feeling a little resourceful {recipe}

We had crockpot chicken and rice on Tuesday for dinner. I'm not really a recipe follower, but I find recipes on the interwebs and mix it up or just try and wing it. For the original dish, I took a 3lb bag of frozen chicken breasts and tossed them in the crockpot.  I poured a jar of premade gravy on top and sprinkled it with a packet of Lipton onion soup mix. Set it for four hours on high. Bam. Done. Then I steamed up way more rice than we could ever eat to go with the chicken. Why is it that a cup of uncooked rice makes like six cups of the good stuff?  Don't answer that.  I know why. But why can't I ever remember that I don't ever need a whole cup?  

So what do we do with all the leftovers? We pretend that we love leftovers and wouldn't ever let them get moldy in the fridge.  We try to be resourceful.  We wait a couple of days and make a casserole, of course!  You'll need your leftovers and a few other items for this dish. 

Lunchy's Cheesy Chicken and Rice Florentine Casserole

3 cooked chicken breasts, diced or shredded

2 cups of cooked rice

2 cups frozen spinach

5 teaspoons flour

2 cups milk, divided (I used skim)

1/3 cup light sour cream

8oz shredded cheese, your choice. I used a hodgepodge of white cheddar, Mexican, Italian and goats cheese. Reserve 1/4 to sprinkle on top of the casserole. 

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

In lieu of the salt, pepper and garlic powder, I use Jane's Krazy Mixed-Up Salt...if you've never used it before, it's great for recipes like this one. And on eggs. And a salad. And everywhere. My father used to buy it when I was a kid and I was shocked to find it still being sold a few years back. Now it's a staple in our house.  

Grease your baking dish. Set oven to 350. Mix the chicken and the rice together and spread into your baking dish. Top with frozen spinach. Pour stock over the top of the spinach. 

Now to make the cheese sauce:  whisk together flour and 1/2 cup milk in a small bowl. Pour mixture into skillet over medium heat then add remaining 1-1/2 cups milk. Cook mixture, stirring constantly, until thickened, 7-10 minutes. Remove skillet from heat then add 3/4 of the shredded cheese, sour cream, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and stir until smooth. 

Pour cheese sauce over top of the chicken, rice and spinach. Bake at 350 until bubbly and heated all the way through, about 25-30 minutes. Because this is a leftover dish, all of the food should already be cooked so basically you're just reheating it all.  Yum!

My cheese sauce looks a little thin because I didn't have quite enough cheese and didn't adjust for that...don't worry, if you follow the recipe, yours will be way better!  Ahhhh...the hazards a of being a self-taught, lazy cook.  I didn't even know how to cook anything when I got married. My husband likes to tell people how I only had a stack of sliced cheese and a case of beer in my fridge when he moved in. After about 14 years, I've learned a thing or two. Now I make at least two meals a day, and typically one is from scratch. I wish I had begun blogging earlier in my journey. When I stayed home with the girls it would have been nice to have a record of our growth together. Way back then, though, there wasn't really a platform for it. 

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feeling like being honest with you, dear reader.

I am. I am lazy. Sometimes I think I may do all this blogging stuff just so I don't have to fold laundry. Or clean out my car. Or unload the dishwasher. Or feed the dog. Please don't tell the Hubs. Don't tell him that I spray Lysol around just before he gets home, either. He thinks I've been cleaning...(insert evil snicker here).

If you're lazy, I mean awesome, like I am...this is the lunch for you. I made spaghetti for dinner last night and we had a lot of leftover noodles, but no more sauce.  How about a lazy mom leftover makeover?  Take the noodles, squeeze on the ranch dressing, chop up some cold cuts, chuck in some frozen peas and top with grated parmesean cheese. A Babybel cheese, sugar snap peas with a side of ranch and some crunchy mini toast slices adorn their lunches. I say lazy, they say "YUM!"

This is a ten minutes or less lunch for sure. And I made two lunches in that little time. Takes longer to clean up the kitchen. Which I still have to do...but I'd rather force you to have more words to read. Check out some more lazy, I mean quick, lunches over at Bentos on the Bayou 15 Minute Fridays.  Each Friday there's a post that bloggers can link their quick lunches to...tons of awesome ideas. 

I swear...EasyLunchboxes and PlanetBox make these lazy lunches look spectacular.  Here's the same lunch as above in a PlanetBox Shuttle:

If you are interested in any of the products I use, click the affiliate links below, please! Anytime you purchase through one of my links, regardless of what you purchase, I get a small percentage of the sale. It's how lunchy gets paid! Thanks!

  

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feeling a little leftover

Our new favorite meal lately has been THIS wonderful recipe from Home Cooking Memories. Meatball grinders...or sandwiches or hoagies.  Whatever you call them, they're fantastic!  So easy to make, and perfect for a leftover lunch!  

Meatballs separated with our big silicone muffin cups from Target, Martin's Hoagie Rolls, snap peas with ranch in the mini dipper, and blueberries. They will assemble the sandwich at lunchtime, so the bread doesn't get soggy. Nothing is worse than soggy bread. Ugh. 

If you are interested in any of the products I use, click the affiliate links below, please! Anytime you purchase through one of my links, regardless of what you purchase, I get a small percentage of the sale. It's how lunchy gets paid! Thanks!

   

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feeling like making baby calzones

Calzones...yum!  Don't you just love the cheese and the bread and the sauce and everything?  I've never made them before, but gave it a whirl tonight.  We made baby calzones.  They were so simple to make...In fact, I made up the recipe on the fly.  I really hope you're comfortable eyeballing the cheese and such on this one...because you really just have to!  Let the photos be your guide.  Measurements are not important. (But if you're really a stickler for measurements, I've added approximations to the bottom of this post)

You will need:

Pillsbury canned Grands biscuits 

Parmesan cheese, grated

Ricotta cheese

Shredded mozzarella or we used Publix Six Cheese Italian blend

Garlic powder

Salt

Preheat oven to 350.

Pop that can of biscuits open.  Once you've recovered from the scare, take a rolling pin and flatten out the biscuit. I rolled it only in one direction, giving it an oblong shape which I found easier to manage in the long run.

Shake some Parmesan cheese onto one half of the flattened biscuit. Then a bit of shredded cheese, then about a teaspoon of ricotta. Sprinkle with garlic powder and a little salt.  Make sure to leave room on the edges for the fold as shown above.  Fold the biscuit over on itself.  Crimp with a fork:

Place in the oven at 350 for 14-17 minutes or until the biscuit is golden brown. 

Serve with spaghetti sauce for dipping and a salad. Yum.

Of course, you can also use the leftovers for lunch!

Served with spinach, cherries and sauce for dipping:

If you are interested in any of the products I use, click the affiliate links below, please! Anytime you purchase through one of my links, regardless of what you purchase, I get a small percentage of the sale. It's how lunchy gets paid! Thanks!

For each biscuit you will use about a teaspoon of ricotta, a teaspoon of shredded mozzarella, a dash of garlic powder and a dash of salt. One can of biscuits usually has 8 biscuits. 

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