My Alfredo (or white cream) sauce

More kitchen adventures, this time the Alfredo sauce. I used a recipe that I found on Allrecipes.com called "Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce." Of course, it does call for American ingredients. I've already described my shopping expedition so you know that I was a little nervous that I had bought the right ingredient equivalents. So, I got everything out of the fridge – parm cheese, cream cheese, butter, milk – including what I wanted to eat with the sauce, chicken and pasta. I had forgotten to buy mushrooms on my last trip to the store so I was a little disappointed that my chicken and mushroom with alfredo would be sans mushroom. Anyway, I had 3 pots going – pasta, chicken and sauce. A side note on the chicken. I had asked my friend who had just spent the year in Poland about the food and cooking and she mentioned that she didn't eat much chicken because it tasted gamey. Discussing this with my mom later, mom tried to look up ways to remove the gamey flavor from poultry, without much luck on the search. So, I've been a little leery about cooking chicken. Of course, the logical side of my brain realized that I eat chicken in restaurants all the time and it tastes good, so…I bought 2 fresh (as opposed to frozen) boneless, skinless chicken breasts (kuřecí prsíčky). I used my standard chicken pan-"fried" method (a little olive oil and a little lemon juice if you have it, cook on each side for 6-8 minutes depending on the thickness on medium-high heat, turn the heat off and let sit covered for another 6 or so minutes – I found this in an Italian cookbook and have been using it for years. The leftovers are great for pasta, salads, tacos/quesadillas, etc..). My stove/pots cook high/fast so the chicken was nice and crispy on the outside. So, the frying pan is spitting olive oil, the pasta pot is boiling and I am trying to make the sauce.

Melt the butter. Check. Add garlic powder and cream cheese and melt until smooth. Okay. I tasted the (soft/spreadable) cream cheese as I unwrapped it, tasted it – it tasted like cream cheese, although with a mild flavor. So, I cut it up and dumped it into the melted butter. It was not pretty. It didn't meld together and I was a little worried that I would have a failure. I was whisking, like instructed but soon turned to a fork for more control, splashing melted butter on my Texas A&M sweatshirt and watching the cheese slowly melt, slowly smooth out. Next add milk. I must also say that I was guestimating the measurements. My kitchen is well-equipped but lacks some necessary measuring devices, especially one for liquids. And I had to guess that 85 grams of parm cheese was about half the 150 gram package of cheese that I bought, and grated myself. Dump in the parm cheese, add some freshly ground pepper. And remember, at the same time that I'm trying to make sure my cheese sauce doesn't burn, I'm checking on pasta and flipping chicken, a normal evening in my kitchen (although this was lunch). And the results you ask? Pretty good. The sauce is mild, due to the mild flavor of the cream cheese and it tends to cool fairly rapidly. It also reheated nicely, so I'd say it's a success. Not at intimidating as I had imagined and when I make it again I'll try to remember to take some pictures to add to the post.