Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

 Day 24!  I'm proud we've made it so far.  Tonight we made another dinner in the Crockpot for our 30 day eating in challenge using this recipe.  We changed it up a little bit and made it with a Hawaiian marinade instead of with a barbecue sauce.

Hawaiian marinade, a can of pineapple chunks, 3 chicken breasts, a Crockpot and 4 hours later we had this:

And it was delicious!  We served it with white rice and broccoli.  The only thing I was a little disappointed about was that the pineapple absorbed so much of the marinade it burned your throat to actually eat it.  I guess it was just to flavor the chicken.  Maybe next time I'll save some extra for us to just eat. :)

Anyway, I hope you've been doing well.  Thanks for reading.  I'll see you tomorrow with my 100th post!

--CC

Recipe: No-Fry Parmesan Pork Chops

For Day 22 of 30 Days of Eating In we created a new recipe.  On Sunday I was trying to get together a meal plan for the week and realized we had a whole lot of pork chops we got on sale recently, so I scoured the internet looking for pork chop recipes and found this one on All Recipes.  I tampered with the recipe a little to create a fusion between it and a chicken recipe we've been using for a long time.  This is what I came up with:

No-Fry Parmesan Pork Chops! 

It was pretty yummy if I do say so myself.  Plus, since it's made in the oven, I was able to sweep the whole house and get a few other chores done while it was baking. That's my kind of meal!

To get the recipe, click "read more."

Easy Crockpot BBQ Chicken

For day 18 of our 30 days of eating in challenge we made Crockpot BBQ Chicken.  This recipe was absolutely phenomenal.  Let me list just a few of the things I loved about it for you.

1. Fix it and forget it!  I put it in at noon and didn't have to bother with it the rest of the day.
2. No defrosting.  I put the chicken in the crockpot straight-up frozen.
3. Only 6 ingredients.  And that's including the chicken.
4. So, so scrumptiously tender! Seriously, this chicken flaked like salmon when you poked it with a fork.
5. My house smelled like barbecue all day. Um, yes please.

Yet another awful picture.  My apologies.

 We served ours up with cornbread, homemade Parmesan potato wedges (leftover from another night and reheated in the oven while the cornbread baked) and green beans.  A very southern meal, huh?  But it sure was delicious!

Just a few comments about the meal:

We actually used chicken tenderloins instead of chicken breasts because that's what we had on hand.  If you do this, you'll want to reduce the cooking time just a little bit to prevent the meat from drying out.  And if you make yours from frozen chicken like we did, you'll want to add 1 cup of warm water to prevent sudden changes in temperature that could make your Crockpot crack.  Don't worry--the water cooks out.

As far as the recipe itself goes, we didn't care for the vinegar.  It wasn't bad if you like your barbecue sauce kind of tangy.  We just prefer ours a little sweeter.  And, honestly, I think you could probably just put plain ol' barbecue sauce with nothing else and it would still be delicious!

We'll definitely be making this again.  :)

I hope you enjoyed a marvelous dinner with your family.  Thanks for reading!

--CC

Turkey Pesto Sliders

More 30 Days of Eating In!  We were supposed to try this recipe on Wednesday, but we ended up having to eat a frozen pizza that my boyfriend insisted would fit in the freezer (it didn't) Wednesday night.  So here we are eating our Turkey Pesto Sliders on Thursday.  Consider everything on the menu moved back a day. :)

Ours aren't really so much Turkey Pesto Sliders as they are Turkey Pesto Sandwiches.  And they're not really Turkey Pesto Sandwiches so much as Chicken Pesto Sandwiches.  Hey, we used the supplies we had on hand.

But, anyway, here's how they turned out:

Once again, please excuse the awful picture.  Someday I'll have a nice camera and good lighting.

 Honestly, we didn't really follow the recipe at all.  We used totally different ingredients.

Their ingredients:

• Slider buns
• Turkey deli meat
• Provolone cheese
• 3 tbsp. pesto 
• 3 tbsp. mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp. butter, melted

Our ingredients:

• 2 Kaiser rolls
• Lemon herb chicken deli meat (from Sam's Club.  Awesome deli meat!)
• Provolone cheese
• Feta cheese (What can I say?  We like cheese.)
• A butt-ton of pesto

See?  Not the same sandwich.  We even cooked ours at a lower temperature (350 instead of 400).  So really we more borrowed the recipe as inspiration for our own toasty dinner sandwiches.

And they were pretty delicious!  The kaiser rolls were flaky and crispy on the outside but still soft on the inside.  And the feta and provolone cheeses were all hot and melty.  Mmm!  Plus, it was such a quick and easy dinner to throw together.  It took maybe 15 minutes and there wasn't really any cleanup.  We didn't even bother with sides, really.  Just some Baked Lays and fresh carrots. (Betcha can't guess what one of the only vegetables my boyfriend will eat is!)

It was really the perfect busy-weeknight meal and it feels really good to actually try out a few of those pins from my Pinterest.  They've really been piling up!  Lol.  I'm sure you understand. :)

How about you?  Have you gotten to try out any of your pinned recipes or tutorials yet?

--CC