Slow Cooker Chicken Curry

I love soups and stews. Back when I was a kid my parents had a fun little theory that the reason I liked soup so much was that I was too lazy to chew. I think it’s actually a combination of two things: I’m generally cold, and my jaw comes out its socket kind of easily so yawning or eating hard/chewy things cause it to click and hurt a little bit. So I guess my parents were not completely wrong.

And I suppose they’re not all wrong about me being lazy either. Today I attempted to make Golden Curry even easier than it already is. For those who aren’t familiar with Golden Curry, it’s one of the easiest dishes to make. All you have to do is cook meat and vegetables, then add the block(s) of curry and water, mix, and you’re done! Easy, right?

But tonight I attempted (and succeeded) in making Golden Curry even easier. And it was all made possible by my trusty … wait for it… SLOW COOKER! I’ve probably said it a thousand times, but I’ll say it again: I LOVE my slow cooker. I can just do all my prep the night before, dump everything in the slow cooker before work, and hot, delicious food is ready when I get home!

This curry was sooo good. Of course the fact that I was fasting today may have played a part in that. Haha. My church has a retreat coming up this weekend and a bunch of us were fasting today in preparation. Personally I think I need to prepare myself for playing drums for the praise band. I love playing the drums, but I have a hard time not being super self conscious about how I sound. I know I shouldn’t be thinking about that and that I need to ask God to give me the right attitude and the right heart. I also think I need to spend more alone time with God… which is hard when trying to balance work, volunteering, church stuff and socializing. Hm…

At any rate, I’ll be playing this weekend and I don’t think I’ll have adequate time to practice. Gotta have faith that God can work despite that.

Agh, so much for going to bed early today. Ok. The recipe. It was really good. It needed something green (for the picture… maybe peppers or peas). Can probably feed approximately 3-4 people, but I would suggest adding another chicken breast.

Ingredients
1 chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
3 carrots, chopped into 1″ pieces
1/2 onion, sliced coarsely
1 large potato, cut into chunks (not too small)
2 cups water
1/2 8.4oz box Golden Curry mix

Put all ingredients in the slow cooker. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. Serve hot on white rice.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos

Weekends always go by way too fast. I can’t believe it’s Saturday night already. I’m lying in bed listening to the wind outside… and I’m very grateful that I’m inside right now.

Today we had “ladies night” which consisted of a bunch of the women from my church getting together to have dinner and play some games. I know I said in my last post that I hate games, and that’s still for the most part true, but the games we played were not particularly competitive and didn’t require a ton of brain power.

One of the games we played was called Imaginiff which involved answering questions about the other players like “imaginiff was a joke. What kind of joke would he/she be?” One of the questions that come up for me was “Imaginiff I was a character from Winnie the Pooh. Which one would I be?” Top two answers were Eeyore and Tigger. Does that make me somewhat manic depressive? Either sad and depressed or bouncy and happy? Hm, fascinating.

Anyhow, the menu for the night included slow cooker shredded chicken tacos, chips with homemade guacamole, and “chipwiches”. I’m not going to post a recipe for the chipwiches because all they were were chocolate chip cookies (using the recipe from the back of the bag) with vanilla ice cream in the middle.

The tacos involved an incredibly easy mexican rice recipe and an even easier slow cooker chicken recipe (only three ingredients. Three!). Put ’em in a tortilla with some lettuce, cheese, salsa, and guacamole and you’re good to go!

Rice recipe from Allrecipes.com
Chicken recipe from Iowa Girl Eats

Ingredients
For the rice:
2 cups uncooked long grain rice
1/2 onion, diced
28 oz diced tomatoes with liquid
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
oil

For the chicken:
6 chicken breasts
1 jar (11 oz) salsa
1 packet of taco seasoning

In a frying pan, heat oil and saute onions with cumin. In the bowl of a rice cooker mix all the ingredients. When the rice cooker goes from cook to keep warm, uncover and mix to allow the rice to dry out a little bit.

In the bowl of a slow cooker, pour half the jar of salsa. Place the chicken on top of that. Sprinkle with taco seasoning. Top with the rest of the salsa. Cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 2-4 hours.

And that’s it. So super easy!

Sweet and Spicy Chicken

A guest post!

I haven’t really cooked anything new in a while. I’ve been cooking some, but have been sticking with old favorites like fried rice and broccoli. I guess I’ve been mildly busy since coming back to Madison… although I’m not sure exactly what I’ve been up to for the last two weeks.

Let’s see… I guess I’ve been very social lately. A while back bunch of us threw a birthday party for a friend. It was a small, chill gathering of people with pizza, wine and ice cream cake! And… last Friday I had some co-worker friends over for dinner. On Saturday some of us went skating, then got bubble tea/coffee (I’m really not a huge fan of bubble tea. Kind of an asian fail I suppose). Sunday went to watch the Pats-Texans game but most people just went to play games… I think I’m the only person who remotely cared about that game. Tuesday I had dinner with a couple of friends (bulgogi!), Wednesday my family group came over for games and stuff, and today a friend came and cooked this sweet and spicy chicken! I think I’m a little socially exhausted… and yet I have a lot of other social things coming up… hmm.

One thing I’ve really decided is that I don’t really do so well at being around large groups of people… In all the things that I did over the past couple of weeks, the ones I enjoyed the most involved fewer than 7 people and the activities were eating and talking (and maybe a little skating). Things I don’t really enjoy are large groups and games. I really don’t like games… which is kind of unfortunate because it seems like all my friends here love games. Hm. But yeah, my ideal night involves cooking/eating and then just chilling and talking with friends.

Well. Enough of my rambling about all the socializing I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks. Tonight, the recipe I’m posting is from my guest, Angela!

Her recipe for sweet and spicy chicken was extremely simple and surprisingly delicious! Not to say that I doubted her cooking skills, but rather I’m usually not a fan of the sweet/salty (or spicy) combo, so I was pretty skeptical of this recipe when she told me it involved salsa and peach/apricot preserves. But I was very pleasantly surprised! And as Angela says, it’s college-student friendly! Too bad I didn’t know about this when I was in college.

I’m pretty sleepy so I’m going to wrap up, but thanks to Angela for this awesome recipe!

Ingredients
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
3 Tbsp taco seasoning (see below for make-your-own taco seasoning)
1-2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 jar (11 oz) salsa
1/2 cup peach preserves (or apricot jam)

Taco Seasoning Ingredients
2 2/3 tsp chili powder
1 1/3 tsp salt
1 1/3 tsp cumin
1/3 garlic powder
1 1/3 flour

Cut chicken into 1/2″ cubes. In a plastic bag, coat chicken with taco seasoning.
In a frying pan, brown chicken in oil.
Combine salsa & preserves and stir into skillet.
Bring to a boil then reduce heat, cover, and simmer 2-3 minutes.
Serve over rice.