Pantry Challenge Day 4: Italian

If God had intended us to follow recipes,
He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.
~Linda Henley

Pantry Challenge Day 4:Italian

Wow! What a day! Only thing that got done was the kitchen getting cleaned and a couple of loads of laundry! That is what kind of day it has been!

Whew.....

 On to the challenge!

Tonight we are having Italian Chicken Tenders! Back in November I bought chicken tenders in bulk, and packaged them into separate servings. I took 2 out of the freezer this morning. One for tonight and one for tomorrow night! 

 All I did to the chicken was rub it in olive oil, pepper, paprika, garlic and onion powder, and poured 3-4 tablespoons of Italian Dressing over the tenders, baked at 425 for 20 minutes!! How easy was that! 

I wanted to serve it with some hearty and filling, so why not pasta salad?! 

I mixed 1/2 cup low fat mayo that I had on hand with 1 teaspoon mustard, and 3 T relish, (we like dill relish) and a few pinches each of garlic powder, onion powder, pepper and paprika. I added about 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon sugar and mixed well!

 I cooked about 2 cups bow-tie pasta to al denta and rinsed in cold water. I mixed the two together and added some mozzarella cheese (1/4 cup).

I know it sounds crazy, ?dill pickle relish?, but we like the salty tang that it adds to the pasta. You can substitute green olives instead but my hubby doesn't like green olives.  

To lighten the dinner up a bit, I know, after the whole pasta thing, I added some green beans! 

Everything came from my pantry and freezer! Items I had on hand! The left over chicken will be used for tomorrow's dinner! Check back to see what that is going to be!!

What did you have for dinner tonight??

ps: the dinner plate is a 6x6 in plate, we use smaller plates for smaller portions!!

~Remember to put God first, and everything else will follow~

Stretching your Chicken!

If you don't consider yourself a good cook, then I have a recipe for you! This is the easiest Chicken recipe I have. It called for 2 main ingredients! Chicken and Catalina dressing! I went to Sams last week and bought a 10 pk of chicken breast! It gave me 10 huge chicken breast which I divided up. I took 4 and added them to a gallon storage freezer bag and added 1/2 a bottle of Catalina dressing. Which by the way, I purchased the salad dressing as part of the mega 1o event that Kroger ran for 3 weeks. I paid no more than $.65 for each bottle. (Couponing rocks) I then got all the air out of the bag and mushed it around making sure that the chicken was well coated! Then I froze it! I took the other 4 and did the same but with Italian dressing, and the remaining 2 I froze plain. The 2 pks of 4 will give us 2 dinners plus 2 lunches for me the next day. The pk of 2 breast will give us 3 meals. I cant stretch that chicken into chicken taco soup, Chicken pot pie, or Chicken salad. I bought the chicken for $1.88 lb, the cheapest around here for breast! I highly recommend buying you meats in bulk and when you get home with them, dividing them into seperate packages for meals! On this trip I also purchased 5 lbs of Jeannie O Ground Turkey 93/7 for $10.99 (cheap and it was the well known, healthy brand), and over 4.5 lbs of ground Beef 90/10. You can also purchase the storage freezer bags cheap too!! I hope you try this out so you can stretch your dinners out!


Catalina Chicken
4 lg chicken breast
1/2 bottle Catalina dressing

Italian Chicken
4 lg chicken breast
1/2 bottle Italian dressing

Enjoy!


~Remember to put God first, and everything else will follow~