Fast Dinner Friday - Cooking Meat Ahead of Time

One of my secrets in the kitchen is to cook meat in bulk.

If I have a family pack of chicken breasts, you will find me putting them all in the slow cooker or marinating them and baking them. Five pound package of ground beef? You won't always see me cutting it into one pound packages. Brown it all at once.

You're going to be cooking at least some of it then so why not all?

This is a HUGE time savor.

Tonight our family is having chicken enchiladas. With already having the chicken cooked, the prep time is cut in about half to three-quarters. Here is my "go to" chicken enchilada recipe.

Creamy Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
2 cups cooked chicken
pepper
cumin
garlic powder
10 wheat tortilla shells
2 cups cheese (I use white cheddar)
1/4 c. butter
1/4 c. flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 can (4 oz) diced chiles

Preheat oven to 350 and great a 9x13 baking dish.

In bowl, mix chicken with a pinch of cumin, pepper and garlic powder. Then add one cup of cheese and mix. Fill tortillas with one-fourth to one-half of the chicken and cheese mixture. Place side by side in baking dish.

In a saucepan, melt butter and add flour. Cook on medium-low until mixture is bubbly. Slowly stir in chicken broth. Whisk over medium - high heat  until thick and bubbly. Turn down or take off heat.

Add sour cream and green chiles (I always puree my chiles). Be careful not to have on full or high heat. You don't want the sour cream to curdle.

Pour sour cream and chile mixture over enchiladas and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cheese on top is browned.

This meal is really easy to do all the prep work and stick in the fridge until you're ready to bake. Just add a couple extra minutes and dinner will be a super Fast Dinner!

But I Don't Wanna... and a Quick "Throw Together" Dinner !!

Put I really don't want to cook...

That seems to be a continual thought going through my mind lately. I will not beat myself up about this because I know I cannot be the only mama in the world who is run down and just doesn't want to think about preparing dinner.

Can I get a witness?! :)

Today, I rose above. I made breakfast, lunch, bread AND dinner!

Above is my quick, easy and thrown together dinner...

Chicken - I butterflied it, put it in a pan and dumped BBQ sauce on it. Put in the a 350 degree over for an hour and there it was!

Potatoes - in a large zip loc bag, I added three pounds of red potatoes (halved and quartered), 1/3 cup of olive oil and a package of oil soup mix. Shake it baby, shake it! Put in a greased baking pan and put inside the oven (next to the chicken) for 40 to 45 minutes.

Peas - pull them out of the freezer (you know, you are good and put them up from your garden last year! :) ). Warm them with 2 tablespoons of butter.

Voila! Done and dinner is at the table!

Next step, I need to revisit the series on FINDING the kitchen table! :)

Sausage Gravy

Day 20 of 366... 

On of the biggest fears I had about this challenge was that I LOVE food and there are certain restaurants which have food that I crave All. The. Time.... 

Panera has soups and sandwiches that I love... 

A local family-owned restaurant has the best sausage gravy...

And the list continues on...

Learning how to make some of your favorite foods at home can be a big cost savings. Today I calculated just how much I was saving by making the sausage gravy from home... I was astonished!

But first - the recipe... :) 

Homemade Sausage Gravy

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup flour

2 cups milk

1/2 pound sausage

salt and pepper

Brown sausage in a pan. Take sausage out of pan with slotted spoon. Leave grease in pan. 

Add the 1/4 cup of butter. Melt on medium heat. 

As butter is melting, add the 1/4 cup of flour. 

Stir. It will be extremely liquid-y. Stir constantly until it begins to boil. Turn heat to simmer/low for 10 minutes and stir occasionally. Add sausage. Stir and serve.

This is a super easy and quick recipe. Almost always we have the ingredients on hand for a quick and easy dinner. We pair it with hashbrown potatoes and eggs. Delightful!

Now for the "break-down":

• 1/4 cup of butter- that is half a $.69 item - we'll say 35 cents! :)
• 1/4 cup of flour - there are 30 1/4 cups in a 5 lb. bag of flour - Bag of flour (not on sale) is $2.99 / 30 is about 10 cents rounded up as well. We are out to 45 cents.
• 2 cups of milk - 16 cups on a gallon - milk is $2.50 around here. $2.50/16 is about 15 cents times 2 - 30 cents - up to 75 cents!
• sausage - We pay about $2 for our sausage where we buy it. We used half. So that's $1 - up to $1.75.
• bread to eat it on - We only get bread when it's on sale. We paid $1 and used half a loaf - 50 cents - up to $2.25.

$2.25! 

Now granted a lot of times we have eggs and potatoes with them but the eggs come from the chickens on family farm and are given to us at no cost and the potatoes are raised in the garden so no cost for them. BUT we often have leftovers and have at times just eaten the sausage gravy alone. It's rich and fills my family's tummies! :)

Now let's compare the cost of the sausage gravy at the local family restaurant to that of the gravy made at home. We generally had to buy three plates of the sausage gravy and biscuit plate to feed our crew. Each one of the plates cost $5 and then you add drinks and tax and tip. Let's just go on the sausage gravy - at the restaurant we would have paid $15 plus tax and at home I fed my family for $2.25 and tax free! That is at least a $13.75 savings!

Finding "copycat" recipes of some of your restaurant foods could be a great way to get you back to the family table. 

How about you? Do you have any good "copycat" recipes?

I hope you have a blessed weekend and see you Monday!

*This post is linked to Frugal Fridays.*

Slow Cook Chicken and Dumplings

Day 17 out of ... 366 - We're making progress! :)

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, frozen
• 2 Tablespoons of salted butter
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup
• 2 1/2 cups of chicken stock
• 1/4 cup of white cooking wine
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2 teaspoon parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon chicken seasoning
• salt and pepper to taste 
• 1 batch of drop biscuits

1. Put frozen chicken in slow cooker, cover with soup, broth and wine. Add butter, seasoning, parsley, onion and salt and pepper to chicken.
2. Cover and cook on high for 5 to 6 hours on High heat.
3. An hour before serving, drop biscuits in by the spoonful. Stir and cover. Cook until dough is no longer raw.

Enjoy!

Best and Easiest Pizza Dough EVER!

Day 6 of 366...

My friend Amanda gave me this recipe and I absolutely adore it. It is easy and delicious!

This is a recipe that you use your bread machine. It does all the work!

Put in machine in this order:

• 1 cup and 2 Tablespoons water
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cups water  flour ;)
• 2 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning or pizza seasoning
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoon yeast 

Select the dough setting and walk away! After the bread maker's dough setting is complete, punch down dough and spread onto pizza pan. Add choice of sauce and toppings. Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes.
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Our eating at home journey has been awesome! We taking away any thoughts of eating out and just setting out to get into a routine, it has been wonderful. We're almost a week in - 51 more to go! :)

Have a blessed weekend!

White Chicken Chili

Day 5 of 366...

Yep I am a slacker. I have been so busy around the house that I haven't had time to write about our journey near like I'd hoped. I am sure once everything gets back to normal, I will be posting here more regularly.

With that being said, I am also going to be lazy cut back with the recipes until I have time to do them adequately. I will be posting them but not so in depth. :)

We have been doing really good at eating at home. Only today did I think about asking someone to dinner but then I remembered the challenge! :)

I don't know if we just over ate eating out or what but Andy and I both want nothing to do with a restaurant!

White Chicken Chili - It's a great way to use up leftover chicken!

White Chicken Chili 

2 cans Northern beans

2 cans garbanzo beans
2 cans navy beans
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
2 cans (4 oz) green chiles, minced
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1 lb. chicken breast, cooked and cubed
Salt and Pepper to taste
6 cups broth

Throw it all in a pot and simmer for about an hour. This recipe makes about 24 1 cup servings but a lot of times I at least double it because it is one of those recipes that tastes better the following days as leftovers and it freezes well!

Enjoy!