What’s for Dinner?

My good friend, Allison, provides me with endless food inspiration.  Every day she walks into my office and says “What’s for dinner?”  Usually I have no clue, but she’ll rattle off two or three ideas.  By the end of the day, Allison has a plan.  She heads to the grocery store and then home to whip up whatever she’s envisioned.  I find this amazing, verging on small miracle, because the LAST thing I want to do after work is go to the grocery store (or really anywhere but home, with the exception of my yoga class or the occasional cocktail date).  My version of grocery shopping on the weekdays is going home and opening my cupboard/refridge/freezer and hodgepodging something together.  Although I love food, I’m just not very innovative during the week.  We eat a lot of chicken and salad.

Every once in a while I actually plan out a few meals on the weekend and buy what I need to make them.  That’s as good as it gets.  And recently, I did just that, using Allison as my guide for two of the meals.

Meal #1:  Baked Spaghetti

I know this falls into the “classics” category, but I’ve never made it.  Allison gave me instructions:  cook your noodles, toss them into a casserole dish, add spaghetti sauce & cheese and bake.  I passed this description on to Doug and he whipped up a masterpiece.  Here’s what he put together:

• Cooked spaghetti noodles
• Homemade tomato sauce that we made last summer from our bumper tomato crop
• Cottage cheese
• Mixture of Mozzarella, Kerrygold Dubliner Irish cheese & Smoked cheddar
• Chopped sweet apple chicken sausage

Mix it all up and sprinkle the top with cheese.  Pop into the oven at 350 until the cheese on top is just how you like it.

If the casserole dish seems boring, try baking in individual ramekins:

Meal #2:  Creamy Crockpot Chicken

Allison pinned this recipe from The Larson Lingo blog and I thought it sounded simple and tasty.

• Bag of frozen Chicken Breast Tenderloins (2.5-3lb bag)
• 8 oz block of cream cheese (don’t use Fat Free! 1/3 less fat or regular is fine)
• Can of Black Beans, drained & rinsed. (or Pinto Beans if you prefer)
• Can of Corn, drained
• Can of Rotel

Directions:

• Put frozen chicken in the crock pot
• Put Cream cheese on top of the chicken
• Dump in the Black Beans (make sure they are drained & rinsed!!!)
• Dump in the drained corn
• Dump in the Rotel
• Cover & cook in your Crock Pot on low for 6-8 hours
• Every 2 hours, I stir the ingredients
• You can shred the chicken when it is done, or just leave it as tenderloins

This was a hit!  I made a few changes:  using diced tomatoes and not stirring every two hours, as I wasn’t home to do so.  It turned out great.  Delicious over jasmine rice the first night and perfect on small tortillas when we had leftovers the next.

Here’s to creative friends and planning ahead every now and then!