Adventures of a Military Family of 8: fall fridays

Showing posts with label fall fridays. Show all posts

Foodie Friday: Chicken Enchiladas recipe YUM!

Aricka has been nominated for Best Foodie Blog of the Year!!!!!!!

If you agree, which you should!! ;) go on and vote for her, voters are also eligible for a prize!
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/504857
Don't forget to add "Shamrocks and Shenanigans" name on the bottom of the form for the vote to count

We eat a lot of Mexican food in this house. Now there are a ton of really good Mexican restaurants here. They are practically on every corner yet I still cook it every chance I can.

Enchiladas are a little time consuming and somewhat messy (especially with a camera in one hand) but cheap and feeds an army! I can get two nights out of one tray of enchiladas. Add some Spanish rice and re-fried beans and you will be competing with the corner restaurant! (or so I keep telling my pocket book) Now there are some shortcuts, tonight, I am using the leftover meat from The whole chicken made for tacos (I froze it) and I am using can sauce. I have made the sauce home made. It is by far better home made but time is an issue so the can will have to do tonight! If you don't have chicken handy, take three chicken breast and bake them with salt, pepper and a little olive oil in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until cooked. Even better, go buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store or Costco! I personally like to freeze leftovers for this purpose. But that's another blog post entirely!

Chicken Enchiladas

Meat from one rotisserie chicken or equivalent
1 cup sour cream
1 cup Cheddar cheese plus
3 cups Cheddar cheese
1 SM can of ortega green chilis diced undrained
1 extra lg can green enchilada sauce
9-12 flour tortillas (depends how full you stuff them)

In a medium size bowl mix chicken meat, 2 cup cheese, (in my case it's two handfuls) green chilis and sour cream. Mix well. This mixture will melt down into a creamy sauce!

Now here's where the sloppy part starts!
Pour enough sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 pan to cover the bottom.
Pour 1 cup of sauce in a pie plate. Take a tortilla and place in the pie plate. Flip over to sauce both sides. This is important to my family...they do not like dry enchiladas. Note: I skip the pie plate and just do it in the baking pan. You can save the dish to wash!

Add 1/2 cup meat mixture and roll up. Keep refilling sauce to moisten tortillas. Nobody likes a dry enchilada!

Repeat until the pan in full or the meat is gone.

Take remaining sauce and pour over top of enchiladas

Cover the top of the enchiladas with cheese.

Bake in a 350 degree preheated oven for 30 minutes uncovered.
Try to resist seconds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Love her recipes as much as I do?
Give her some love and Follow Aricka at
Shamrocks and Shenanigans(her food blog), Twitter, and Facebook

Foodie Friday: Chicken with White Wine Gravy (Pantry Meal)

Aricka has been nominated for Best Foodie Blog of the Year!!!!!!!
If you agree, which you should!! ;) go on and vote for her, voters are also eligible for a prize!
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/504857
Don't forget to add her name on the bottom of the form for the vote to count "Shamrocks and Shenanigans"

Guess what day it is?!? It's Foodie Friday with My Dear Friend Aricka at Shamrocks and Shenanigans. For today's post she made an AWESOME Chicken with White Wine Gravy (Pantry Meal)

My cupboards are bare. It is the night before I shop and there is literally two nights of meat left in the freezer and a bunch a canned goods. The Fireman is home so I am expected to cook. This is where I pull out my Pantry meals. This one is an old one too. I took this from Gram (back when I was barely married to The Fireman) who probably took it from a Woman Day's or some sort of magazine. It has been copied to the backs of envelopes and tweaked for my family. I have to make twice the gravy. Just don't tell The Tortured Teenager that it has Cream of Chicken soup in it or she will never eat it again! She has a thing against any recipe with Cream of Anything Soup in it!

Chicken with White wine Gravy-Pantry Meal
Printer Friendly Version

1 cut up chicken (like what you would use for fried chicken but all I have is breasts)
1/2 finely chopped onions (the smaller the better for picky eaters)
1/2 to 3/4 cup white wine (make sure it's a dry wine you really would drink...I prefer to drink red but I will drink this too!)
2 cans Cream of Chicken Soup
salt and pepper

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Mine are old so I added some olive oil.

Salt and pepper chicken. Add to skillet skin side down. Cook 5 minutes

turn, cook another four minutes.

Squish meat to one side of the pan (see I put mine on their sides) and add onion and cook till translucent. Aww heck, we like a little color on ours!

Add wine, carefully...drink some too! Let cook for a minute...stick your face in the fumes...don't you want to bathe in that?

Add the soup and 1/2 can of water and mix it all well. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until your chicken is done. Again, mine were big pieces and I do not want raw meat. I don't have a lid for this pan, so I'm about to put foil over it!

Gram used to serve over Smashed Red potatoes but I dont have that in my bare cupboards so skins on mashed potatoes will have to do!

This is The Fireman's FAVORITE chicken gravy! Why? It's canned soup and wine! But it taste like what he ate in elementary school...at school! Lucky me! I am being compared to lunch ladies in the 60's! Such is my luck!

The Tortured Teenager practically licked her plate clean. God help me if she ever reads my blog!

For my crock pot cooks, you could brown the meat pop all ingredients into the crock pot and let cook on low for 3-4 hours. You can even toss in the potatoes! This would be perfect to make before a baseball or football game! Toss in before you leave and it will be perfect when you get home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Love her recipes as much as I do?

Follow Aricka at Shamrocks and Shenanigans(her food blog), Twitter, and Facebook

Foodie Fridays... Fast & Spicy White Bean Chili

I have a surprise!!! After many weeks, I finally got the courage to ask a wonderful friend, who's blog I LOVE, if she would like to do a Foodie Friday weekly post on my blog. She said "YES!" ;D I am so excited to share with you my friend, her blog, and great recipes. Meet Aricka, writer and great cook on Shamrocks and Shenanigans. She is a Mom, a Wife to a brave Fire Fighter, and she has recipes that make me wish I would get off of my couch ;D If you love food (because who doesn't?) visit her blog, you won't be sorry ;) Now without further ado, here is Aricka's 1st post, for "Fall Fridays" on Foodie Friday post...

Hi Everyone! I'm Shamrock and Shenanigans and I was so kindly asked to write a Friday post of Fall recipes for my buddy Adventures of a Military Family of 8. If you follow my blog, you know I love to cook. I like it all. I cook the recipes that are quite time consuming but my favorite are the ones you toss together and get on the dinner table in no time. Being that I started with a full house of four bratty kids, I can appreciate that time is limited and the kids are hungry.

Everyone is on Monday night football kick. When I think of football I think of snack foods and hearty chilis. We eat a lot of chili around here when it's cold. I love the versatility and how it feeds a crowd. My son, The Ballplayer has his favorites. We battle over which one I will make. He prefers my white bean chili. My daughter prefers more a traditional kidney bean chili. My husband, The Fireman has no preference. He just likes being fed. It's so rare that my son likes a dish that I can't help but make his favorite.

You can make this chili in less than 30 minutes. I like meals like that. I am not garnishing with yummy tortilla strips but only because A. I don't have any and B. I'm trying to watch my carbs....again. It's a work in progress. But you will love that this is just a bunch of ready to use food that you toss in a pot and simmered till warm. You can add more veggies to this chili. A bell pepper or even some carrots would be great. We unfortunately won't be making any special trips to the store for any extra ingredients. My family is pounding their spoons on the table as I cook. They are hungry! You will see I show ingredients you could use if you dont have what I am using. Using what you have on hand is huge in keeping on budget in my family.

Fast & Spicy White Bean Chili

serves 4

6 cans navy beans (I only had 4 and half were butter beans. Use what you have)

2 medium onions chopped

3 cloves of garlic minced

2 celery stalks minced

1 package of hot links sausage chopped (use any hot sausage you prefer but this one gets used a lot in my house)

2 TB olive oil

1 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce (or tomato sauce will do but the spaghetti has lots of flavor)

1 cup chicken stock (if you have none, use water)

1 tsp cayenne

1 tsp oregano (Italian seasoning works great too)

1 tsp smoked paprika (this is must! I use it in a huge amt of my recipes)

1 tsp crushed red pepper

1 tsp parsley (all I had was dried)

Salt and pepper

Cut each sausage into four strips and cut into chunks. In a sauce pot, combine the sausage, the 2 TB oil, onions, and celery and cook until tender. Season with some salt and pepper too. Add the garlic and the red pepper flakes and just let it get a little color.

Once everything is tender and smelling good (I mean really, I could eat it right now but this is chili I am making, so lets finish) add the beans, (drained and rinsed because I am not sure what they are really packed in but slime is not good in my chili) spaghetti sauce (or tomato sauce is fine) and the chicken broth/stock. You want it to be a little saucy but not soup (unless soup is what you are going for)

Now we need to spice this baby up! So add the 1 tsp cayenne, 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp smoked paprika, 1 tsp parsley (all I had was dried) and salt and pepper to taste. Remember that cayenne tends to release flavor after it simmers for a couple minutes so dont add more just quite yet. If you are wimpy (or your kids are sensitive) to the heat, add half of the cayenne and work your way up on spice.

I recommend you make a double batch. No really! I never have leftovers and the kids are fighting over what is left in the pan. If you are lucky enough to have leftovers, try topping a crunchy baked potato with some chili. It is heaven!