What a Crock! Taco Salad & Soup

Cooking for two can sometimes be challenging. Most recipes are usually 4 servings. Leftovers can be a problem and eating it ALL is certainly a problem. That is why lately my favorite appliance has been my 1.5 qt. crockpot. (All pictures are from the web, I didn't think about blogging this till after the fact.)

Its only real setback is that it only has two settings, on and off. It's not what I would call a slow cooker because it does bring the food to a boil. I bought it years ago for little smokies in BBQ sauce and only recently have been using it for regular cooking. I thought I'd share the easy two meals I made the other day.

Easy Crockpot Chicken Fajitas

Ingredients

• 1 lb of Chicken Breasts
• 3 Peppers (Green, Red & Yellow), sliced
• 1 Onion, sliced
• 1 Package of Taco Seasoning
• Flour or corn tortillas
• Toppings - sour cream, cheese, guacamole, etc.

Instructions

1. Slice peppers and onions then place them on the bottom of the crock pot
2. Put Chicken on top of peppers and onions
3. Sprinkle taco seasoning on the top
4. Cook on low for 6-8 hrs (or high for 3-4)
5. Shred everything up and mix together
6. Serve with tortillas and all the toppings - sour cream, guacamole, cheese, lettuce, etc.

http://eatathomecooks.com/easy-crockpot-chicken-fajitas/

That is the actual recipe^^^ that I more or less followed. I cut up onion and bell pepper to layer the bottom of the pot and placed three small chicken breasts (frozen) on top. I have a bottle of taco seasoning...

...that I sprinkled freely over the chicken. Put the lid on, turned it on and let it cook for 4 hours. Instead of making fajitas though, we had fajita salads. They're like taco salads except with chicken fajita meat and vegetables.

I added black beans but not corn or avocado. I think I like the salad better than a wrap. One of the granddaughters was here and she didn't care for the onions or bell pepper which left me with quite a bit of taco flavored broth, bell pepper and onion. Back to the web to search for a recipe for Chicken Taco Soup. I scoured through all the recipes for common ingredients and find I only need to add the half cans of diced tomato and black beans that I already had opened for the salad, then a can of whole kernel corn and a can of kidney beans. This made for a full pot. Later I added a little more taco seasoning and taco sauce.

Quick to prepare and easy to make. Full of flavor, I really like it. The only picture that I did take was of the nearly empty pot.

These two dishes will absolutely get repeat performances. Let me know if you give them a try and what you think.

Nothing Last Forever (except maybe plastic bags in trees)

The past couple of days have been dealing with the fact that appliances don't last forever. First there was water under the hot water heater, this was a week or so ago. It had rained just prior to this so I wasn't sure if it was the water heater or the rain because the floor dried up. Then a day or so later there was even more water, but we were still having rain off and on. The vent for the hot water heater goes pretty much straight up, just a slight angle out of the house up the side from the basement. When this didn't dry up we were pretty sure that it was an appliance issue. In the meantime, I put a load of clothes in the dryer and it started vibrating and groaning really bad and rather loudly. Have a service warranty on the washer and dryer I called and scheduled for possible repair on dryer and regular maintenance on the washer. This appointment was made for Thursday anytime between 8am - 5pm. Nothing like narrowing it down, I'm just glad they could pinpoint to just one day and not say sometime between the 14th - 16th. I guess I shouldn't complain, it's not like they have a shop here where I live.
Then the hubby called our "local" plumber and made arrangements for him to bring a new hot water heater and install it on Wednesday. So Tuesday night I moved my pantry items out to give the repairmen plenty of room to work, filled a bucket of water to have in the bathroom and a cooler of water in the kitchen (not knowing how long it will take him to switch them out). Then waited. The plumber came around 9:30am and was out of here before noon. I hardly knew he was here. Today, after lunch I was starting to wonder if the repairman was going to show up, but around 1:30pm he calls to say he was about a half hour away. When he finished up it turned out that it was simply lints that was causing the noise and vibration in the dryer so no major repair was need, thank goodness.

Now I just need to get things put back where they belong, take a shower and go to my granddaughters Girl Scout Awards ceremony. Pictures to come...

(Edit: Correction on the water heater vent, there's quite a turn in it. There's no way the rain could have come in there.)