Chicken rice casserole

Day 2 of our eating home cooked meals for 40 days and I have to tell you both meals have been under $15, with leftovers for both Jeff and my lunches. I can see we will be saving money! And, I am 2 for 2, as far as the family is concerned. They loved this casserole and it was so easy!

What I had:

• 3 chicken breasts (pick size for your family, it doesn't matter for this recipe)
• 1 cup uncooked, rinsed rice (I used basmati because that's what I had, you can use brown, long white)
• 1 cup cooked quinoa
• 1 lb mushrooms chopped (not too fine, you don't want them to disappear in the creamy sauce)
• 1 small can of cream of mushroom soup
• 1 small container of heavy whipping cream
• Salt, pepper, garlic, parsley,m whatever spices you like to taste

What I did:

• Spread the uncooked rice in the bottom of a 9X13 glass baking pan
• Spread the cooked quinoa over it
• Placed the chicken breasts over the quinoa
• Sprinkled the breasts with salt & pepper
• Mix the soup & cream in a mixing bowl, added the spices till I liked the taste. I had to add a little more water to make it runnier
• Pour this mixture over the rice, quinoa & chicken
• Bake for 60 minutes @ 350 degrees (I had really thick breasts so needed 5 more minutes
• Serve with any roasted/sautéed/boiled/raw vegetables your 6 year old will eat (or swallow whole as my kid to his asparagus pieces)

Salsa chicken & Spanish Rice - in the Crockpot

So, I make a lot of chicken in the crock pot lately. Ont he weekend, it's so easy to get a couple different big meals done for the week while still being able to spend time with my family. Easiest is to throw some frozen chicken into the crock pot and some sort of sauce (either bbq or a salsa) and let it cook till it's really tender. Well, last weekend, I thought of all the water in the salsa and wondered if it would cook rice. So, I threw in a box of Rice-A-Roni Spanish rice and it's seasonings. Without the butter. Let it cook for a couple hours on low, and it cooked the rice perfectly. Let me try and put what I did down since Oliver loved it and ate it by the fistfuls and I'd like to replicate the recipe again.

What I used:

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 cups of your favorite salsa
Box of Rice-A-Roni Spanish Rice

Throw the frozen chicken thighs with the salsa into the crock pot and set it on low for 4-6 hrs, checking back once every hour. Once the chicken thighs look cooked but aren't falling apart, throw the rice and seasoning packet in. If the liquid looks low, add a 1/2 cup water but usually the salsa has enough liquid.

I set it for low initially for 2 hrs, and it needed another hour. The rice was cooked perfectly, I was able to tear the chicken into tiny pieces.

Oliver ate it by the fistfuls, using both hands. So did Jeff ... well, he used a fork. But, it was a success.