Cooking

My Fourth of July update will encompass a lot of what I have dabbled in this week, but mostly cooking. Cooking is, by far, the hobby I spend the most time doing. The creativity behind my current cooking has to do with saving as much as we can on our part time, law student salary.

This week I made:
1) Chicken pot pie, easy man's version.
One of my favorite things about the chicken in this recipe was the crockpot whole chicken. I have made countless whole roast chicken's in my day, mainly because they can be dirt cheap (e.g, I bought one on Friday for $3.38 that made an entire dinner for 4, plus some left over for chicken noodle soup). Since I had to work, though, I ran home during my lunch break and stuck the whole chicken in the crockpot with some onions, garlic, and paprika so it would be finished when I got home.
Easiest way to cook a chicken! The meat was falling off the bone and so moist! I proceeded to make the chicken pot pie with some Philadelphia Cooking Creme that we got for free with coupons last week, frozen veggies, cream of mushroom soup that we got for a dollar with coupons, and a container of Pillsbury biscuits (surprise, surprise, with coupons).
Thankfully dinner was ready within about 45 minutes of getting home, which is pretty good for our schedule. I'll admit, with the Cooking Creme's we have gotten I have not necessarily been really impressed. They are a little too overwhelming in flavor for my taste, and they have the cream cheese flavor, which, while delicious, should be reserved to certain foods. I can't complain, though, it was inexpensive and served us well!
2) Baked Penne
This also used some Cooking Creme we got for free. I also used ground turkey we got on sale, frozen mozzarella we got on sale, and homemade spaghetti sauce from some canned tomatoes we got with coupons for $1.80 total. Definitely tasty. Probably my favorite of the Creme Recipes I have tried, mostly because the Italian style lends itself to very cheesy flavors. This meal served us at least 2 meals and I had left over turkey for the freezer as well as some left over homemade spaghetti sauce for the freezer.
3) Baked Chicken
Not difficult, but I will say, for some reason the chicken didn't bake through the way I expected. I think our oven is a little old and inconsistent in temperatures. It wasn't bad though. I now have more chicken broth than anyone knows what to do with! It's great to have on hand, though, if one of us gets sick or we've had a long day and I don't feel up to cooking.

On deck for this week:
Ribs (Fourth of July celebration) with Potatoes
Pot Roast with potatoes and carrots
Turkey Spaghetti with Squash and Zucchini
Maybe some frozen Beef and Barley Stew