Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad

This is a keeper recipe per hubby, so I'll give this the labels of super easy and hubby approved!

This was made a bit easier this go as I had 2 already leftover baked chicken breasts in the freezer.  They had been seasoned with garlic and rosemary but I think if you want to add chicken, you can decide how you want to do this.  Or... you can go vegetarian and leave off the meat or add roasted chickpeas.  I bet they would be awesome on this salad!

Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad

Ingredients:
Cooled Cooked Pasta (I used bowtie)
Chopped Romaine Lettuce
2 Cubed Chicken breasts
Shredded Parmesan Cheese
Caesar Dressing of Choice
Seasonings of choice for Pasta (water is usually salted for boiling so I choose unsalted seasonings like garlic and pepper)
EVOO
croutons (optional) I served hubby's with 1/2 pita. 


Cook Pasta and drain.  Put pasta back in pan and toss a little EVOO, garlic, pepper, and parsley for flavor.  Let cool. 

If you need to cook your chicken breasts.  Bake or pan fry as preferred.  Do this along with the pasta so both can set aside to cool a bit.  When cool, cube chicken breasts.

While everything is cooking, you can begin chopping your lettuce. 

Now that everything is done... it's time to plate!

I put a pasta fork full of pasta on the plate first.

Then I topped with a ton of Romaine

Then I added about a handful (I have small hands) of chicken.

Top with the shredded parmesan

Drizzle with your Caesar dressing

Enjoy!

I made my pasta ahead of time so it had time to cool a lot so my lettuce didn't get soggy.  It was also helpful having the chicken only warm rather than hot for the same reason.  I'm guessing this dinner, from "scratch" wouldn't take but 30 minutes to prepare (depending on your chicken and pasta cooking times and allowing to cool a bit. 

I had enough left to make a 3rd salad for lunch the next day. 

Healing Chicken Noodle Soup

Okay... I'm on day 6 of the flu.  I'm still running a fever.  It's the worst week to miss work.  Yay me! But amidst dozing, changing "Sliders" episodes on Netflix, and putting my robe on and off (hot, cold, hot, cold) I've been inspired to blog some.

I was at work the day I started getting sick and since I made this on day 2 of feeling like poo (hey, that rhymes), I didn't put my all into this.  I made it the best I could in hopes of the garlic, onion, and broth would do their thing and make us feel better.

The problem is that after I made this soup, honey and I were too sick to really eat.  We never could get much of this in us.  Maybe a half a cup at a time and honey sometimes passed on it completely.  He's only started eating more the past 2 days.  So although, this should be a healing recipe, it didn't really help us this time because we hardly ate any of it.

Here's the quick homemade recipe with a picture of the final product.  It was my lunch today, but I could only eat about 1/4 of.  But Baby dog got to enjoy a little taste.

I have to admit, this could have looked better too if I hadn't felt so bad.  I got feeling weak part way through shredding the chicken, so it's half chunked, half shredded.  ha ha... also I couldn't stand slicing the onions so I stopped at 2.  I put noodles in it because honey likes the noodles.  I wish now, that I had not even added noodles since he hardly ate any.  I completely forgot celery, but I don't really like cooked celery anyway.  If you forget it, I think they make celery seasoning if you have that.

Healing Chicken Noodle Soup
Ingredients:
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 cartons low sodium chicken broth (reserve 3/4 of 2nd Carton)
1 package of carrots (I used Bolthouse organic carrot chips) 12 oz.
2 celery bits or seasoning for flavor
1 tbsp of Better than Bullion
Pink Himalayan Salt to taste
pepper to taste
2 large sweet onions or 3 medium
fresh garlic (as much as you can stand)
olive oil
noodles of choice (optional)



Put the chicken breasts in your stock pot and cover with filtered water.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat and cover for about 30 minutes to cook the chicken and create a broth base.

While the chicken cooks, gather the rest of your ingredients, slice your onions as you please and peel and chop about 8 garlic cloves.

Go ahead and throw 4 whole cloves in the pot while the chicken simmers.  Chop the other cloves and put in a small fry pan with olive oil and brown it over medium low heat to bring the flavor out more.

Once the chicken is done, remove from pot, shred, then put back in pot.

Add the rest of your ingredients.

If adding noodles, I added about 4 small hand fulls (my hands are small!).  I still had too many noodles it for us.

Add 1 carton of chicken broth, keep your pot on a simmer temperature, put the lid on it and go take a nap!

In a few hours, your soup will be done and may need a bit more broth and possibly salt and pepper. The noodles soak up the broth and it can hardly look like soup after spending the night in the fridge.  So keep your reserved broth handy.

Enjoy and feel better!

Philly Peppers Recipe

Philly Peppers!

I made these back in December.  This was just a fun way to assemble extra ingredients I had from making fajitas.  I've seen plenty of pictures of these recipes on Pinterest, so this isn't an original idea.  

Does anyone else save recipes for the picture and not really read the recipes?  I have a bad habit of doing that.  I think it's an ADD tendency to not want to sit long enough to read the recipe.  I'll just make it like I think it's made.... ha ha (more like a recipe picture is an inspiration and the recipe is maybe a suggestion of what to buy)  wait... SQUIRREL!!!

I looked up free pictures for this, so hopefully this doesn't make anyone mad!

Okay... I had an extra package of peppers that included red, orange, and yellow peppers.  So I was super excited for a colorful dinner.  I also had left over frozen fajita steak... so again, I'm excited because I love to eat meat.  Just sayin'.  I also made what I thought was just a cup of quinoa.  Does that stuff like double in size over night?  I had a ton of cooked quinoa and needed to use it up (I still threw out like what seemed 2 lbs of it to the birds).  

Oh!  The recipe!  Here you go!

Ingredients:

3 fresh peppers (any color that you prefer) cut in half, tops and seeds removed.

1 cup to 1 cup and a half quinoa (cooked and maybe lightly salted with pink salt of course and peppered) enough for 3 servings.

1 small sweet onion coarsely chopped then cooked or caramelized to your liking

EVOO (for the onions)

9 oz steak or chicken strips (cooked and chunked into small pieces) enough for 3 servings

6 provolone cheese slices 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

begin cooking your onions on medium heat (not higher). 

Par boil your peppers for about 3-5 minutes so that they are still firm but not too crunchy.  I hate hearing people crunch their food sometimes (squirrel!) 

Cool them off slightly on a foil lined cookie sheet so that you can handle them.

Begin your assembly of your stuffed peppers.  

This is how I did it:

a little quinoa on the bottom of each pepper half,

then maybe an ounce to ounce and half of meat

then stack some of the cooked onions

top with a broken slice of provolone

add more quinoa

add more meat

add more onion

top with a slice of provolone

Bake in oven for like 10 minutes or until cheese is melty.  It shouldn't take long as your ingredients were all cooked and warm before you put them in the oven.  

This seems like a lot of words, but it really didn't take long to prepare or get my fork into them.  

You can see that depending on the size of your peppers, you will not need much to stuff them, but I enjoyed 2 halves for supper and it was yummy.  So yummy, that I forgot to take pictures of the peppers cut open.  I'll have to update this post when I make them again to get some assembly pictures.  

Enjoy!

Plum Salsa Recipe

Plum Salsa!

You know when you buy a bunch of fruit, with good intentions, only to find it got too ripe before you could eat it?

Yes, that was the inspiration for this recipe.  I had 2 very soft plums.

Plum Salsa 

2 very ripe plums chopped

1/4 red onion chopped

2 tsps apple cider vinegar 

dash of pink salt

sprinkle of dried cilantro (or fresh of course if you have it)

squirt of Sriracha sauce

Gently mix up your salsa and chill.

While you chill, let the salsa chill a bit so the flavors can marinate.   

My daughter taste tested and approved this on Keebler Club crackers.  Honey approved it on baked tilapia.  

I suppose this would be yummy on baked chicken or with tortilla chips or even a sandwich topping.

Enjoy!

Hey!... this is my 100th post!  (I guess only exciting news to me.  ha ha!)

Peach Salsa Chicken Recipe

Photo by Tracy Hilbun

Peach Salsa Chicken

Super easy and yummy supper.  This is not an original idea.  I think this is a take on a Weight Watchers recipe.  

My ingredients:

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Betty's Country Store Peach Salsa (Betty's Country Store is located in Helen, GA - about 10 miles from us)

Mozzarella cheese slices (part skim)

Pink Himalayan Salt

Pepper

Preheat oven to 375

Place your chicken breasts in a prepared glass baking dish (use cooking spray, oil, or butter)

Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the chicken breasts

Top with salsa (maybe 1/2 cup on each breast?) {I'm terrible about measuring}

Cover dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes or so

After 20 minutes, remove chicken and add a slice of cheese to each chicken breast

Bake an additional 15-20 minutes re-covered in foil

After about 15 minutes, remove foil and bake an additional 10 minutes with an additional slice of cheese on each chicken breast to brown the cheese.

Enjoy with some nice low carb sides to complete your colorful plate!

Yummy, easy, cheesy!

Pesto Pasta Recipe

Still on a pasta kick...tonight was Pesto Pasta

The simple version...
Cook pasta of choice (I used whole wheat penne)
While pasta is cooking I sliced fresh veggies on hand (peppers and onions) then cooked them in the frying pan with olive oil until warm but still crisp.
While stirring the pasta and veggies occasionally, I prepared a Knorr pesto packet. (Takes about 6 minutes)

I drained the pasta and then placed the cooked veggies in a bowl and used the "seasoned" pan to warm some Tyson frozen oven roasted tenderloin pieces. This takes about 5 minutes

I tossed everything in my pasta and topped it with some feta crumbles (because I had some...ha!)

Enjoy with a fresh veggie side like grape tomatoes.

It was really easy and good. Dinner was ready in about 20 minutes, give or take.

photo by Tracy Hilbun

Is this another one of your creations?

That is what Bj asked me as he ate his lunch/supper after teaching today. 
Yes it was! I am having another one of those "more month than paycheck" months, so dinners can be somewhat "creative".
this creation contained stuff I found in freezer, pantry, and fridge.
I found 2 frozen chicken breasts and boiled them in about 5 cups of water. I found a bag of yellow rice. After the chicken was done, I used the broth to simmer the rice for 25 mins.
I cooked a bag of frozen broccoli and broke up the chicken while the rice simmered. 
When the rice was done, I began the assembly in a glass baking dish. 
Rice first, broccoli next, then the chicken. I found some shredded cheese in the fridge, so that was the next layer. I added another layer of rice and baked at 350 for 20 mins. There were hardly any cheez its left so I crushed them up. After the 20 minutes, I sprinkled the cheez its and the rest of the cheese on top and baked for 5 more minutes.
Yep, another one of my creations.
By the way, it was pretty good!

Saturday Easy Chicken Pasta Recipe

BJ said he wanted lasagne... I was not inspired to make it, even though I agreed.  Because he is so easy to please, he said I didn't have to make it.  I need to make it soon though!

Anyway... I was not inspired period.  So... went to the store...

Aisle of inspiration.... the salad dressing aisle!
I think this feeds 4-6 depending on how much you put on your plate

1 lb of boneless skinless chicken (breasts or thighs)
1/2 package of plain cream cheese (softened)
1 can (10 1/2 oz) of cream soup of choice - I used cream of chicken with herbs
1/4 - 1/2 cup of dry white wine
1/4 cup of Italian style salad dressing... I used Tuscan Italian
pasta of choice ( I had thin spaghetti on hand)
fresh parsley

Cut up the chicken in bite size cubes.  Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil in a medium frying pan and heat up on lower heat.  Add chicken to pan.  Lightly season with some salt and pepper and toss in the oil.  Cook partially on a lower medium temp for a few minutes... do not cook thoroughly

In a mixing bowl... add the cream cheese, can of soup, wine and dressing... mix with a whisk.  add a little bit of cream or milk for a thinner consistency if desired.

Add chicken and cream mixture to slow cooker and cook on high for 2 hours or low for 4-5 hours.

cook pasta and drain.  I tossed a little of the salad dressing on the pasta to keep it from getting sticky.

Serve pasta topped with the chicken and sauce.  Top with a little fresh parsley.

I served this with a salad and cheddar garlic biscuits.

This did not take a long time to prepare, had few ingredients, and had a mild flavor. 

Enjoy!