The Adventures of 'The Kidds'

Daniel loved this dish. It’s a combination of recipes from the Carnation evap milk label and the Campbell cream of chicken soup label, plus online recipes. I made half the recipe in an 8×8″ glass baking dish, the following recipe is for 9 x 13 and allows you to use up the contents of the cans mentioned above

2 chicken breast halves, pre-cooked and cut into bite-size pieces*
1 and 1/2 cups instant white rice
1 16-oz package of frozen brocolli, thawed (enough to break apart and spread)
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 can (12 oz) Carnation evaporated milk
8 oz cream cheese
1-2 tsp curry powder, to taste

Grated cheddar cheese for topping

Grease baking dish. Mix the liquid ingredients and curry powder well, preferably in a separate bowl, and pour into dish. Add the rice and chicken, top with the brocolli. Cover with foil and bake at 350ºF for 25 minutes. Take out of the oven and sprinkle with cheddar cheese, bake for another 10 or so minutes, until the cheese is bubbly.

Let sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

If you notice, there aren’t any seasonings, we season to each person’s taste at home and don’t add salt to most of our dishes so that Daniel can eat it too. Also, the cream of chicken contains a fair amount of sodium; Campbell now makes a Healthy Request™ version that has half the amount of sodium found in the regular one.

*Alternatively, you can use uncooked chicken and non-instant white rice and extend the initial cooking time to about 50 minutes. You should probably lightly brown the chicken first if you do this.

For this recipe, I microwaved the chicken breast to cook it. Just place the chicken on a ceramic or glass dish, microwave 30 seconds, and flip; repeat until thermometer reaches 165º in the thickest portion (you may have to cut off thinner parts to prevent them from overcooking). As a disclaimer, the meat may not cook evenly throughout using this method and you’re not supposed to use this cooking method for kids under 5, but since I was then placing it in a dish to bake in the oven (for 50 minutes) I felt it was safe to do

I was hosting playgroup the other day and needed to make some snacks. I had the Pillsbury Quickbread Blueberry mix, which I made, but I wanted something that I could eat, as my doctor wanted me to try being gluten-free for the next few weeks. Since I hadn’t gone gluten-free shopping yet, I had to make stuff from what was in our pantry.

I had a couple cans of tropical fruit salad, some condensed milk, but alas, no table cream for a true Filipino salad. While perusing the contents of my pantry, I noticed a box of Minute Tapioca which I had been meaning to use to make pie (obviously, I haven’t). Then, I noticed the packs of coconut milk powder that my mom sent over. This got me thinking….Hmmm….tapioca pudding+coconut milk powder=Yum! But would it work with fruit? Why not, they’re all tropical, yes?

It turned out great! Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try:

2 cans tropical fruit salad (14 oz), drained

1 recipe Minute Tapioca, prepared according to package directions (6 servings).

1 packet coconut milk powder (150 g)

Add the coconut milk powder to the pudding after removing from heat. Mix well and cool. Stir in the fruit salad and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Makes about 5 servings.

Last week, Don’s uncle Jim came for a visit before we all went to a family reunion in West Virginia. Anyway, he brought with him a full rack of pork ribs (really 2 racks, still connected in the middle) for us to cook on the grill (took up the whole grill cooking surface!). There was a ton of leftovers…we had some for lunch but we still had a sizable amount left.

Because the smoky flavor of the yummy ribs (for some reason) brought to mind Chipotle’s carnitas burrito bowl, I thought it might be good to use the leftover ribs with the same flavors, but in soup form. It turned out great–here’s the recipe.

1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
About 3 cups of leftover rib meat, chopped into small pieces
1 can (14.5 oz) RedGold petite diced tomatoes with chipotle
1 can (14.5) RedGold petite diced tomatoes
1 can black beans
1 can great northern beans
1 can golden sweet corn
4 cups of chicken broth

Saute onions and garlic in olive oil, add everything else, and simmer for about 30 minutes. Top with Fritos and cheese if desired.

It turned out great! If we weren’t making it for kiddos, we would probably have added more spice using diced jalapenos and possibly an actual chipotle pepper in adobe sauce. And added a dash of lime juice and some chopped cilantro. But these were the ingredients we had handy, and it worked pretty well Yummy.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony’s Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine.

So Corrine and I have been trying all kinds of Pizza lately, probably, cause it’s so easy to just call the pizza place especially cause they are offering such cheap pizza deals, but we have also been trying frozen pizza.  Now we have had some pretty bad frozen ones, I know you know the ones we are talking about.  The ones that looks and almost taste like cardboard.

I got an email a few weeks ago, about Tony’s Pizza and they were giving away coupons for free pizza.  I jumped on that quick, I mean we just had a baby, I’ll go for anything that is cheap or free.  We were like that before Daniel, but we are even more frugal now.  Anyway I filled out the form and in the mail a few days ago arrived several coupons for free Tony’s Pizza, (I might send you some, if you tell me what you do for pizza night)  Anyway we got the coupons, and I took one to the store and tried it. Continue Reading »

Apparently, cooking cucumbers does not take away its crunchy goodness. I stuffed it with sauteed ground pork with red bell peppers, and garlic (ala stuffed green peppers), poured some diced tomatoes and tomato juice on top, some basil, oregano and red pepper flakes, and baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes, and voila, it turned out to be a pretty good dish.

It kind of has the texture of chayote squash when cooked. Which makes sense, I guess coz I think they are somewhat related.