Zesty Chicken

This creamy recipe is a super easy freezer meal option.  When you find chicken breasts at  a good price, buy enough for three or four of these meals, along with the remaining ingredients and you can have supper ready to cook and spares for yourself and a friend in less than 20 minutes.

If you’re steering clear of canned cream soups, you can easily make your own version for not much more time.  There are lots of recipes available online.

4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 pkg. cream cheese, cubed
1 pkt. Italian seasoning/dressing mix

Added later:  1 bag frozen broccoli, cauliflower or California medley, if desired

Add all ingredients to slow cooker, stirring to coat.

Cook on low 5-6 hours.  (Add a bag of frozen veggies last hour, if desired.)

If preferred, you can bake this in the oven, covered, at 375 for about 30 minutes, or until chicken is done.

Serve over rice or noodles.

Parmesan Cauliflower

I’ve been on new recipe kick lately.  Does anyone else ever go through these phases?  I bet I’ve tried 10 new recipes so far this year.  I don’t know why.  It isn’t like I don’t have enough solid recipes to pull from as it is.  Oh, well.  It’s a relatively harmless pasttime, I guess.

Our family was blessed with an abundance of broccoli and cauliflower from a friend’s farm the week before Thanksgiving.  I hurriedly blanched and froze it, getting over a dozen quarts of cauliflower and about half of that in broccoli.  I like cauliflower just fine, but it’s not a veggie that I particularly crave.  I thought that surely I could find some new ways to prepare it that would really knock my socks off.  I don’t know that this recipe quite does that, but it really is tasty.  And super, super easy.  With the practically free cauliflower in my freezer, this hearty side dish costs us pennies per serving.  Nice.

Wash your cauliflower and cut it into bite-sized florets.  I used a quart bag of blanched, frozen then thawed cauliflower, but you could also use a head of fresh.  You just might want to blanch or steam it first to soften it a bit.

Combine the following into a paste:

1/4-1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese
1 t.(ish) mayo
1 t.(ish) yellow mustard
dash or two of hot sauce or a pinch of cayenne pepper
black pepper to taste

NOTE:  You might think you want to salt it at this point.  Keep in mind that parmesan is already fairly salty, so you may want to skip the salt or at least give it a taste first.

Stir the cauliflower into the paste, coating as much of the veggie as possible.

Bake in a small casserole dish, uncovered, at 350 for about 35-40 minutes.  The cheesy part will get kind of brown in the oven.  Feel free to cover it with a piece of foil if you’re afraid it will get too dark.  When the cauliflower is crisp-tender, it’s ready.  Cool for a bit before eating.