What's For Dinner?

Mashed potatoes and meatloaf sounded pretty good for tonight 🙂 having our best meatloaf - here's the recipe! 

Tonight...My kids love this potato soup, plus buttermilk biscuits and salad 🙂 

Baking the potatoes for the potato soup is a fast way to make it. You can start the potatoes at breakfast or school time and they'll be nice and cool, ready to take off the flaky skin. I don't take off the baked inside and I'm not picky about some skin. You just want to make sure you leave the brown and bubbly baked part. I dice them all up, add them to my sauteed onion celery, and spices. Then cover with chicken broth in the dutch oven. It just needs cream, cheese, and bacon. Adding fresh broccoli to simmer with it is delicious too. 

Last night, we made our homemade tortillas (recipe on the blog) to make beef, bean, and cheese burritos. I double the recipe to make 24. If I don't use all the dough balls, I put them on a cookie sheet and freeze and thaw as needed.

I pressure cook dried pinto beans for our meals, so easy. How-to here! My daughter missed the pot of pinto beans sitting there and added black beans, so we used both!

It seriously takes a few minutes to make the tortilla dough.

Beef Stuffing - Not exact amounts here because it depends on the amount of ground beef, I used 2 1/2lbs for our family.

• Ground beef - cooked - I usually add some beef base (paste) and a cup of water to my ground beef.
• Add chopped green and red peppers, chopped onion, 2 c. cooked beans, 1 can spicy tomatoes such as Rotel tomatoes, 1 can of green or red enchilada sauce. 
• Start with a tsp of each seasoning: salt, pepper, onion powder, chili powder, cumin, thyme.
• Cook and stir until bubbly.

Now just stuff the flaky, yummy tortillas and top with cheese, avocado, sour cream or whatever else you love. Enjoy!

It might be 90 degrees out, but a comfort food is a comfort food! 

We're doing our White Chicken Chili tonight... 

This turned out delicious. There's no canned soup - just keep heavy cream on hand. How can we go wrong ... 😀

It's very easy and takes 3-4 hours. I've only made it once and used frozen chicken. So the thickening may need adjusting if you use thawed chicken. 

Ingredients:
4-5 lg boneless chicken breasts (frozen or thawed, see notes on thickening)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. paprka
1 tsp. thyme or 2-3 tsp. if fresh
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. pepper

2 1/2 TBSP Cornstarch, thawed chicken (3 TBSP if using frozen chicken) (adjust with milk later if you need more)
2 1/2 TBSP minced garlic (I used the jar garlic for this)
2 c. heavy cream (heavy whipping cream works fine)
1/4 c. white wine (grocery cooking wine has a lot of salt, I would skip salt, and adjust later if you use it)

3 c. fresh, sliced mushrooms, washed
A dish of Parmesan cheese, shredded, for individual topping 

I would make this a bit different on the stovetop. I would probably add the garlic to hot oil first, but the point (to me) of the crockpot is to put it all in, do your day, and still have a good dinner. You may think of other things to add in or adjust, but everyone loved it, and it was simple. (Reply if you find other great additions or adjustments, I'd love to hear them!)

Whisk together the spices. Place the chicken in the crockpot and sprinkle the spices evenly over the chicken. 

Whisk the cream, wine, garlic, and cornstarch together. Pour over the chicken. 

Cook on high for 3 hours. Add the sliced mushrooms during the last 30 minutes of cooking. Test the chicken at 2 1/2 hours if using thawed chicken. I used frozen chicken, and it took a little longer than 3 hours.

Serve on top of or with rice, and top with parmesan if desired. We served this with a green vegetable.