Baked Buffalo Chicken Wontons with Faux Bleu Cheese

This past weekend, we visited my brother and sister-in-law in Florida. We had such a great time; the adult company, taking Dexter to the beach for the first time, just being at the beach, and getting away.

Since we did take a little vacay, I'm not overly upset about running astray from my meal plan and 30 day squat challenge. As for the meal plan, I pretty much left off from where I was at and started again and for my squat challenge, I too picked up where I left off and plan on skipping the next two rest days since that is as many days as I am behind.

Tonight I was supposed to make chicken salad but my husband begged me to make something else; too much of the same I am guessing even though I could likely eat chicken salad every night. Anyway, I still wanted to do something with chicken and looked through Pinterest for some ideas. I found several recipes for buffalo chicken wontons with varying ingredients; my own spin on each is below.

NOTE: I love love love all cheeses. My absolute, number one favorite food of all time is cheese so bleu cheese dressing is one of my favorite dressings. My dear, dear husband however detests bleu cheese. Which is totally fine because in my quest to make a dip to go along with my wontons, I discovered a dip that I will likely make again.

Buffalo Chicken Wontons 

1 Chicken breast

Cayenne pepper

Salt and pepper

Hot sauce (I used about 1 cup of a variant of Frank's Red Hot)

Butter or margarine (I used 1/4 cup)

1 Green onion, sliced 

4 Tbsp softened cream cheese

Faux Bleu Cheese

1/4 cup milk or buttermilk, more if you would like the dressing thinner

1/2 cup mayo

1/4 cup Feta cheese

2 Tbsp Ranch dressing dry packet

1/8 Tsp fresh cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. Put chicken breast in an 8x8 inch pan and add a little water to the bottom. Shake on as much cayenne as you like (be careful, it's hot!) and season with salt and pepper. Bake until cooked through, about 45 minutes. In the meantime, make the dressing. Stir together the milk, mayo, Ranch powder, and black pepper. When combined add in the Feta cheese; stir, cover and chill in the fridge.

Once the chicken is cooked through, DO NOT turn off your oven, turn it up to 375. Shred the chicken with two forks and place in a large mixing bowl along with the cream cheese and sliced green onion.

In a separate small bowl, microwave the butter to melt it, about 30 seconds; stir in the hot sauce and add the sauce to the chicken mixture, stir to combine.

Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray. Take one wonton and lightly moisten each edge with water. Place a small amount of the chicken mixture in the middle of the wonton.

Pretty sure I even overfilled this one.

**NOTE** You WILL overfill a couple when you begin, its just like a Newton's Law or something. Don't get discouraged!! You literally need about a TEAspoon of filling each, if that. 

Gently fold over and press together edges with a fork. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes. Serves 4 as an appetizer and 2-3 as a dinner.

XOXO

Sara

Cheesy Chicken and Broccoli Rice (For Under $10)

I spent today deep cleaning my house because 

1: I have nothing else to do :)    

and 

2: It really needed it.

Dexter woke up very early so I was lucky enough to get him down for a nap by 10! Anyway, long story short, by the end of the day I was pooped. And even though I worked all day to make the house sparkle, I don't get paid for doing it, darn, and this mamma still had to make dinner with items around the house.

I bought a bunch of Knorr Rice Sides when they were 10 for $10 at Kroger and still have two or three in the pantry. I saw that I had a broccoli and cheese flavor and I knew I had chicken breasts in the freezer, sounded like dinner to me. I added in a couple other ingredients to make it more substantial and creamy and it still came in under $10, my kind of dinner.

NOTE: My husband loathes, let me make that clear, LOATHES, leftovers. No matter what it is the only leftover he could possibly, maybe eat would be pizza. Newsflash! He offered to take leftovers of the rice to work for lunch tomorrow. I know we're trying to save money with the recent purchase of the truck by my husband not coming home for lunch and I know he told me that from now on he wanted me to make him lunches but I still like to think the rice was so good that the anti-leftover king wanted to eat my leftovers tomorrow. Wishful thinking.

Cheesy Chicken and Broccoli Rice

1 Knorr packet of Cheddar Broccoli rice

1 Chicken breast

2 Tbsp Ranch Dressing powder, divided

1/2 cup frozen broccoli

1/4 cup Mozzarella cheese

2 Tbsp cream cheese

2 Tbsp Mayo

4 slices Cheese of your choice, I used Muenster
Cooking spray

Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat the chicken breast in 1 tbsp of the Ranch dressing powder, salt and pepper. Bake, in an 8x8 pan sprayed with cooking spray, through, about one hour. When the chicken comes out, leave the oven on and let it cool slightly while you cook the cheddar broccoli packet by the directions; when it's time to put the lid on the rice and let simmer, shred chicken and mix with the frozen broccoli so it thaws slightly while the rice cooks.

When the rice is finished, mix in the chicken and broccoli, cream cheese, mozzarella, mayo, remaining Ranch powder, salt and pepper.

Spray the pan the chicken was cooked in with the cooking spray and transfer the rice back into the pan. Top with the sliced cheese and pop into the oven for around 10 minutes to warm through and melt cheese.

I asked my husband to take a picture of
me putting the sliced cheese on the
casserole and it turned into a photo shoot.
Most of the photos taken were not appropriate
for posting. Gotta love him :)

Take the rice and put it onto a rack that has been moved up to the highest setting and broil on high until the cheese is slightly brown and bubbly; around 2 minutes. Serves four. 

My son is allergic to all dairy products so he had spaghetti for dinner. Irrelevant? Yes. But I wanted to include a picture of him!

Thank goodness it was bath night!

Enjoy, everyone!

XoXo

Sara

Corn Chowder

So far I've been two-for-two since I've started this blog. Two-for-two? Yes, the two meals that I have made for my husband have both been successes and in his words, "8 out of 10's." I need to keep this up but its is nearing the end of the pay period and I must find things around the house to cook with. 

My son is one and I've been stuffing him full of vegetables while I can, so we normally have lots of canned vegetables around the house. I knew we had at least two cans of corn in the pantry but you can't make a whole dinner around corn; alas! You can! (As a disclaimer, I'm sure there are millions of dinners you can make around corn, but with my minuscule cooking abilities, I didn't know any.) Corn chowder popped into my head and it did sound quite good and filling. I Googled some recipes and got a good idea of how I was going to make my own version. I find it so hard to copy recipes exactly from cookbooks or the internet because I cook for two and a lot of recipes are made for eight or ten or more. I have experimented with halving the ingredients then halving them again, in some cases, but the end product never comes out right, hence my awful record of being a cook. Below is the recipe. My husband, by the way, gave it a solid eight :D.

Corn Chowder

2 cans corn

3 strips bacon

1 garlic clove

1 cup buttermilk

1 onion

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp flour

2 cup chicken stock (I used bullion cubes)

3-4 sprigs fresh thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Shredded cheddar cheese to top, if you please :)

Heat a large soup pot on the stove over medium-high heat. add olive oil and allow to heat with the pan. In the meantime, slice bacon into small strips, dice onion into a small dice, and chop the garlic. Once the pan is heated thoroughly, add in the bacon, onion, garlic, and the stripped thyme leaves from the stems.

This is how it looks before cooking.

Cook, stirring ever so often, for about 10 minutes until the bacon is crispy, onion is soft and the mixture looks like this...

When your mixture gets to this stage, sprinkle in the flour and combine. Add in your chicken broth and bring to a boil. When the mixture comes to a boil, add the buttermilk, corn, salt and pepper. Scrape the bottom of the pan to bring up the crispy bits on the bottom. Simmer the soup on low heat for 10-15 minutes. Serve with cheese atop, if you prefer. I think the soup may have needed a slight kick. I would try adding heavy cream in place of the buttermilk or maybe a bit more thyme. Perhaps sauteing carrot along with the garlic and onion would also help. Who knows; if you do find something that works, please let me know! This would also be so good with some rotisserie chicken mixed in for added protein.

Don't eat that thyme sprig.
Just added it to make it
 look pretty for y'all!

Enjoy! And Happy Friday!

Slow Cooked BBQ Pulled Chicken

What a hectic day! This morning went smoothly, except for my son boycotting his nap, but that's nothing new so I'm used to that. My husband left early for work because he is currently working in two different departments, so I may or may not have slept in a little. 

The original HOSS.
 Don't mind my pose.
We were young and in love.
(Still are!)

I knew this evening would be quite different than the lazy day I had because, yesterday, my husband bought a new truck. When my husband and I met, he had a 2006 Dodge Ram and it was his baby. He bought it from a co-worker while he was in England and had it shipped to Georgia when he came back state-side. In September 2011, he decided the gas mileage wasn't cutting it during his city drive to and from work. He traded the HOSS, as he named it, in for a Chrysler Crossfire. My husband is 6'3'' and I swear I tried to talk him out of it, but it was his truck and he could do what he wanted with it. Anyway, after some time my husband

The new HOSS!

went through a good many cars- a Mustang, which we traded in because we found out I was pregnant; two Impalas, one of which I still have and is my main car; and a Volkswagen GTI. For a while now, my husband has been drooling over every Ram he saw and realized that ever since he had gotten rid of his truck, he had been trying to replace it and nothing would do the job. We tried for a while to get a Ram that was a good couple years old because we knew how upside down we would go on his GTI and thought that that was the only way we could afford one. Well come to find out, if we bought a newer or new one, we would be able to afford it without going too upside down on the GTI. Once my husband learned this, he was off to the races and bought one that very same day, yesterday. He needed a co-signer and I lovingly obliged. Since he bought it last night while I was at home with our son, I could not be there to sign the paperwork so we had to reschedule the signing to today.

Grandpa sent him cookies!
Yay! More sugar!

My son is a good boy; he's a good boy when he's entertained and full. However when we go out, he always gets bored and usually quite fussy, hey, he's one. I was dreading taking him to the car dealership because I knew how long it would take to get the paperwork around, sign, and complete the sale and I knew he would get antsy pretty quick because it was getting late in the day. Needless-to-say, the trip to the car dealership and the whole experience there was exactly what I had thought, a disaster. Luckily, and here is the actual point of the blog, haha, I had dinner cooking in the crock pot and it was ready for us when we got home.

Slow Cooked BBQ Pulled Chicken

2 chicken breasts (mine were frozen)

1/2 can of cherry soda

3/4 bottle of BBQ sauce

1 Tbsp Sriracha hot sauce

1 Tbsp vinegar

1 Tsp hot pepper flakes

Dump all ingredients in the crock pot and cook on high for 2 1/2 or on low for 4 1/2 hours. Pull with two forks to shred the chicken; stir and serve in buns.

I served some homemade pasta salad with it; noodles, Italian dressing, frozen peas, mozzarella cheese, and tomatoes.

I took this photo after we had
already devoured most of the
chicken. Oops.

My husband LOVED it! Woo hoo!!! I commented that it tasted like the stuff you buy pre-made at the store and he said, and I quote, "Wayyy better, babe." :D

Hope everyone has an awesome evening! 

XOXO

Sara