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

Rich and Creamy Queso Dip with Hamburger

In light of the All-Star Game tonight, GO AL!, I thought it would be nice if I made some kind of "sports food". I love queso dip and my mom makes the best queso so I decided to text her and ask for the recipe. It turned out so good! Rich, creamy, and cheesey! I hope you all enjoy!

Rich and Creamy Queso Dip with Hamburger

1 lb hamburger

1-2 jalapenos

1 small onion

1 lb Velveeta, I used the Mexican variety

1 can tomato sauce or 1 can chili without beans (see side note)

1 packet taco seasoning

Dice the onion and jalapeno. In a large fry pan, brown the hamburger along with the onion and jalapeno.

Look who helped!
Doesn't he look so thrilled?!

Meanwhile, dice the Velveeta and add to a crock pot along with the can of tomato sauce so the cheese can begin to melt.

My mom said you can make this dip on the stove top in a large soup pot but you will have to mind the temperature and stir more often. Drain the hamburger mixture and add back to the frying pan. Add the taco seasoning and cook further according to the directions. Once the hamburger is finished, add to the crock pot with the cheese and tomato sauce, stir.

I let the queso cook on high heat for about 30 minutes because I was starving. But my mom said to let it cook for at least an hour and a half on low to let the flavors meld. I'll let you decide. I like to eat mine with the cupped tortilla chips because I find it holds up to the dip a lot better, my husband likes the yellow corn rounds. So, I'll let you decide on the chips as well.

Serve with toppings of your choice. 

Side note: If you prefer a more chili queso, my mom said sometimes she adds a can of chili without beans to shake things up a bit. Me? I love both!

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

My First Post!

I have been thinking about making a blog for a long time now; the Pinterest Era, so to speak, has grabbed a hold of me as it has to so many others and I want to post things that could be helpful to others. 

A little bit about myself, I am a 2011 graduate of Michigan State University and was married that same year to my wonderful husband, Jonathon. After we were married, we re-located to Georgia per my husband's job and found out we were pregnant three months after we were married, yay!? After completing my Bachelor's Degree in the area of Education, MSU requires an additional year of an internship in a classroom in order to become certified. WELL, moving to Georgia and then finding out I was pregnant so soon after put finishing my certification on hold. I found a job at local pre-school and worked throughout my pregnancy; after having my son, my husband and I decided that we would be better off, financially, if I stayed home with him for a while rather than pay the daycare fees and work my $8.50/hour job.

I have babysat PLENTY in my teen years and lived on my for around four years prior to getting married which lead me to believe I would be well  suited for home-making. I was honestly looking forward to it, what could be better than staying home while my cooing little baby grew up? Baking pies, making crafts, having a sparkling clean home and a hot dinner on the table when my husband got home from work all seemed so---doable. Well, let's just say that while I do love my son unconditionally and absolutely adore watching him grow, it can get quite boring. Sitting around all day is definitely not my cup of tea and I need things to keep me busy. 

Besides the fact that I am a new homemaker, and even though my husband loves me dearly, he will be the first one to tell you that I cannot cook. I have a solid arsenal of recipes that I can make with my eyes closed but my husband telling me constantly that we eat the same things over and over has made me cheat on myself and go looking for recipes elsewhere. In turn, I usually try and fail a new recipe about 4 times a week. Once in a while I get one that squeaks by as edible; my husband eats silently and doesn't look at me and say, "Honey, I love you so much," which I know means, "This is crap but I am not going to come straight out and tell you." That takes me back to the drawing board and am constantly trying new things to make him simply eat silently and maybe say "yum" once in a while.

To make a long story short, I'm just a young momma and wife learning as I go. I hope that if you do read this and my subsequent posts, which will be about anything and everything, that you will be able to relate in some way and find them useful or at least entertaining as you laugh at my many blunders.

And now to the post. We are not well off in anyway, except for in love :), so I am always trying to make delicious dinners for a reasonable price. In Georgia, there is a restaurant called The Atlanta Bread Company and they have awesome creamy tomato basil soup. I wanted to try and make it at home so I looked up recipes on Google and Pinterest and realized that I had most of the ingredients on hand and got a good idea of how I was going to try and concoct my own recipe. Guess what?! This one wasn't too bad. 

Creamy Buttermilk Tomato Basil Soup with Cheddar Croutons

Soup

1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1 small onion, diced small
1 tbsp margarine or butter
5-6 basil leaves, julianned 
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp baking soda
Fresh cracked pepper and salt to taste

Crutons

2-3 pieces of bread

Butter or margerine

Shredded cheddar cheese

Garlic powder

Over medium heat, melt the margarine or butter in a medium sized soup pot. Add the onion and saute until soft. Add in the can of tomatoes along with the salt, pepper, sugar, and basil leaves. Let simmer on low for 5 minutes. Add baking soda and stir, the mixture will foam a bit but this step is important so the buttermilk doesn't curdle when added to the hot mixture. Let cook for 30 seconds and stir in buttermilk. Let simmer on low heat for 5 minutes and either leave it the way it is and serve if you like your soup chunky, mash with a potato masher (what I did) for semi-chunky, or blend in a blender and heat a little more in the pan before serving for creamy, smooth soup.

For the croutons:

Pre-heat the oven to 375F, cube the bread, spread out on a baking sheet and dot with butter. Sprinkle very sparingly with cheddar cheese; you don't want cheesy bread, you want crunchy croutons so be sparingly with the cheese. Shake on garlic powder lightly and bake for 15-17 minutes, or until the cheese is browned and the croutons are crispy.

Top the soup with the croutons and ENJOY!

I hope this works out for you. This is my first post so if I have ruined your dinner, I apologize. However, the name of my blog is Not So Suzy Homemaker, just remember this, haha! I cannot wait to post again! Thank you so much for reading!

XOXO,

Sara