Crock-pot fajitas

Take me out to the ball game, take me out to feed lambs, pigs, chickens, horses, cats, dogs & 'camp robbers', take me out into spring...can you hear the tune?  Well, it sort of goes along to Take Me Out to the Ball Game, except it's my rendition of adding everything in. 

 

Green grass is poking through the frosty dirt, or soggy spring snow, which means a change of season is upon us, and with a change of seasons comes a slew of fun outdoor activities.  For me it also means a time to try and menu plan.  I enjoy baking, but cooking is challenging for me, because it usually requires for-thought and time-which I seem to lack mostly by my own procrastination though.  So when a friend and I started talking about fitting in healthy meals and snacks for the next couple months, this recipe came up.  I'm sure it's in some recipe book somewhere, but we just hodge-podged it.  I recently did the same with round steak, but that'll be another  post.

 

The flavor was great!  The chicken really absorbed all the ingredients. I have to say-I thought it was one of the best fajita dinner's we've had, and my family gobbled it down so it seemed to jell well with them too.  And it's something you can throw in the crock pot after school, have it ready for dinner, and it's low maintenance-no oil, extra skillets, stove tops and dishes to wash.

 

So here it is:

Chicken breasts-boil.  I used four frozen breasts.

Line crock pot with a slow cooker liner-hence the low maintenance part above

Once the chicken's done, place them in the crock pot

Add 2 cups water

Add 2 cups chicken broth

1 package of fajita seasoning

1 onion sliced like you'd like for fajitas

1 red pepper sliced like you'd like for fajitas

1 yellow pepper sliced like you'd like for fajitas

Put on low for 2 hours

Pull out with a slatted spoon

Place all ingredients in a bowl

Serve with warm tortillas, cheese, tomatoes, pico-de-gallo, guacamole, sour cream, salsa and a side of rice and beans.  Super easy!

 

I like extra cumin, and garlic, so I added a little more at the end.

You could also add 1 can of Rotel tomatoes in it for spice, and it would be good in the tortilla once you're ready to serve. Cayenne would work too, just depending on your taste buds.

 

You don't have to boil the chicken, but for food safety-I did, after all it's chicken.  If you have a longer amount of time you could add frozen breasts and slow cook them all day, then toss in the onions and peppers a couple hours before you're ready to serve.

 

While I'm at it, I'd like to share a couple more web-sites with meal planning tips, recipes, and ideas.

http://www.momswhothink.com/  This site has great plans to print out, plus a ton more ideas.

http://www.once-a-monthcooking.com/ I have these cookbooks, and they are extremely helpful.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Birthday Time Capsule

In our immediate family we get to celebrate birthday's every month from April through August, then the papa's in December.  But we also have many family and friends through out the year, as everyone does, when we get to share the special day they became a gift to us all. Recently, I found a birthday time capsule web-site.  Just type in the birth date and viola...a page of all the great things that happened on the day compile as well as the price of groceries, fuel, who you share the day with, etc.  It could make a fun gift, scrapbooking addition, or give you a little trivia about the day.  Here's the link: http://dmarie.com/timecap/step1.asp

Have fun!

Redneck Easter

While most families hunt Easter eggs, at our house we started a new tradition.  "Let's shoot 'em," said my husband.  "YAH!" hooped and hollared our boys.  They couldn't wait! 
We started stashing extra eggs from our hens a few days before Easter so we would have plenty to plink.

On Easter morning the first thing out of their mouths was, "how much longer 'til we can shoot the eggs."  Now this was about 5:30 am, and I know the rest of the morning must have seemed like an eternity for them.  The chocolate for breakfast helped the enthusiasm, the jelly beans for their pre-church snack sent them bounding a little further on their sugar rush, and the peeps and miscellaneous candy snuck here and there had them soaring into a sweet abyss, or as I saw it walking sugar sticks of dynamite.  Especially after church as we witnessed our middle son, put on his ski helmet and goggles in the back seat then proceed to play the 'air' drums on his head all the way home-yep...there was a little of a LOT too much sugar running through his veins.  With so much 'fuel' inside these boys, the outlet had to be dynamic...our redneck Easter began!

Carefully placing the eggs across our dirt hill, my husband readied the scene.  Safely armed with three rifles the egg splatting began.  They each took turns.  "KAPLOW!" went the rifles echos.  Their smiles beamed with excitement with every shot they took!  "All be darned if each of them hit every egg, dead on," said my husband.  I smiled.  "That's my boys," I thought to myself.

Then it was my turn.  Still in my church skirt, I knelt down in the dirt, set the cross-hairs on my egg target and pulled the 410's trigger.  The egg yoke blasted into the air, the shell burst into a zillion bits and splattered all over the dirt hill. "Ha-ha! That was awesome!" I said.  What a great feeling to 'plink' an egg.   Our boys shot for over an hour with their dad, learning from him, shooting a few eggs, and spending some quality 'boy time' as well as burning off some of the sugar rush pulsing through their little bodies...and so our redneck Easter tradition began. 

Maybe next year you'll share in our Redneck Easter tradition at your home, or maybe you have a Redneck idea to share with me.  I'm game, how 'bout you?