With Daniels arm being broken, and us being in this limbo state of having food stamps now, but still needing help, I’ve been trying to get even more creative in the kitchen. As I’ve mentioned before, we have dinner with my mom every Sunday, and this past Sunday we had quesadillas. Chicken. Well, my mom decided to shred a LOT of chicken. Like we all ate a decent amount of it, but we still went home with a gallon sized Ziplock FULL of chicken. Needless to say, my family will be eating chicken this week. So, its time to get creative.
So, what the heck am I supposed to make with chicken all week long? Well, I figured I’d use it as a challenge, and see how creative I could get.
Day 1: Chicken and Cheese Burritos
So for the first day, I looked around my kitchen. I saw beans, cheese, chicken, and tortillas. Simple- I’ll do burritos! I decided to take it one step further, and try making my very first batch of refried beans. My mom had also recently given me like 5lbs of pinto beans, so I had plenty. (Don’t worry I didn’t make ALL 5 lbs. of them. That’d be insane)
So I soaked the beans overnight, and put them in the slow cooker with chicken broth and some onions on low, the entire 8 hours I was at work. By the time I got home, they were perfectly done and ready to mash. I kept them on low though, since we want them nice and easy to mash up, but I made sure to stir them anytime I went in the kitchen, so the beans don’t burn to the bottom of the slow cooker.
When I made the burritos, I did a layer of beans, a layer of chicken and a layer of cheese. I used nacho cheese, the kind that taco bell uses on some of their burritos, and the chicken burritos were a hit! The whole family loved them, including my bean hating son!
Day 2: Chicken Patty Sandwiches
Part of this 7 day chicken experiment is also trying to make things my family likes. So the traditional “Just make chicken spaghetti” is out. Cause my family isn’t huge on pasta (which sucks cause chicken alfredo sounds SO GOOD right now) What my family does enjoy however, is burgers and sandwiches. So, I figured I’d try to make chicken patty’s for sandwiches.
The patty’s itself were easy enough to make, only requiring chicken, mayo, and crushed up crackers as the base for putting it together. I felt like overall, they came together pretty easily, but I need to work on how big (or small) I make the patty’s themselves, as some of the bigger ones didn’t want to stay together.
The family seemed to enjoy them. I’m pretty sure my kids were expecting something more like Chick-Fil-A, with the breaded chicken sandwiches. But overall, my husband and I liked them quite a bit.
Day 3: Chicken Stew
The weather has been kind of hot for stew, but considering this is for an experiment, I figured it was worth it. Daniel says he can eat soups and stews in any weather anyways so- whatever.
This is a recipe I found on Pinterest, it reminded me a lot of chicken and gnocchi soup, minus the gnocchi. It uses the same base of butter, onions, celery, and carrots to start out with, as well as chicken broth and heavy cream too. Which, bonus tip here- if you do not have heavy whipping cream, just use evaporated milk. its still Yummy in the tummy!
With the stew, I made some cornbread. I don’t make it often, but stew and cornbread just seemed like a good combination. The kids seemingly liked it, even if it was hot outside. They all ate it all, plus at least 2 pieces of the cornbread.
Day 4: Chicken Taquitos
I had trouble coming up with what to do for the fourth day. I had no idea I’d wind up using the rest of the chicken on the 4th day either. I still had some homemade refried beans though, as well as cheese that was already shredded, and the chicken. So I used all of it that night. I warmed up the beans, and then mixed up the cheese with the chicken, wrapping them up in the rest of the corn tortillas I had and deep frying them. They were absolutely scrumptious! Especially when dipped in the homemade refried beans! Daniel also mixed some Pico de Galo in with his portion of refried beans for a little extra flavor which he said was “Pretty damn good!”