Meal #5 Chili-Chicka-Roni

Menu:
Chili-Chicka-Roni


I just made up this name! I think it is cute.
This is a nice hearty meal for 2. All these menus I have been posting (except the Tallerone-which feeds about 8)feeds 2. That is because currently in our household there are 2 people: my husband and myself.

Chili-Chicka-Roni

1 box mac and cheese
1 can diced green chilis
1 12.5 oz. can chicken chunks
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/8 cup milk or a bit more to get to the consistency you like.
milk
Your favorite seasoning (we like Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy, black pepper, Pico de Gallo powder)

This meal does have a vegetable: the green chilis. Next time I make this I will use a bigger can of green chilis. I did chop the chicken chunks up. Put the liquid from the canned chicken into the water you use for cooking the macaroni.

By the way, you do not need a lot of water to cook macaroni, only to drain off the water down into the sink drain. Just use twice the amount of water than there are noodles (like in how you cook rice.)After the macaroni has boiled until it is almost done, you can put a lid on the pot and turn off the heat (thus saving fuel) and finish cooking with the residual heat...takes about 5 minutes.

This is a nice warm comforting nourishing one dish meal with its creamy cheesy base, high protein chicken, and the delicious green chilis. I used olive oil instead of butter that the recipe on the box calls for (I used only 1 tablespoon of olive oil) and then I used about 1/8 cup of soy milk, because I saw that the green chilis had some thick liquid.

Meal #4 Creamy Bean Soup and Sides

Menu:
Creamy Bean Soup
Popcorn
Pineapple Tidbits and Craisins

Maybe you can think of a cute name for this meal. I love popcorn so much, I sometimes serve it with a meal. It goes perfect with the Creamy Bean Soup...it is a whole grain, to complement the protein in the beans. The dessert is a nice contrast with its red and yellow colors. Dessert is pineapple tidbits with craisins sprinkled on top.

Creamy Bean Soup

Put 1 cup water in pot and bring to boil. Add (Slowly while stirring)...
1/4 cup instant potatoes (taken from my packet)
Take off heat for 10 seconds. Return to burner and add
2 1/4 cups water
1 15 oz. can pinto beans, (including the liquid)
1 16 oz. can refried beans )
a few twists of freshly ground black pepper
Stir until contents of the pot are well blended and nice and hot.

Makes about 6 cups of delicious soup!
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Evening Meal #3 Phad Thai

Menu:
Phad Thai
green beans
mandarin oranges

Phad Thai

I picked up the Phad Thai seasoning envelope at WinCo (99 cents)and followed the directions on back:

1 Tablespoon soy sauce
8 oz. shrimp or chicken
2 Tablespoons oil
6 oz. cooked noodles
1 green onion (optional)
1/4 cup peanuts, crushed (Optional)

This is such a satisfyingly spicy dish..we have had it twice in the last month.
Directions:
1. Combine seasoning in envelope, soy sauce and water, blend and set aside.

2. Heat 2 Tablespoons oil in large skillet over medium high heat unitl hot. Add meat and cook until done. (I used meat that was already cooked, so I did not do this part. I just opened the can. I used canned turkey instead of canned chicken. Usually I use chicken that I have cooked and chopped and frozen myself and then thaw it out to use. But in my food storage, I have canned chicken or turkey for this recipe.)

3. Cook noodles and drain them ( I cooked half of the package of noodles pictured here.)and add it to the skillet with the cooked meat. Add seasoning mixture and stir fry 2-3 minutes until noodles are coated. (I just drained the noodles into a colander, then returned noodles to the pot and added the seasoning mixture and the cooked meat and stirred until noodles were all coated.)

4. Serve. (makes 4 servings, but we had 2 big servings) Top with crushed peanuts (which I did) and green onion if desired (I had none).

I wanted something green on the plate, so I opened a can of (no salt) green beans. Dessert was mandarin oranges. Love the color and the juiciness. This recipe is a keeper!

Evening Meal #2-Salmon Dill Bisque and sides

Menu:
Salmon Dill Bisque
crackers
apricot, pecan, raisin compote

Salmon Dill Bisque


6 2/3 cups water
1 packet "Creamy Mash"(pictured...from Costco. Or you can use 1 1/4 cups
potato flakes or pearls.
5 T butter (if you have it) or 3 Tablespoon light olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 cups milk (or soy milk, or reconstituted dry or condensed milk)
1 14.75 oz. can salmon (I used Bumble Bee Wild Alaskan Salmon ($1.99 a can at WinCo, $3.99 a can at Stater Bros.)
Open can, dump contents into a bowl and remove the chunks of salmon and put them in another bowl, leaving behind the skin and bones (although both are great to eat-the bones are super soft and have lots of calcium-but most folks don't like the texture, taste, or sight of the skin and bones.) You can give the skin and bones to your dog or cat or you can save it for adding to your bowl of soup later. You, the cook, need all the calcium you can get!
2 teaspoons dill (or more if you like)

~~Bring to boil the water, salt and oil or butter (if you have it). You can make this without oil or butter.
~~Turn heat to very low and slowly, while stirring continually, add the powdered potatoes.
~~Add the 2 1/2 cans milk and the dill. Stir. Make 5 one and a half cup servings.

Serve with a side of crackers.
For dessert, drain some canned apricots (My can had 10 halves.)in a bowl with chopped pecans and some raisins and some cinnamon. (I stirred the cinnamon into the syrup I drained off, then spooned the now spicy syrup unot the apricot halves (2 to a bowl if serving 5)

Remember..if people are still hungry after a meal like this, you can have popcorn.

Challenge #1

Participate With Us in 2009 !

In our Relief Society (Silve Lakes Ward, Victorville California Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints), we are having monthly Preparedness meetings and monthly challenges to help get your prepared for emergencies.

Since it is the beginning of the month, when most folks get a paycheck and feel rich, this week is a good time to plan and start buying for 30 evening meals that can be prepared from items only in your pantry (No refrigerated items allowed). Consider this similar to a science experiment. Go to mypyramid.gov to find your daily nutrient needs for guidelines as to what foods you should have and serve. For example, you want to have an orange fruit or vegetable at least every other day. You should have protein at each meal and snack. You should have a green vegetable (I say: Include canned spinach-remember Popeye?!)every other day at least.

I also challenged everyone to have AT LEAST 3 days water (2 weeks is beter) :one gallon per person per day.

And a light source. Candles are not recommended. Go shopping for a battery operated lantern if you do not have one. Solar or hand cranked one are great! If you already have a lantern, get fresh batteries for it. When the lights go out in a power outage, you will be ready!

I will post one recipe a day that is exclusively from pantry items. I plan to make each of the meals and take a picture of it, too.

Consider the Tallerone (POSTED JANUARY 30) recipe as the first one..we still have to eat it up before I do a new recipe. This recipe I made had 10 one cup serving at about 47 cents a serving. It is really good..the Parmesan cheese and the sliced olives give it some extra "class".

Easy 3 Ingredient No Bake Cookies

Have a sweet tooth? During a power outage, you may not be able to use your oven to make cookies. But you can use an open flame on your camping stove, or the heat from a charcoal grill to make these delectable chocolate-y, high fiber "bites".
We served these, made with the Grape Nuts, last night. I made mine with Smart Start cereal just as an experiment.

One warning. These are food storage items, but cereal has a much shorter shelf life than canned food. If you went out and bought a box of cereal today, it would expire in about 10 months. Chocolate chips also have about a 10 month shelf life (sometimes more, depends on the brand)..then they get white-ish and crumbly.

So if you purchase these, and store them away, make note on your calendar or somewhere to use up these items before the expiration date. These are packaged items...mice can eat through the cardboard and plastic packaging. The canned milk I have pictured here has a "use by" date of September 2, 2010 but I have used sweetened canned milk past its "use by" dates and it was still OK.

This recipe is better than the classic No Bake Cook recipe I have used all my life, so thank you to Chrissy Heiner for sharing this treat and this recipe with us. Last night, we heard there is another name for these "cookies" (actually, it is more like a fudge): Gorilla Poop.

Easy 3 Ingredient No Bake Cookies
(aka "Gorilla Poop")

1 (12 oz.)package chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups Grape-Nuts cereal (or other cereal, crushed)

Melt chocolate chips. Stir in milk and Grape-Nuts.
Drop by teaspoonfuls on wax paper. Cool.

Tallerone Recipe

Last night, we had our "Kick Off" meeting for our year of Preparedness Classes/Activities for our Relief Society sisters. We will meet each month on the last Thursday of the month (Except Nov., Dec.) for the year 2009. One of the dishes on the "tasting table" last night was Tallerone, a last minute choice I made. It was so quick to make on my stovetop. Then I put it in my crockpot to take to our meeting so I could plug it in to keep warm.

Here you see pictures of the ingredients and then the final product. Every ingredient is a pantry item. Since I did not pass out the recipe last night, here it is....

Tallerone

8 ounces medium egg noodles (half of a 16 oz. bag)
1 can No Beans chili (15 oz.)
1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz.)
1 small can tomato sauce (8 oz.)
1 can corn (15 1/4 oz.), drained
1/2 can of black olives,drained and sliced
2 Tablespoons Parmesan Cheese
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
black pepper (Optional)

Cook noodles in big 6 quart size pot and drain. Open the cans of chili, tomatoes, tomato sauce and dump the contents into the hot noodles. Open can of corn and drain it and dump corn into pot. Open can of olives, drain and take out half of the olives (about 3/4 cup or so) and slice them. (Save the other olives for the olive lovers in the family to snack on..or or another recipe.) Put them in pot, along with the 2 tablespoons of the Parmesan cheese. Add garlic powder and pepper (If you like pepper). Stir until all combined. Heat over low flame to warm it up more, transfer to a serving dish. Sprinkle with another tablespoon of Parmesan cheese.
Makes 10 one cup servings.
Serve with a side of cooked canned green beans or asparagus or something else green.