Italian Chicken Rice Pot

In procrastinating doing my homework a while back, I ran across a YouTube video by Laura Vitale for one pot chicken and rice. I have learned that some of the greatest dishes are super simple, and this is definitely one of them. I didn't have all of her ingredients on hand, but I had enough to make a most delicious variation for a college student such as myself.

By the way, this makes a lot food...and I didn't get to eat any of the leftovers!

Italian Chicken and Rice

Inspired by Laura in the Kitchen
I've linked the original video and recipe here if you are interested.

Ingredients:

Vegetable oil (or olive oil, etc.)

2 pieces of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 can tomatoes, diced

Salt

Pepper

Garlic Powder

Italian Seasoning

2 cups of white rice
3 cups of water + 3 bouillon cubes (chicken-flavored)

[or three cups of broth...]

It's almost easier than Rice-a-Roni, and tastes a lot better.

Instructions:

Heat oil in skillet and cube chicken breasts.  Fry cubes until they start to develop color.
Meanwhile, dice bell pepper.
Add pepper to chicken and fry until color starts to change.  Season with salt and pepper.
Add rice and cook for about a minute to let brown.
Add water, bouillon, can of tomatoes, and seasonings.
Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and let simmer.
In about twenty five minutes, your yummy chicken and rice should be ready to eat.

This one is sure to be a classic in my house (assuming I ever have not-frozen chicken!)

Finally, I would like to thank Mrs. Vitale for inspiring this wonderful dish.

My First Crockpot Experience

Chicken Taco Bowls

Good afternoon, everybody!  I finally used a crockpot yesterday, and it was awesome.  I like this whole "I can effortlessly cook all day and study all day all at the same time" deal.  It's great.  

The recipe I used is modified from budgetbytes.com, and that's a pretty cool website because Beth tells you how much the meals cost to make (with approximate prices for each of the ingredients), then thus how much they cost per serving.

I used:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 pint jar of home-canned diced tomatoes

1 pint jar of home-canned black beans

1 can of corn (actually store-bought)

Cumin
Minced garlic

Oregano

Salt

Pepper

1/4 cup of water

2 cups of white rice

Shredded cheddar cheese

I put everything (except the rice and cheese) into my crockpot chicken first, then the rest on top.  I gave it all a good stir, making sure the chicken was covered, and cooked on low for 8 hours.  

After studying for a while I decided to make some of my white bread to go with it, then when I had about 40 minutes left to go, I put my two cups of rice into my rice cooker, filled with water to the appropriate fill line, and at about 5:00 we had a delicious dinner, and I'd read quite a bit of my English Literature assignment (this week is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight...read it in high school!)

Funny thing about my camera: it seems that I have to take pictures of flowers on the food setting,
and pictures of food on the flower setting.
Tough cookies, right?

Thus, we have yummy Chicken Taco Bowls served with rice and a slice of hot homemade bread! (and a LOT of leftovers, being only two of us here)

Canning Time!

Canned Apple Pie Filling

My husband and I have had a cooler full of apples sitting in our living room for over a week, and I finally decided to do something about it.  (My aunt was blessed with an overabundant amount of apples this year, so one Saturday when I was tutoring algebra, my husband and father went and picked some). I'm afraid that I do not know what kind they are; they are small and green.

I had helped my mother-in-law can this summer a couple of different times, and had heard the process explained a couple more, so I decided that I would break out my canner and give it a try.  I didn't have to use my lid, thank goodness.  Baby steps are nice.

I found on Pinterest a post from Adventures in the Anderl House where some folks canned some apple pie filling, and I thought it would be a perfect place to start!  The post has awesome instructions, and was extremely helpful since I was flying solo.

Preparing

Fist things first, I had to wash my canner...in the bath tub, and I got black, grimy stuff all over my arms and hands!  Not fun for someone who does not really like to get dirty.  One of my co-workers this summer thought that was absurd since I'm from the South.  Do I have to like getting dirty?  Clean is nice... perhaps I did not fit his stereotype.

My Materials:
23 Qt. Canner with canning rack
Quart-sized mason jars (x7)
Cooler full of apples
Jar lifter
Lid Lifter
Canning funnel
LOTS of water
Sugar
Salt
Cornstarch
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Vinegar (for cleaning)

Anyway, I cleaned up the canner and brought it downstairs to the kitchen and sat it on our stove.  Woo hoo!  (Photo op first, actually).  At that point I decided that I would heat my jars.  Needless to say, while filling everything with water, I made a pretty decent mess.  But, then again, it was just water.  I filled the jars and the canner with water to where it filled maybe an inch or so above the jars, and turned the heat on the stove to try to get things boiling.

Next up, I got to work on peeling and cutting the apples, and at this point my husband was still home, so he helped, thank goodness.  One thing about me: ever since I was a small child, I have pretty much avoided knives like the plague, so I am very inexperienced with knives, and my hands are extremely awkward with them.  Having an apple peeler helped, though...still a good chance at severing my skin off of my fingers, but the peeler helped.  All in all, cutting up the apples (at first) was a very grueling experience.  After maybe an hour or so, we had enough apples for almost two jars. (Remember: tiny apples)  That was it.  I had seven jars all hot and ready to go....quart sized jars!  So, instead of crying about it, when my husband left for school, I left for...Walmart!

My friends the sectioner and the peeler!

Thus, two of my three best friends of the day. (The third being my loving husband).  I went and bought a Farberware (I seem to like Farberware) Apple Sectioner for just under $6.00, and between it and my peeler, things went exponentially faster.  On Tuesdays, my husband has one class, and by the time he got back, the jars were almost filled.

So next came the pie filling concoction. I used a recipe that I found on Pinterest (where else?) coming from Adventures in the Anderl House.

So I mixed up the ooey gooey goodness in a pot and brought it to a boil. Now for the loveliness of my jar lifter and funnel!  Canning is so much easier with these beauties (plus a lid lifter, but I wasn't using it at the moment)!  I would bring one jar over beside the stove, ladle three scoops into the jar of apples through the funnel, take the funnel out and put it in the next jar, then took the hot jar back across the kitchen with the jar lifter so it can get ready to get its lid.

Filling

Before putting on the lids, I used a small spatula to work air bubbles out.  I do believe a plastic knife would have worked better, but such is life.  After poking around in each jar for what seemed like forever, I cleaned the jar rims with some vinegar (a trick my mother-in-law taught me) and used my awesome little magnetic lid lifter to put the lids on.  I tightened the rings really well, then took them over, one at a time, and sat them in my canner (still with the water in it from earlier), being careful not to touch the jars to the side of the canner or to each other.

Boiling Water Canning

Next problem: basic science.  The density of the jars displaced the water that was equal to the amount of covering the jars by an inch plus enough to fill the insides of seven, quart-sized jars.  The result: the canner overflowed with water.  After a sigh and a quick laugh, I grabbed a clean ladle, and started scooping out water. It took about eighty or so scoops, but then the water was about an inch or two over the jars, and I cranked up the heat.

No lie, getting the water to boil took forever, and honestly I wasn't watching the clock.  My husband and I made separate runs to McDonalds redeeming some BOGO coupons, so between two burgers and two smoothies, one of us got a free meal.  Thus, we didn't leave the big boiling bucket alone.  When it got to where it boiled, I set a timer for twenty minutes. (Yay! The end was in sight!)

The jars came out one at a time and found themselves sitting on a towel.  Here was the real waiting game: waiting on the jars to seal.  That's all I wanted.  It took a little while, but over the course of the night, I heard seven wonderful little POP noises, and when you're canning, that's music to your ears. Wednesday morning, I went and checked each jar's seal by pressing down in the middle of the lid.  Presto! I heard right.  I foresee some pies soon!  (...I know the goo mixture is delicious because I got the stickiness on my hands.  Who can resist licking it off?)

Finished jars waiting to seal. Pop!

So, after this lovely experience, I went right back to the daily grind of reading English Literature and doing homework.  Ah, the life of a college student.  It's fabulous, right?

If you have not canned before, this is probably a good place to start, unless you want to do applesauce or something.

Leftover Brown Sugar Chicken and a Milk Story!

Basic Chicken Fried Rice, Anyone?

Sorry, folks. No picture this time, but I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

We had one piece left of the fabulous chicken and about three storage containers of leftover rice on Sunday.  (Late post; both of us started school this week)  So, we decided to chop it up and throw it in with the rice.  Easy recipe time!  Cooked chicken + cooked rice + soy sauce.  A wise lady once told me that it's not necessarily the complicated recipes that are the best, but the easy ones.  (I'm loving the whole easy thing).

The Milk Story

So, if you follow CVS, you know that they have their milk on sale this week for $3.39 for a gallon. Any discount on good milk is great, especially when you love to drink milk like me (especially when I wake up in the middle of the night).  Anyhow, we were planning on going shopping yesterday and I decided that I'd check my e-mail before we left...and whaddya know!  There was a wonderful little email from CVS with a $3 ExtraBucks Coupon!!  Bwahahaha! 

So, after a run to Home Depot and Walmart, we hit the CVS and I literally bought milk with TWO QUARTERS and got change back. (Now, I understand that I could have rolled the ExtraBucks by making use of another ExtraBucks deal, however we were out of milk, and not much this week interests me...plus the coupon expired in two days).

Life is good!

Maybe I'm Not a Hopeless Chef After All!

Brown Sugar Baked Chicken

I love Pinterest! Pinterest is my friend, especially since I'm new at the whole homemaker thing.  Anyway, I was browsing through the Food and Drink section the other day and ran across this recipe from spoonful.com for Brown Sugar Spiced Baked Chicken.  My husband and I agreed it should be on our must-try short list.  Sure enough, when it came down to Saturday, we still had three pieces of chicken left from our meal planning shopping trip this week (by the way, the meal planning seems to be going well as for getting ingredients, but we seem to end up altering our meals from the original recipes, but, then again, what are recipes for?)

I substituted paprika for chili powder (we didn't have any paprika), and whaddya know, the chicken turned out fantastic! (We think the sugar melted off) And it was so easy!  Just mix up the seasoning, slap the chicken into it, toss it in a baking dish and put it in the oven for twenty minutes! Easy is good for a newbie like unto myself.  One piece each filled us up, too, so we have one lovely spiced leftover to combine with something (probably leftover rice) for dinner tonight.  We make our rice in a rice cooker that we received as a wedding gift, and that thing is awesome.  Haven't really tried much with it, but it can apparently do quite a few things.

Bread!

The Seemingly Normal Bread of Life

Hello, again!  It has been a while, has it not?  Summer is basically over, and we're now living in our own place.  Of course, there's still boxes all over the place, but if there weren't, it wouldn't be realistic. (I seem to use a lot of contractions! My English teachers would cringe!) I've crocheted some things between my last post and the present, but I've been a little busy to explain.  Perhaps if I can catch my breath again, I could explain a little.  Using cotton yarn is great!

The feature of the day, however, was my climbing over the boxes in the kitchen floor and using my long awaited... wait for it... BREAD MACHINE! Hooray! It's one of the wedding presents that I didn't get to see until after we left the in-laws'. Working at the grocery store, fresh bread would come down the belt for me to bag, and I would almost always think to myself, 'I'm so excited to use my bread machine when we go back South!' Well, after being up for a bit this morning, I decided today was going to be the day!  So I grabbed my favorite scissors and cut my box open.  Ah, power.  (I don't particularly like knives).  I read my instructions, (I was so excited that I didn't even look through the French and Spanish sections like I normally would) and started cleaning the equipment to get it ready to roll [dough].  I went to the Walmart (in my lovely car that I've missed all summer) and grabbed some bread flower and bread machine yeast.  In fact, I even went over and looked at the yarn and did not even get any!  I did gather some ideas, though.  Christmas, anyone?

So I got back home with my lovelies, and I baked an empty bread maker for ten minutes...twice.  I would bet at the moment that you are thinking like my darling husband and ask "why didn't you do that before you went and got the ingredients?"  Well....I guess I was just that excited.  It would have made lots of sense though.  So, after everything was cooled down and cleaned, I meticulously made a small mess in the kitchen (and cleaned it right up, I might add) and threw together the white bread recipe that came with my machine.  Ta dah! Three hours and two job applications later, I had a lovely loaf of home made bread and I didn't even really get my hands dirty!  It went really well with some chilli and cheese, and a gulp or three of some Mexican-style rice pudding!

So, here it is: my little one and a half pound loaf of seemingly normal white bread.  It was quite delicious!  One of these days, we'll have things put away where I can take nice pictures of things, but that day is not today.  If you haven't made bread, I challenge you to.  Yes, you can do it without a machine, but I get to keep my wedding rings on this way...and do other things like fill out job applications.  Have a great day!  (And no, I didn't make that potholder...my aunt did...)

The Ever So Fabulous Root Beer Chicken

Life is fun as a newly wed... especially when living with the in-laws for a little bit.  But that's okay; each of my siblings did it, too.  What's really awesome is having the continuing opportunity to learn some wonderful homemaking skills...(I'd like to call them my "wifey" skills).

As for my "wifey" skills ideas, they probably mostly come from Pinterest, but that's normal, isn't it??

Cooking Experiment: The Chicken

Today (starting with yesterday) I did a little experiment with cooking.  I found a recipe on the fabulous wonderful Pinterest for Marinated Root Beer Grilled Chicken from the Six Sisters' Stuff.  So, I struck a deal with my mother-in-law, and we agreed that I could do my little experiment for dinner. We had actually planned it for a few days before, but we were supposed to get bad weather, which would have (literally) dampened the grill. Whaddya know! It missed us, and we didn't get to have our chicken.

Anyway, back to yesterday.  I went to get started on this wonderfully simple little recipe, and it turned out that we didn't even have any root beer!  That was nothing that a quick run to the gas station for a can can't fix.  Then, nobody could find the apple cider vinegar, so the men went to the grocery store on the hunt.  Of course, I found some in plain sight before they got home, and the marinate was thrown together and in the fridge by the time they returned.  (Meanwhile, I had my first canning lesson with my mother-in-law canning chicken from the local butcher with her beloved Viola [that's her pressure cooker]. Maybe I should name mine once I get to using it.  It's still sealed in the box).

So the chicken should marinate anywhere from three hours to overnight, and we were planning for the minimum time so we could indulge before I had to leave for work.  Then, I got called in early, so it got to hang out in the refrigerator over night until after church today.  Since I had less than two hours before heading to work again, I changed into my work clothes, covered my white shirt, and let my wonderful husband grill the chicken. (He's the best!)

This is the amazing result that we ended up with.  It might be a slight understatement to say that it was a huge hit!! I think even someone who isn't a root beer fan would like it.  (Maybe I should have moved the in-laws' sodas before taking the picture.  Oh well.  It was fabulous!  What else can I say?

I guess this cooking "wifey" skill doesn't have to be so scary after all.  One piece of advice I was given as for cooking was just choosing the simple things.  They taste the greatest.

So that's my adventure in My Tiny Corner of the Universe today.

Blessings

So yesterday toward the end of my shift, I was offered the opportunity to switch my shift time from 3 to 9 to 9 to 3, and I really love going to church and find it very important, so I politely declined the time change.  I believe I was extremely blessed for my decision. I had the opportunity to give the opening prayer, everything touched my Spirit (I shed many happy tears today) and I didn't really realize how wonderful it was today until I was at work thinking to myself about how the day had gone.  I ended up getting off of work early today, too, so I got to come home and spend time with my darling husband.

So basically, today has been a very wonderful day; very peaceful with delicious chicken!