Recipe: Easy Crockpot Mexican Chicken

I’m not usually one to experiment in the kitchen, but this past weekend, I got creative. By “creative,” I mean I got desperate to use up some of the things we had in the kitchen to make dinner and avoid delivery or fast food. Even though we go through phases where we cook all the time, we also go through phases where we don’t. Right now, we’re in convenience mode, which means way too much fast food, and it’s getting tiresome.

I need to go shopping and I’ve been procrastinating doing a meal plan and grocery list. In honor of procrastinating even longer, I decided to see if I could hodge podge something together with what we had in the house. The crock pot is pretty much the best invention for this sort of lazy cooking, and I love it. I love everything about it. I like it better when we have liners, because then clean up is easy too.

I was surprised with how well this turned out, and I wanted to go ahead and share it for those looking for an easy recipe. I’m sure it mimics many other recipes out there, but it never hurts to add another variation to the pile, right?

Ingredients:
Boneless chicken breasts (we used chicken tenderloin)
1 can of Campbell’s Fiesta Cheese Soup
1 can of tomatoes and peppers (Rotel would be good for this)
1 can of black beans
Chili powder
Garlic salt
Pepper
Shredded cheddar cheese
Tortilla chips

Directions:
Throw the chicken in the crock pot.
Season with the seasonings of your choice (I listed the ones I used above).
Pour the cheese soup over the chicken, followed by the black beans (undrained), followed by the tomatoes (undrained). To be honest, you could pour these ingredients in any order you want. The goal is just to get them in there and covering that chicken.
Put the lid on and let cook for 7-8 hours.
Top with cheese and eat over nacho chips (if desired).

We stirred this dish periodically throughout the day, but I don’t think we needed to…it’s just how we roll. About halfway through the cooking time, I was a little worried that it was going to be too watery, but by the time we were ready to eat, it was the perfect consistency and was really good over nacho chips…sort of a chicken chili nacho thing. We talked about some modifications for next time, just to change it up a bit (sour cream, more cheese soup, mexicorn), but the truth is, this recipe as is was delicious. I don’t even like black beans, but they were super tasty in this meal.

This one is going on our menu rotation, and even though it was super simple, being that it was an experiment, I feel proud that it tasted as good as it did.

A.

Thank you, Influenster. #HelloKeurig

Disclaimer: I received this product complimentary from Influenster for purposes of testing and reviewing.

I’ve held off on getting my own Keurig for awhile now, but it was always something I thought I’d like to get eventually. So I was thrilled when Influenster told me I had been chosen to receive the Keurig VoxBox.

 

The K450 2.0 Brewing System looks as sleek as the other ones and comes complete with a 70 oz. water reservoir and a digital screen. It was easy to put together, and the touch screen is simple to use. I brewed my first cup of coffee with it and wasn’t disappointed.

 

 

One of the things that I’d always questioned about the Keurig was how long it would take to brew coffee for multiple people. Brewing time is short, but it seemed like it could be tedious to replace several cups and brew each cup individually. This system, however, comes with the ability to either brew a cup or a whole carafe of coffee using larger K-cups. Even on days I’m by myself but feel like really getting my coffee on (stretches of writing, reading, or hardcore knitting), I can make one full carafe and drink from it for awhile.

There is an option on the touch screen for hot cocoa or other and an option that allows you to pick “strong” for the brew of your coffee. I find many coffees to be strong already, so I might not use that option much, but I do have friends who like it thick. Plus, I like having the option for those super early mornings or those really late nights.

I’ll be using and testing my new gadget over the next few weeks and will have a full product review once I get to know the ins and outs of the 2.0. Stay tuned!

A.

Rotisserie Chicken and Parmesan Bake

Rotisserie chicken is one of the tastiest things ever, and I’d heard that it’s great for recipes. I decided to see if it lived up to the hype this past week. During our regular shopping trip, we stopped at Dillon’s and picked up a chicken for about five dollars, and I was the lucky one who pulled as much as I could off the bone. I’m okay with it…it beats touching raw chicken.

The rotisserie chicken didn’t yield as much meat as I thought it would, but it was still enough for about two meals. We were going to stretch it into three, but I think two meals in a row is going to be about right for us.

One of the recipes is something I named a Chicken Parmesan Bake, though I’m not sure if that’s accurate. I tweaked the Sour Cream Noodle Bake to add more pasta sauce, and I used the chicken instead of ground beef (in the future, I’m going to try this with italian sausage and ground pork).

For your recipe pleasure, here are the deets on this dish (sorry for the blurry bowl shot, as I failed at taking a finished product pic).

Hot, delicious, mess!

Chicken Parmesan Bake with Rotisserie Chicken
Ingredients

* Shredded Rotisserie chicken (2 cups? I just eyeballed it)
* Pasta sauce (1 jar)
* ½ teaspoon salt
* fresh ground black pepper
* 16 ounce package penne pasta
* ½ cup sour cream
* 1¼ cup small curd cottage cheese
* Parmesan cheese
* ¼ teaspoon onion powder
* garlic powder (eyeball it)
* 1 cup grated Mozzarella cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Simmer chicken and pasta sauce in skillet, ½ teaspoon salt and plenty of fresh ground black pepper. Stir, then simmer while you prepare the other ingredients.
3. Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside.
4. In a medium bowl, combine sour cream and cottage cheese. Add plenty of freshly ground black pepper (if using onion powder and garlic powder add it now) and parmesan cheese. Add to noodles and stir.
5. To assemble, add a third of the noodles to a 13″ x 9″ baking dish. Top with a third of the sauce mixture, then sprinkle on half the grated mozzarella. Repeat with noodle, meat, then a final layer of cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, or until all cheese is melted.

 

This was so good! The only change (besides trying different meat) I’ll make in the future is to add some minced garlic. Fresh garlic would be good too. I love lasagna, and this was an easy way to satisfy that craving.

A.

Trying out the Graze Box

This seems like a fitting topic for today because I’ve been hit with a case of hardy core munchies. Not sure if it’s the increased activity the past couple days, the weather, or a mix of other factors that’s making me want to chow down, but I’m in serious “eat all the things” mode.

I’m usually able to keep my snacking in check, though it’s easier when I have portion-controlled things. Enter the Graze Box. My friend sent me a code for this a few weeks ago, and I decided to give it a try.

The box comes with four different snack packs pre-selected by Graze for you to try. You then give the snack a rating on the website. If you like it, they’ll send it to you occasionally. If you love it, they’ll send it more often. If you hate it, you can select trash and they’ll take it off the list of things to send.

You can browse the snack catalog and mark things you want to try. You can also choose to receive lower calorie options if you’d like, though the regular options are in the recommended calorie range for a small snack.

Graze allows you to pick how often you want a box sent to you (I chose to receive a box every two weeks), and each box is $6, though with the shared code I’m going to give you, you can get your first box and your fifth box for free.

Things I liked: Trying new snacks is awesome. I forget there are other kinds of healthy things out there besides what I’m used to. The portion control is good, and the snacks from my first box were tasty and satisfying.

Things I’m not sure about: Though I like the portion sizes, four snacks isn’t going to last long, so I have to exert some self control if I want to make the box last more than a day. Since it’s a subscription service, they automatically draw from your bank account.  I don’t mind this in itself, but unless I get a reminder email, I’m likely to forget to record the debit. Also, part of me thinks six dollars is okay for something fun delivered right to me, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m going to give it until my fifth box to decide. Luckily, you can cancel at any time.

If you want to try it out, just go to the Graze website and sign up. You can use the code RTTK3NY1B to get your first and fifth boxes free. I get mine sent to my work, but you can have it sent to your house as well. If you try it, let me know what you think!

Question: Do you subscribe to any delivery services like this one?
Bonus question: What’s your favorite go-to snack?

*Like most of the things I talk about here, Graze didn’t put me up to this. I just wanted to share this with my readers.

A.

Recipe: Tuna Noodle Casserole

This past week was a banner week in our household. I cooked dinner twice!

Even better than the sour cream noodle bake was the tuna noodle casserole I made on Tuesday night. I love TNC. It was one of my favorites when I was a kid, but I’ve only had it a handful of times as an adult. In my normal aversion to cooking, I always thought the dish was too complicated. So many ingredients, so much to do, so much kitchen drama!

That’s not the case. This was easy to make, and while I wasn’t as super suave in the kitchen as I had been with the first casserole, I still managed to put it all together without setting anything on fire. I used bits and pieces of old recipes I’d been given to hodge podge this together. Now it’s probably going to be one of my go-to recipes.

Under that layer of chips is cheesy tuna goodness.

Tuna Noodle Casserole
Ingredients
6 ounces egg noodles
2 tablespoons butter
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
1/2-1 teaspoon garlic powder (or to taste, I use 1 teaspoon)
3 -4 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4-1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper (or to taste)
onion powder
1 (6 1/2 ounce) can tuna, drained and flaked
Shredded cheddar cheese
Potato chips

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a 2-quart casserole dish.

2. Cook the egg noodles in boiling water; drain and toss with 2 tablespoons butter.

3. In a sauce pan, mix together undiluted mushroom soup, garlic powder, Parmesan cheese, milk, sour cream, salt, pepper, and onion powder. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently for 15 minutes.

4. Stir in tuna to sauce mix.

5. Combine the mixture with the cooked egg noodles.

6. Pour everything into casserole dish.

7. Sprinkle the top with shredded cheddar cheese, then with crushed potato chips

8. Bake for about 25 minutes.

I was surprised at how easy this was and how delicious it tasted. Jon likes his things spiced up, so he added hot sauce to his. The recipe is versatile, so you can add whatever spices or sauces you want to give it some kick.

This coming Sunday I’m trying two recipes: crockpot cheeseburgers and crockpot dump cake. Wish me luck!

A.

Recipe: Sour Cream Noodle Bake

Any time I actually make dinner, it’s a pretty big event. Being in the kitchen makes me uncomfortable. I don’t multi-task around hot items well, and I don’t have the flair for seasoning and eyeballing amounts like Jon does. Therefore, he does pretty much all the cooking (even though I’m in charge of finding new recipes).

I pinned this recipe to my meal board awhile back (the original one from the Pioneer Woman can be found here). It looked easy enough, so I gave it a shot with a couple minor changes. The information below includes my changes, so refer to the links for the full, original recipe.

Sour Cream Noodle Bake

Ingredients (I was able to pick up everything at Aldi, which is the cheapest grocery store in our area)

• roll of ground turkey
• 2 8 oz cans Tomato Sauce
• Salt
• Pepper
• Egg Noodles (I cooked a whole 16 oz bag. It made alot. Half the bag would have been fine)
• 1/2 cup Sour Cream
• 1-1/4 cup Small Curd Cottage Cheese
• Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Brown ground turkey in a large skillet. Drain fat (my turkey was lean, so I skipped this step), then add tomato sauce and season with salt and pepper. Stir, then simmer while you prepare the other ingredients.

Cook egg noodles until al dente. Drain and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine sour cream and cottage cheese. Add pepper. Add to noodles and stir.

To assemble, add half of the noodles to a baking dish. Top with half the meat mixture, then sprinkle on some cheese. Repeat with noodles, meat, then a final layer of cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, or until all cheese is melted.

My food pics never look as pretty as the originals, but the food tasted good anyway!

The original recipe says to pair with some bread, but I figured the noodles would be starchy enough. Though they are egg noodles. Still a starch, right? I don’t know. The meal was really filling without the bread.

Next time I’ll even out the noodle to sauce ratio by using only half a bag of noodles as instructed. Even with that little oversight, this turned out really well. I’m proud! Also, I managed to keep all kitchen anxiety at bay. I took my time, managed to do a few things at once, and even (sort of) cleaned up as I went.

My next mission? Tuna noodle casserole.

A.

Tea and Chocolate from the J’AdoreVoxBox

Based on the lack of posts, you can probably tell that things are at a slow crawl lately. That, and I just haven’t been in the frame of mind for blogging. If I remember correctly though, last year was pretty uneventful until March, so fingers crossed that when spring…and the better weather hits…I’ll have more blogtivity.

The excitement for today was that my J’AdoreVoxBox from Influenster arrived!

It’s like Christmas, but for Valentine’s Day

There is some pretty great stuff in there, and hopefully I’ll have the chance to blog about all the things. Today, I started with two of the items…the consumables. Because how hard is it to tear the package open and get to chomping and drinking, right?

Red Rose Tea sent four tea bag samples for my drinking pleasure. Within ten minutes, I was sipping on a cup of their delightful Creme Caramel.

I love tea, but like other things, I go through phases where I drink a lot of it, then switch to something else, like water or coffee (or soda, but I’m trying to curb that habit). I can drink iced tea all year round, but my hot tea moods come and go. However, after trying the Creme Caramel, I think I might be entering back into a hot tea phase. It’s so good! Only slightly sweet, not too rich, and it’s a taste that just makes me happy. I drink tea plain, no cream or sugar, but I can see how this flavor might taste good with a little dash of something else. Having said that, I’ll probably still enjoy it fresh and unadorned.

In the category of things that I love all the time, no phase needed, is chocolate.

The best thing ever

This bag of Hershey‘s kisses is huge! I usually prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate, but Hershey’s are a huge exception. Their milk chocolate is the best, in my opinion, likely even better than most of the gourmet chocolate brands. Kisses are great because they’re easily portioned controlled, and one little Kiss packs a punch.

Serious side note: my relationship with food has changed greatly over the past couple years. Nothing is off limits, I don’t berate myself for eating sweets and treats, and I’ve realized that the quickest way to binge on something is to deprive myself of it. I also try not to negative self talk when it comes to food, though sometimes I let things slip (old habits die hard). However, I do know that I tend to feel yucky after consuming too much sugar, but if it’s in front of me, I’ll eat it.

Hence, the Kisses will be shared with Jon, and have been put into a bowl and stuck in the fridge to serve as a sweet treat over time, not all at once. I did, of course, already have a healthy serving size before writing this review. No regrets. They were delicious! If I get to feeling bakey, I can also add them to cookies or use them in a bunch of other recipes. But I think they’ll be most effective for a quick craving killer.

Samples, tea, and chocolate…seriously not a bad way to kick off a Saturday.

All products were received complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes. All opinions are my own. 

A.

To-Do Lists and a Box of Goodies

Though lacking in excitement, the day was a really productive one. I managed to get several things off my to-do list over lunch and after work, and though I still have plenty of projects to keep me busy through the rest of the month, I feel a little bit better knowing I’ve finally got a few things off my shoulders.

At lunch, I went to drop the laundry off to Jon, and we used our remaining time to go grab a nearby geocache, marking our first time geocaching on our lunch. My main goal in getting this one, since it was near the cemetery, was to drop off my zombie travel bug. She’s now in the wild and will hopefully move on to big adventures. Since that didn’t take long, we made a quick trip to Kinko’s to grab some boxes to ship some things to people.

After work, we took advantage of yet another nice day and went to walk the rec center track. Unfortunately, tonight’s walk wasn’t great. My mission had me running from zombies straight from the start, and instead of restarting to get my warm-up, I went with it. I had some ankle cramps and my thigh muscle felt strained, so we called it after about a half hour. I didn’t finish my mission, but I’ll redo it next time. It was a good one. Very intense.

When I got home, my Jolly VoxBox from Influenster had arrived, and I opened it right away to see what kind of cool products I would have the chance to review this month.

I’m going to be trying out all of those things over the next few weeks and will be reviewing everything individually as I get the chance to use them. As you may have guessed, those Skinny Cow chocolates have already been sampled.*

Possibly better than regular peanut butter cups….

I spent the evening finishing up the writing project for my mom, which I think came out okay. Sadly, I didn’t get to revise the next chapter of my Nano, but that’s a good project for tomorrow. I also just realized I forgot to put laundry away. As much as I like to get that done, I’m feeling tired, so it might have to wait for tomorrow night.

Time to shower, read, and sleep…in that order.

A.

*I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes

Day 2: St. Louis Vacation – Science and Beer

We were up early to take advantage of the hotel’s breakfast. While I knew there would be hot food on the buffet, I was thinking it was just going to be biscuits and gravy, but there were eggs and sausage too. There was also fruit, bagels, juice, cereal, and danishes. I made sure to eat a full breakfast since I knew we were going to be doing a lot of walking.

We made it to the St. Louis Science Center shortly after they opened and walked around for a couple hours. There were some great displays, including an energy contraption that stretched along the whole ceiling of the entrance lobby. Colored balls followed the loops from one side to the other.

As cool as this was, my favorite was the animatronic dinosaurs.

There were a lot of kids there and a lot of cool things geared towards kids, but we still had fun walking through the museum and looking at things. We wandered over the planetarium to look around as well, but we didn’t do any of the shows. It was a good visit though, and gave us another chance to use our ASTC membership that we got through the Flint Hills Discovery Center.

Our second stop of the day was at the Anheuser-Busch Tour Center for a tour of the St. Louis brewery.

The tour was a lot of fun. It was a seven block walking tour, all down hill, though we did have to navigate down three flights of stairs. This gave me a little anxiety since my knees do better with going up stairs than they do down, but I managed with hardly any problems. We got to see the areas where they brew, age, and package the beer. We also got to see some of the Budweiser clydesdales.

 

At the end of the tour, we took trolleys back up the hill to the hospitality room where we were given two free samples. I tried the Black Crown beer and the Straw-ber-ita flavored drink (is that even considered a beer?). Both were good, though the fruity drink was more pleasing to my taste buds. The drinks made me a little giggly, so we hung out for awhile, just to make sure I could drive safely.

We came back to the hotel and made a pit stop at the Hardee’s down the street for a late lunch. Their credit card system wasn’t working, but instead of turning us away, they gave us a free meal. It was tasty too. Our last couple Hardee’s experiences weren’t great, so it was nice to finally have a good charbroil flavored burger.

Though we talked about doing something else this afternoon and evening, we ended up just relaxing in the hotel room and ordering in. We have a lot of walking planned for the next couple of days and wanted to pace ourselves so as not to burn out all in the first day. It was good to just chill.

Tomorrow is zoo day! I hope the weather doesn’t freeze us out from visiting the animals.

A.

Chinese for Lunch

I had lunch at Happy Valley with some friends today. The lunch portion is huge and well worth the value if you can eat that much. I managed to eat most of it. Delicious sweet and sour chicken! Lunch with friends and the fact that I’m back to jogging with no hip pain were the highlights of my day!

Happy Hump Day!

A.