Recipe: Slow-Cooker Chicken Tacos

I'm supposed to be working on a stump speech for class, and I'm having serious trouble with it, because I've decided to challenge myself by writing it from a Tea Party perspective (ugh) and I don't know anything about the Tea Party except that I hate them. So, instead, I'm going to post a recipe for Slow-cooker chicken tacos, which are really good and I made on Monday but haven't had enough time to post about until today. (Technically, I still don't have enough time to post about it, but what can you do).

First thing is to gather your ingredients:

• 3 frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 package taco seasoning (in this case, reduced sodium)
• 1 can Rotel tomatoes with green chilies
• 2 cans dark red kidney beans (optional)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/4 cup olive oil (optional, but good)
• 1/2 - 1 cup water (if not using kidney beans)

Rice is optional, if you want to add it to the recipe, but I don't think it's necessary. It would probably be pretty good.

  

First step is to cover the bottom of your crock pot with the taco seasoning packet, and then place the chicken breasts directly onto the taco seasoning. Chicken breasts should be frozen to start, which makes this recipe even easier.

Flavor the chicken breast by sprinkling the cumin over top of them....













....and then dump the can of Rotel on top of the cumin-covered chicken breasts.

The next step is the kidney beans, if you choose to use them. I really like beans in my chili/tacos, so I would definitely use them, but that's entirely up to you. Also, I'm sure that black beans, pinto beans, navy beans, etc., would taste fine. You could also use only one can if you want to go light on the beans. Add one can of kidney beans, with the liquid, to the beans. Drain the other can (reserving the liquid) and add the beans, followed by the olive oil (if using).

Put the lid on the crock pot and set it on low. After 3.5 hours (or more) it will look something like this:

Using a fork, take out the chicken breasts and move them to a cutting board. They should be completely tender and moist. Shred all three breasts with a pair of forks. Add it back into the pot.

Mix the chicken back in and let the flavors come together for another half hour or so (or longer) before eating. If it seems a little dry, go ahead and add the reserved kidney bean liquid (which has more flavor and nutrients than water) or just add water as needed.

When ready to eat, you can eat it plain like a chili, but of course, you can add anything else you might put on a taco: hot sauce, rice, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, etc.I prefer to pile it on top of a tortilla with cheddar cheese and light sour cream.






Approximate WW PointsPlus value for a 1/2 cup serving of taco filling (with beans, no toppings/tortilla included) = 4.

Spicy Oven-fried Chicken

I really don't feel good today. In fact, I've felt kind of sick for three days. Luckily, it's just particularly rough PMS so it should be gone in a couple days, but I've had a bizarre relationship with food for the last few days (this must be what being pregnant feels like).

Normally, I don't have any "female issues." No cramping, bloating, fatigue, or whatever else they list in the Midol commercial. But I have not been well this week, and have been having a lot of trouble deciding what to eat. On Friday night, my mom suggested Hollis sandwiches, which are one of my favorite things ever, modeled after the sandwich served at the Pav at UVA by the one-and-only Miss Hollis. But when she suggested it, I felt nauseous. So then, she suggested Chinese and that sounded so much better. Sweet, fried, spicy. Perfect. Yesterday, I at the leftover Chinese food, so today I was left trying to figure out what to eat now that it was gone.

I settled on a Weight Watchers recipe that I got when I joined. It's called "spicy over-fried chicken" and my mom made it once, but it was kind of... bland. So, I decided to add some more Tabasco and see if it was any better. Here's the recipe:

If you're having trouble reading that, you should be able to enlarge it to full size. I'm not sure where you could find this on the site or if it's exclusive to joining. I hope WW doesn't sue me for putting it on my page, though. It's just so good!

And it is good. The almonds in the breading really make it crunchy, which helps deceive you into thinking it's deep-fried. I ground a few out of the mixed nuts using a microplane. I used fat-free half-and-half instead of low-fat buttermilk, primarily because I had the former without going to the store. I also used chicken breast, because, again, it was already in the freezer.

The resulting chicken, right from the oven, and cooked to an internal temperature of 170 degrees. It made the whole house smell great while it was cooking, which is weird, because it was really just baking a chicken breast. The areas with the larger pieces of almond are the ones that got particularly brown and crispy.

Because I added a lot of Tabasco, I figured this would be spicy, so I served it with blue cheese dressing on the side. To lighten the blue cheese dressing a little bit, I used a small amount of regular dressing and added crumbles of reduced-fat blue cheese. Blue cheese (which I'm not spelling bleu cheese bc I don't want to deal with the little red underline for misspelled words) is one of my favorite foods and I would pretty much put it on anything, and this reduced-fat kind, which I found at Giant, is really good.

It turned out it still wasn't all that spicy, so maybe next time I'll add a hotter type of hot sauce or more of it. I don't really like spicy foods, but I do like buffalo-style food, and that's the idea behind this, in my opinion. But it met my criteria for foods I've been craving the last couple days: sweet, fried, spicy. It was a great decision, and I don't feel like I totally destroyed my diet, despite eating Chinese food this week, which is not good for you at all, but tastes so good.

So that was my first recipe entry. I'd like to do more of them, and I'll take more pictures next time. I didn't think to make it a blog post until I was at the end, so next time I'll have more in-progress pictures. I'm also planning some "to-do" list kinds of posts. This is one of them: working through some recipes I want to try through the blog. I also want to document cleaning projects (I'm kind of a slob), make my way through my nail polish collection, and make my way through my shoe collection and wardrobe. If I can't find a use for something, I'll donate it to someone who can.

But for now, I'm going to go back to watching the Nationals and the Phillies and lay on the couch feeling generally crappy, but with a full and content stomach.

From recipe (on screen) to finished product (on plate)