Last week we had a bridal shower for one of the wonderful ladies I work with.  She's getting married in June and there are so many people on our campus that wanted to celebrate her before she takes off for this new adventure.

My boss and I each brought a Crock Pot of soup and then asked the rest of the ladies who were invited to bring a side dish or dessert.  The shower turned out really great, and we ate a lot of good food!

The soup I brought was actually a recipe that the bride-to-be had given me, which she had gotten from another friend of ours.  It is the easiest soup ever, and soooo good!  Here's the recipe:

Creamy Chicken Chili

1 can black beans

1 can corn, undrained

1 can Rotel, undrained

1 package Ranch dressing mix

1 tsp. cumin

1 Tbsp. chili powder

1 tsp. onion powder

1 8oz block light cream cheese

2 large chicken breasts

Drain and rinse the black beans and set aside.  Place chicken breasts on the bottom of the Crock Pot.  Dump beans, corn (undrained), and Rotel (undrained) on top of chicken.  Sprinkle spices and Ranch mix over everything.  Top with block of cream cheese (don't stir it in) and cook on high 4 hours or low 6 to 8 hours.  Before serving, remove chicken and shred with 2 forks (or use your Kitchen Aid mixer if you've got one handy).  Stir cream cheese into soup mixture; return chicken to Crock Pot and stir thoroughly.

One of the reasons I love this recipe so much is that you don't have to cook the chicken before you put it in.  Crock Pots lose some of their convenience factor (in my opinion) when you have to brown or cook the meat separately before making a recipe.

I should really post a recipe that actually takes some time & effort to make or people are going to think my cooking skills are about at a kindergarten level.  Oh well.

Fajitas...Yummmm

The other day, I wanted a quick and easy recipe.  Since I've been trying to get my garden planted in the evenings after work, and I don't get home from work until around 5:45 usually, I don't want to spend an hour in the kitchen getting supper ready.  By the time I do that, and then we eat whatever I've made, and then I clean it up, the sun is going down.  

I had seen a recipe that looked super simple, and pretty tasty, on Pinterest.  I followed the link to this website {http://eatathomecooks.com/2012/12/easy-crockpot-chicken-fajitas.html} and decided to give it a shot, with a couple small tweaks.

It was probably the easiest main dish I have ever made, and we really liked it!  

Easy Crock Pot Fajitas

2 or 3 peppers (red, green, yellow)

1 onion

Enough chicken breasts to make a single layer in your crock pot

1 package fajita seasoning

1 package taco seasoning

Slice all peppers into long, thin strips.  Slice an onion and break up the rings.  Dump all peppers and onion into a Crock Pot.  Place chicken breasts in a single layer on top of the bed of peppers & onions.  Sprinkle the packages of seasoning over the chicken.  Cook on low 6 to 8 hours  Shred or slice chicken before serving.

Seriously, how easy is that?!  It took me all of 5 minutes before work to slice up the peppers & onion.  I threw them all in a bowl and gave The Farmer instructions about how to put them in the Crock Pot, with a layer of chicken on top, and sprinkle on the seasonings.  I came home after work that day to a house that smelled AMAZING.  I shredded the chicken before we ate it, and we topped ours with sour cream, shredded cheese, and homemade pico de gallo that we had leftover from taco night.

The onions and peppers were a bit more limp because of being cooked in a Crock Pot all day, and from sitting in the liquid that came out of them and from the chicken as it all cooked, but other than that they tasted like restaurant fajitas.  Later The Farmer was heating up some more and called me from the other room.  I walk around the corner to see what he needs and he just said "Hey...these are good."  Haha!  I think that is a good sign. 

 

 

 

The Best Pie Ever

A couple of weeks ago, The Farmer's family got together to celebrate Easter.  It was a great evening of catching up with family and eating a lot of delicious food.  One of his aunts had made a pie that both The Farmer and I ate and LOVED.  His aunt gave me the recipe, and it sounded pretty simple, so I decided to whip one up the other day.  It was delicious, and so easy to make!  

Are you ready for the easiest, tastiest recipe ever?  Here it is:

Creamy Peanut Butter Pie

1 cup peanut butter (we prefer creamy but crunchy would be fine too, if you're into that)

1 cup powdered sugar

1 8oz block cream cheese, softened

1 12oz tub Cool Whip

1 Oreo pie crust

To make the pie, mix the peanut butter and powdered sugar well.  Add the softened cream cheese and mix well.  (I used a Kitchen Aid mixer for all of this.)  Then gently fold in the tub of Cool Whip with a spatula.  Once the mixture is all folded together, pour it into the Oreo crust and refrigerate.  How easy is that?!

In other news, Harlee had to take a bath last night.  Since we've moved to the farm, she has picked up a nasty habit of finding dead animals and rolling herself on them.  Apparently this is appealing to her?  Dogs are weird.  Anyways, Harlee is terrified of getting a bath.  She cowers in the corner of the shower, tucks her tail completely between her hind legs, and shakes.  She doesn't stop shaking until she's out of the bath and getting dried off.  

The first couple of times I bathed her, I felt bad for her.  I was still a relatively new figure in her life, and she didn't have any history with me to know that I was not going to hurt her.  That was over two years ago.  As I was bathing her last night, and she was shaking as violently as ever, I was thinking about how silly she is.  She knows me now; she knows I would never do anything to hurt her.  She knows that I make sure she has food, water, shelter, love, etc. every single day.  She knows that in our entire 2+ years of being together, I have never done anything to hurt her.  Yet she's still terrified when I bathe her.

It's easy for me to laugh at her, but then I realize that I do the same thing.  I have a long history with God.  I've been in church since before I was born, I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 3 years old, and my entire life has been a journey with the Lord.  Through all of that, over the last 30 years of life, He has never once let me down, left me hanging, or let something happen to me that wasn't for my good.  Sure, He's let me go through some difficult things: a very difficult breakup, a scary car accident, and two months of being violently ill in the Amazon jungle come to mind, but those are stories for another day.  Looking back on each of those events, I can see his grace and protection in each one.  I know that all 3 turned out for His glory and my good.  But along comes a new challenge, and my reaction is to freak out, tuck my tail between my legs, and shake like Harlee.

I want Harlee to calm down enough to just stand there while I bathe her, but much more importantly, I want to calm down and rest in His goodness while He takes me through the things that I don't enjoy.  Isaiah 30:15 says that “In repentance and rest you will be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.”  I want to stop standing in the corner shaking and just wait in quiet trust.  

God is so good, to use even the mundane tasks like bathing the dog to teach me.  If anyone has practical ideas about how to be a quiet truster (not a word?) instead of a corner shaker, I'd love to hear them.  In the meantime, I'll be over here bathing my dog.  Because now that she's all clean, her mission for tomorrow will be to find a new rotting carcass to roll in.