Creamy Turkey Stew

It turns out that the weather in Southern Louisiana is more unpredictable than in Georgia! One week it's sunny and 70* and the next week it's highs in the 50's and freezing at night. So it's time for some more crockpot soup recipes!

Creamy Turkey Stew
from: Sandra Lee's "Money Saving Slow Cooking"

Ingredients:
1 1/4 pounds turkey breast cutlets, cut into strips (I used chicken, big surprise, but I already had some in the freezer, and opted to cut them into bite-size pieces rather than strips)
2 8oz packages sliced fresh mushrooms (of course I decided to leave these out since neither the hubs nor I like eating fungus)
2 cups peeled and diced potatoes
1 1/2 cups finely diced carrots and celery
1 cup frozen white corn kernels (I had to use sweet corn, couldn't find any white at the store)
2 cups chicken broth
1 can cream of potato soup
1 packet chicken gravy mix
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
salt and pepper
optional: cooked bacon and fresh flat-leaf parsley

Cooking Directions:
1. Stir together turkey, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, celery and corn in slow cooker. In separate bowl whisk chicken broth, soup, gravy mix and tarragon then pour into slow cooker.

2. Cover and cook on high 4 to 6 hours.

3. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with bacon and parsley if desired.

(I apologize, I forgot to take a picture)

This turned out pretty tasty. I do think, however, it would have been better with turkey (but I'm not a huge turkey fan). I will have to remember this recipe around Thanksgiving, it would be great with leftover turkey!

It tasted just like beef stew, but with chicken! And it made great left-overs (which I am a BIG fan of). Thank you Sandra Lee!

Italian Chicken Crockpot Style

The hubs has been working nights since Thanksgiving which complicates cooking dinner since we now have to eat dinner around 3:30 in the afternoon. That combined with my work schedule has been my excuse for not trying new recipes the past couple of weeks. But this week I'm making up for it with 2 new recipes!

I have Pinterest to thank for this week's inspiration. Seriously, how did we ever come up with new recipes to try and diy crafts to make before Pinterest?

Anyways if you've seen my Pinterest page you've seen the following picture with this recipe:

(Photo Credit: The Girl Who Ate Everything)

Crockpot Italian Chicken

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts (I used 6 tenderloins)

1 packet dry Zesty Italian dressing

8oz softened cream cheese

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1/2lb bow tie pasta

Cooking Directions:

1. Place chicken in crockpot and cover with Zesty Italian dressing.

2. Over medium heat on the stovetop, combine cream cheese and soup until well blended. Then pour over chicken in crockpot on cook on low for 4 hours.

3. Cook pasta and drain. Serve with garlic toast.

The chicken was so tender it fell apart on the plate so we ended up shredding it and mixing it in with the pasta and sauce. This was really easy to make and quite inexpensive. I think it would have been even better topped with cheese (which is kind of what it looks like in the picture she just doesn't mention it in the recipe?). Because I used chicken tenders instead of chicken breasts we had some extra sauce which is perfect by itself with left over pasta.

So there you have it. An easy, cheap supper (or mid afternoon lunch in our case.) It wasn't amazing, but it was good and we'll probably have it again.

Chicken n Dumplins

My grandmother loves to cook. I remember when I was growing up, whenever we went over to her house for a visit she always had something boiling on the stove or baking in the oven. She had some interesting concoctions at times, but one of my favorites was always her chicken and dumplings. Thick and creamy, the kind that cooked on the stove for hours before it was finally ready. I can almost taste it just thinking about it!

However, as delectable as it was, it also scarred me for life (ok, so that may be a little dramatic, but it has left a serious impression). Because in spite of what I am sure were her best efforts, there were always chicken bones in it. And for those of you that know me well know that I have a problem dealing with bones. I just can't handle them. Chicken, human, any kind of bone just freaks me out.

That being said, I have always been afraid to try chicken and dumplings and restaurants and other people's homes for fear of finding those nasty little chicken bones that are a result of cooking a whole chicken to put into the chicken and dumplings.

Well, thank you Pinterest and BubbleCrumb for showing me the obvious. Boneless chicken breasts for chicken and dumplings! Plus it uses a crockpot. Yippie!

Crock Pot Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:
4-6 BONELESS skinless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons butter
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken broth
1 diced onion
1 tablespoon dried paisley
4 grands flaky refrigerator biscuits

Cooking Directions:
1. Place chicken, butter, soup, broth, onion and paisley in crockpot. Cook on high for 4-6 hours.

2.Break chicken into pieces (the chicken should just fall apart). Chop biscuits into pieces and add to crockpot and continue cooking 30 minutes or until done.

(photo credit: BubbleCrumb)

The results? Perfecto! Let's just say the hubs and I ate almost the entire crock pot full. I did, as usual, make a couple of minor changes. I used 6 chicken tenders and only had 1 can of cream of chicken soup on hand. Also instead of 4 flaky biscuits I used a small tube of 6 biscuits and flattened them out to get 9 pieces out of each biscuit. But it still worked out perfectly well. Thank you Pinterest!

Nacho Cheese Chicken Chowder

Back to Better Homes and Gardens' slow cooker recipes for this week's experiment.


Nacho Cheese Chicken Chowder


Ingredients:
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into small pieces (for a change I actually cubed my chicken instead of shredding it)
2 14.5oz cans Mexican stewed tomatoes (if you're not a big tomato fan I would recommend using diced tomatoes instead)
1 can Nacho Cheese soup
1 10oz package frozen kernel corn
shredded Mexican or cheddar cheese to use as a topping


Cooking Directions:
Mix together chicken, tomatoes, soup and corn in slow cooker and cook on low for 4-5 hours. Or if you're in more of a hurry, cook on high for 2.5 hours.

(Photo credit: Better Homes and Gardens)

Super easy right?? It was. However, the taste buds weren't quite as excited. It was okay but nothing special. It was actually quite bland to be totally honest. It needed a little something extra to give it more flavor. Any suggestions??


So, while not being a fiasco, it wasn't quite a success either. Time to wash out the slow cooker and try again next week.

Crockpot Potato Soup

Confession: I'm falling in love with my Crockpot! Lately I've been working the closing shift at my job - which means I don't get home until 10pm. Way too late to make supper, even in this house. Consequently I've been scrounging the internet for tasty Crockpot recipes and I'm loving what I'm finding.

I get Better Homes and Gardens weekly recipe e-mails and this past week's was ALL about my new favorite dish. That's right, tons of new recipes created just for the Crockpot.

There were so many to choose from, I have a strong feeling that I will be returning to the website frequently this season for more meal ideas. But for this week I decided to try the Smashed Potato Soup. I'm a big fan of O'Charley's loaded potato soup so I was curious to see how this home-made creation would compare.

It was delicious! The consistency was a little thick, but that was 100% my fault. I went to work and left it cooking (hence why we all love our Crockpots!) and forgot to tell the hubs to turn it off once he got home. Soo it ended up cooking for a couple of hours too long, making it thicker than planned. But it was still very tasty. Also, I added sour cream and some more cheese (you can never have too much cheese) to my bowl.

It was like eating a loaded baked potato... soup style!

(Photo credit: Better Homes and Gardens)

Smashed Potato Soup

Ingredients:
3 1/2 pounds peeled and sliced potatoes
1/2 cup yellow and/or red sweet peppers chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup half and half
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions

Cooking Directions:
1. In slow cooker combine potatoes, peppers, garlic and black pepper. Cover with chicken broth. Cook on low 8-10 hours or on high for 5 hours.
2. Mash potatoes. Stir in half and half, cheese and green onions.


SO EASY and so yummy. But... I had to make the 2 steps into 1 because the hubs was going to be home before me and he likes ready to eat meals. So I added in all of my ingredients at once and let it cook on high for 5 hours and it turned out fine (until it kept cooking another 2 hours on high and all of the liquid cooked out!).

This will definitely be added to the recipe book and used again. and again. and again.