Easy Chicken Taco Soup

I made up this Chicken Taco Soup recipe the other day.  It made a lot and was very easy to make.  Feel free to add other spices or vegetables or whatever to it.  I'm sure it will be good, especially once you add the cheese and tortilla chips.

Easy Chicken Taco Soup
3 chicken breasts
oil, salt and pepper
1 carton of chicken broth (32 oz I think)
1 large can of diced tomatoes (or 2 normal sized cans)
1 can of rotel (tomatoes with green chillies)
1 can of corn (drained)
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 can of black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 package of taco seasoning
water
toppings-shredded cheese (I like pepper jack), sour cream, hot sauce, crushed tortilla chips

-Cook the chicken in a little bit of oil in the bottom of a big pan or dutch oven.  Season with salt and pepper.  Remove the chicken and shred it. 
-Add everything else to the same pan and then add the chicken back in.
-Add a couple cans of water depending on how thick you want the soup to be.
-Let simmer for awhile (I let it cook for about an hour).
-Serve with the toppings.

I made some burnt grilled cheeses to go with this.  I suck at making grilled cheese but my husband is really good at it so we've made that his specialty in the kitchen from now on.

PS-Obviously don't make this if you are currently in one of the states that having record breaking temperatures this week.  However it's been rainy and cooler here so it worked for me.

You should probably make this tonight since there's so many tv shows on.  You don't want to be making something hard while you are trying to watch 8 tv shows at the same time.  Or maybe that's just me.

Hobie Birthday To You!

Ok, so we don't know Hobie's real birthday because we adopted him.  He came from the hard cold streets of Tennessee.  We adopted him when he was estimated to be somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.  We do know the date that he came to live with us last September.  So we are considering that his new "birthday". 

Because we adopted him from a dog foster program we had to answer a bunch of surveys and questions to make sure we'd give him a good home.  One of the questions was...
What kind of personality traits are you looking for in a dog?
I responded...
"We are not looking for a super hyper dog. We want one that we can play with and walk but that is also ok laying around watching tv with us."
(I think most of that answer stems from my laziness and love of TV)

That is pretty much exactly what we got as you can see from Hobie's time with us.


Watching his favorite Soap, The Bold and the Beautiful



The day he got his first rope bone



Maybe it's time for a new rope bone



Family Portrait

 

BFFs



Foot belly rub per his request



 

So anyway we will be celebrating Hobie's "birthday" this week.  Maybe with some Dog Fro-Yo from Feeney's (yeah they actually have that).  And sorry if you hate dogs or hearing about people's dogs or looking a bunch of pictures of dogs.  I used to think it was weird too before I had my own dog.

My New Favorite Earrings...

I have tried making earring wires several times on my own.  I'm not good at it.  Usually I get the wrong type of wire.  I tried beating it with a hammer.  Usually it would just end up breaking.  So I figure if you can't make something, buy it from someone who can.  So I found these ear wires on Etsy (at Shel's Jewelry Supplies) a couple weeks ago and bought some.  I also bought the mini version cause I love mini stuff.

This weekend Beezus5 attempted to take me to her favorite beads store downtown but it was closed.  Fortunately there was another bead store across the street.  So after checking out every bead they had I ended up buying a few.  I made these earrings for myself with the mini hoops.

I like them.  I think the ear wires really "make" the earring.

And here are some more I made for my Etsy shop with the bigger hoops.

What do you think?

Making Stuff Is Hard....

If you pay attention to details, you may notice that I have a new tab at the top of this page....Making Stuff Is Hard.  Here I will be sharing some of my biggest craft and baking failures.  Please feel free to email me any failures (with pictures) you have and I will add them to my list.  Crafting and cooking are not all fun, all the time, guys.  I thought it was time I admit to that.  Sometimes laying around on the couch watching reruns of Gilmore Girls is way funner than making stuff.

Do you have any craft or cooking failures to share with me?

Dinner on the Cheap-Tuna Noodle Casserole

So awhile back I decided that I was going to attempt to make some reasonable priced meals.  I am one of those people who tends to go to the grocery store 4 times a week and just buy whatever I feel like at the time.  I'm not great at planning out a week of meals in advance or even one dinner.  I have walked up and down the aisles of the grocery store for long periods of time before just looking for something to make for dinner.  So anyways, I have decided that I probably waste a lot of money doing that.  So I will be doing a series on cheap meals.  Apparently this is a popular topic.  There are at least 2 shows on the Food Network about saving money on meals (Money Saving Meals and $10 Dinners) and I also noticed a food magazine featuring 5 meals for 4 for under $10 each while standing in line the other day.  So I can totally do this too.  Right?

Sometimes I get annoyed at these low price meal shows.  Awhile back there was one that I used to watch and the guy would make supposedly affordable meals but he would say well this spice doesn't count because you already have that in the pantry.  Or he would buy some weird cheese that would be super expensive at my grocery store.  Stuff like that.  I will try not to do that.

Onward.  When I think of cheap dinners, I think of casseroles.  And when I think of cheap meat, I think of canned tuna (which is pretty much the only canned meat I will eat).  So I was thinking of making a classic...Tuna Noodle Casserole.  That can't be too expensive, right? 

Ok, here is my breakdown....

So essentially this meal cost $7.50 to make but buying all the ingredients new cost $14.25.  However, I have used those remaining ingredients for other stuff.  The remaining cheddar cheese was used in a soup I made last night.  The Parmesan cheese (which you could probably leave out anyways) was used in a pasta salad I made for the baby shower.  The milk was used in my cereal.  The bread crumbs were already half used on something else anyways. 

(Oh and if you want to make this just cook the noodles and mix it with the next few ingredients, then top with a little melted butter, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.  Then bake it at 350 for 30 minutes.)

So there you go.  I think this meal was actually cheap to make.  Some people might not be a big fan of tuna noodle casserole though so next time I will try to make something with fresh meat or vegetarian.  I know you can't wait.

Baby Shower Cookies

I was going to use my fancy cookie press to make cookies for my college roomie's baby shower.  But instead I was perusing my local Sur La Table and found these cookie cutters in the shape of bottles and baby carriages.  So I decided to get those instead.

My first round of cookies came out looking a little like blobs instead of baby bottles or carriages.  But once I used my fast drying cookie icing they started to look a little more like bottles.  The carriages never really looked like carriages so I just decided to focus on the bottles.  Obviously I'm not the best at cookie decoration but they came out pretty good.  I mean, people could at least tell what they were.

There was also a tasty cake and a bunch of other food that we made.  Overall it was a good time.  I'm not good at baby games though.  We had to smell baby foods and write down what we thought it was.  I wrote down pears when it was actually green beans.  And I put down apricots when it was actually carrots.  Oh well.  I'm excited to meet Baby Wunka!

I participated in the group gift (see above) which was something called a Pack n' Play.  But I also bought her a book, Goodnight Moon.  I remember it from when I was a kid.  My other top choices were The Little Engine that Could, The Giving Tree and Are You My Mother.

Can you tell that those cookies are supposed to be bottles?
Do you know what a Pack N' Play is?
Do you know what baby green beans smell like?
What's your favorite children's book?