepper on the chicken and in the pan it went. Very easy to cook this way.

-An easy trick for the avocados: Cut them open just like you normally would. But inside of spooning out the inside, just squeeze the outside and push the avocado out. Because the avocados will be mashed up with the pesto and lime juice, this method works well.

-I'm not a huge dried tomatoes fan, so I used fresh-cut tomatoes instead (out of a can).

-I found the pasta to be fairly heavy from the avocado/pesto mix, so in the future, I might try reducing a bit of each from the recipe. I'm gonna try half the amount of both the next time I make it.

Now check out my final product:

If you want to add a little heat, we added some cayenne pepper and it was terrific - I recommend it!