I am participating in a Eat from the Pantry Challenge this month. This week was really easy, only being two days long!
Day 1
- Breakfast: we slept in until noon
- Lunch: Leftovers* for DH, cereal for me
- Dinner: We went to my mom’s for my brother’s birthday. She made her award-winning chili
Day 2
- Breakfast: we both skipped breakfast (had seconds on dinner late the night before)
- Lunch: Leftovers* with mashed potatoes and corn
- Dinner: crockpot chicken (see below)
*Leftovers: This was the leftovers of the meal I made on New Year’s Eve, which I want to take a moment to mention, because it’s not only frugal, but super easy and quite tasty! What is it? Banquet’s Homestyle Bakes: chicken, biscuits, and gravy. Everything you need comes in a box and you just add water. The preparation is a breeze, as you are mostly layering everything in a 8×8 baking dish. I don’t have one so I used two loaf pans and it turned out fine. The only bit of work needed is mixing the biscuit mix, which is a few seconds of stirring by hand in a small, separate bowl. I find this box at Walmart for $3 and it makes 5 servings according to the nutritional information, but can easily be stretched to more. Even if you eat it by itself (which would then be about four servings), it comes out to $0.75/serving. However, I would suggest serving it with corn, peas, or some other veggie for a more balanced meal.
Crockpot Chicken
I have no idea what to call this. DH referred to it as “Becca’s Herb Chicken” and I guess that’s what we’ll call it in our house. It’s simple enough that it probably has a real name that I’m not aware of, as I’m fairly new to the cooking world. I made this based on what I had, after browsing several slow-cooker chicken recipes. I didn’t have the right ingredients for anything I saw, so I took the concepts and just starting throwing what I had on hand to my crock pot. This is what I did, which was just enough for one meal for the two of us in my 1.5qt crock pot.
- Pour a small amount (2tbsp?) of olive oil on the bottom of the crockpot
- Add six strips of boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- Place 2 tablespoons of butter on top
- Sprinkle generously Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and granulated onion
- Set on High for 2.5 hours
- Add a cup or two of frozen green beans
- sprinkle with butter buds and garden salt
- Set on Low for 2 hours
I served this with Italian toast (toasted Italian bread with mozzarella on top). We were still hungry so DH made more toast and I had the rest of the mashed potatoes for lunch. My picky DH really liked this, so use it as inspiration and modify it for your own pantry.
