Garlic chicken Farfalle

Why the butterflies?
Often referred to as bow tie pasta by low brow Americans, Farfalle means "butterflies" in Italian. This type of pasta satisfies a lot of needs. First, it's easy to grab with your fingers, so you can pinch a piece of pasta while walking casually by in the kitchen. Second, its shape is such that it soaks up the flavors of the creamy sauces and spices often used to adorn it. Third, you can use it to weed out guys your daughter brings home.  Us: "Would you like some bow tie pasta?" Boyfriend: "Did you know Farfalle actually means "butterfly" in Italian?" Us: "Did you know 'coglione' is the Italian word for douchebag?"
Ingredients
  • 16 oz. Farfalle pasta
  • 3-4 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless)
  • 1 (120z) Lawry's mesquite marinade with lime juice 
  • 1 cup of heavy whipping cream (OK to use the vegan stuff here).
  • 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 1 TBSP pepper
  • 1/2 cup of butter
  • 1 lb. of bacon, crumbled
  • 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

  • 1 crock pot
Directions
  1. Put the chicken and the marinade in the crock pot on low and cook for 6 hours.
  2. When the chicken is about ready, cook the bacon until it is crispy.
  3. Pull marinated chicken out of the juices, and shred it (pull it apart or use an electric mixer, really).
  4. About 1/2 hour before serving, boil the pasta.
  5. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and then add the garlic.
  6. Add the whipping ream, pepper, parmesan cheese, and bacon.
  7. Whisk it together on low heat for 3-4 minutes. 
  8. Put the pasta in a large bowl, then the chicken, the pour over the sauce. 
  9. Sprinkle the parmesan cheese over the top.
The Crock Pot
Slow cookers became popular in the 1940s because women started working outside the home. So they needed a way to still cook for their lazy husbands who couldn't be bothered to pitch in every once in a while even though they got home the same time their wives did from work and let's face it men just have to work, they don't have to bear the children, raise them, do the laundry, do the shopping, clean the house, deal with monthly nonsense, and on top of all that cook the dinners....well, I digress. Irving Naxon, of the Naxon Utilities Corporation in Chicago, developed what he called the simmer crock to make a traditional Jewish stew called cohlent that his grandmother used to make in Lithuania. It wasn't that he missed the bean stew as much as he didn't want the oven to be on in the summer because it was so hot in Chicago and he was a propitious sweater (just ask his wife who did the laundry). So he figured out a way to slow cook food without producing so much heat in the house.  Mr. Naxon stopped sweating, and the rest of us got slow cookers. Why is it called a crock pot? Because crock is the Old English word for jar, earthen pot, or container. The Germans appropriated it as Krock, and then we took it back, got rid of the K, and here we are all these years later still waiting for dinner to be done.