In the Kitchen: Crock Pot Italian Chicken

I have Fridays off, which means I typically have the house to myself while my parents work during the day. I was browsing through new recipes Friday morning when my mom called. As we chatted, I offered to make dinner that night - I wanted to try one of those new recipes!

The recipe was, of course, a crock pot recipe. Crock Pot Italian Chicken to be exact. This dish consists of four basic ingredients. We did not have the cream cheese I needed, so I decided to run to Wal-Mart. And when I say run, and I really mean RUN! I ran down the Rail Trail by our house to Wal-Mart to buy cream cheese. While I was there I realized I never checked our supply of chicken (and if we did have chicken in the freezer, I should have set it out to thaw while I was out running). Since I hadn't thought ahead, I grabbed a pack of [thawed] chicken breasts and [literally] ran back home with my Wal-Mart bag of ingredients!

I mixed up the ingredients just in time for them to cook in the crock pot for a full four hours and to serve dinner at 6:15. And this meal was well worth the run to Wal-Mart! My dad commented that the creamy sauce is better than alfredo sauce, and after I took a serving of the dish to Nate, there were no leftovers!

This simple meal is so delicious, easy, and can be paired with a variety of other sides. I served it with cooked pasta and a fruity jello salad.

For chicken or crock pot lovers, I highly recommend this meal! Here's the recipe:

• 4 chicken breasts
• 1 packet dry Zesty Italian dressing (I used regular.)
• 1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened
• 1-2 cans cream of chicken soup (depending on how cream cheesy you want it)

Place the chicken in the crock pot and sprinkle Italian dressing over it. Combine cream cheese and cream of chicken soup in a small pot over low heat and pour over chicken. Cook on low in the crock pot for at least 4 hours (you can leave it in there all day). Once chicken is done, stir into the sauce. If you feel the sauce is too thick you can thin it with a little milk. Serve over pasta or rice.

Photo and recipe came from this site. Check it out for other yummy ideas! Maybe you'll find yourself running to the store for some ingredients this week ; )

Nate is 28!

Nate's birthday was yesterday, and he agreed to start his day off nice and early by watching the sunrise with me! There is a park near my house that has a perfect view to the east over a river and hills, but I had never made it over for the sunrise. It was a clear morning, and we enjoyed our time together as the sun came up!

We had put a breakfast casserole (made with some of Nate's venison!) in the oven before leaving for the sunrise, and it was ready to eat when we got back! Wanting to be festive, I put some candles in Nate's birthday breakfast. Oops! All of them melted into the casserole, and we had to scoop out all of the melted colored wax from our meal - I was glad that I didn't put 28 candles in for him! What was left of our breakfast was good, and we had a relaxing morning together.

Later on some family and friends met us at Kampai for some Japanese hibachi! Our chef was very entertaining, and our meals were great! There were lots of flames and flying foods and lots of laughs and smiles from the audience!

After dinner we headed up to Nate's house where some other friends met us to make birthday milkshakes! We had quite a variety of goodies to blend up into tasty drinks, and we had a lot of creative combinations.

After milkshakes, we headed outside for some glow-in-the-dark baseball and enjoyed the rest of Nate's birthday. It was a fun day fill with lots of celebrations!

Spring and Sunshine

Looking forward to the warmer weather, longer days, and time together outside!

A Tasty Project

Since teaching myself how, I have been continuing to crochet as I find time. After making a few sets of wrist warmers and then the weather getting warmer, I started looking for a new project to work on.

That's when I came across Tasty Crochet - a book full of ideas for crocheting play food!

We had a kitchen set in our house when I was growing up. My sisters and I enjoyed playing with play food and serving meals to our family. I wanted to make some of these adorable crocheted foods, but wasn't sure who I knew that would use them.

That's when I remembered back to my time teaching home-ec in Hannah's first grade classroom! I had mentioned chocolate chip cookies as an example in class, but ended up making pudding with the students. While they enjoyed the pudding, they kept asking when I was coming back to make chocolate chip cookies with them!

I decided I would make and send them a dozen chocolate chip cookies! I'm hoping Hannah can use them during math lessons for visual aids with counting or something creative. All 12 cookies have successfully arrived in Texas, and now I'm working on making some breakfast foods!

Easter Activities

Easter weekend was a lot of fun this year! Growing up, we were usually on the road to Myrtle Beach on Easter Sunday, eating a grand Easter lunch at McDonald's! When it comes to Easter, we don't have many family traditions, so we were a little creative this year.

Julie was home from college for the weekend, and Nate unexpectedly had a couple days off. We had dinner with my parents on Friday night, and then went to the Good Friday service at their church. After our raspberry pie for dessert back home, we had a family Easter egg coloring contest! We used all sorts of craft supplies and had 30 minutes to decorate our eggs. We Skyped Amy in to be our judge, and then Mom had 5 colorful eggs to decorate the house with!

While our family tends to bake and decorate sugar cookies for every other holiday, Easter is not on the list. However, this year I bought some new spring cookie cutters, so we decorated tulips, bunnies, ducks, butterflies, eggs, and other shapes on Saturday! It was a typical Tischer activity, and the spring cookies were a hit with the family and friends we shared them with!

Sunday morning we went to church. My church had an early service at 8am to sing hymns and reflect on Scripture. Before going, I was trying to think of what songs you sing on Easter. As Nate boldly sang out, "Up from the grave He arose!" during the morning service, I reflected on life of Christ, thankful that, "Christ Jesus lives today!" Our regular service that morning brought joy as I was reminded of all we have to celebrate in Christ.

My parents invited a friend from their church over for Easter lunch. We had the best ham I think I've ever had! It had some sort of cinnamon glaze on top - definitely have to keep that in mind for future hams! Then my parents surprised us by preparing an Easter egg hunt. Yes - an Easter egg hunt for three 20-year-olds! For some reason, spotting a purple plastic egg in the bushes still brings such a thrill!

Eventually I headed over to Nate's house since he had some extended family in town. I had brought the Easter eggs up that I had found I my house with intentions of sharing the candy inside them. Instead, Nate's brother ended up hiding them outside for all the "kids" to search for! I told you - this Easter weekend was just a lot of fun!

Easter is a wonderful time to think about the cross and the hope Christ offers through what He accomplished there. It was fun to celebrate this holiday in memorable ways this year!

And just for fun - Dad's decorated egg!

On the Road Again

With Nate's long term work schedule still up in the air, we had to take advantage of his recent weekend off! We had been wanting to visit my grandma in Maryland, so we made some last minute plans and headed out early Saturday morning to spend a few days with Grandma!

When Nate realized there was a Cabela's along the way, we had to set aside some time to check out this outdoors-hunting-fishing-bows & arrows-very manly store! We spent about two hours there checking out all the gear and taxidermy-stuffed animals - they even had a giant elephant!! It was a nice way to break up the trip down, and even though Nate could have stayed there all day, we continued on!

We arrived at Grandma's house in time for dinner, and then we went on an Easter Egg Hunt - an adult Easter egg hunt, at night, with flashlights! Together the three of us found six eggs, and none of them were winning prize numbers, but it was fun to search for the eggs...and they did all have candy inside!

We went to church on Sunday morning, and then headed to Downtown Annapolis with Grandma to browse and grab lunch. We also went over to the Naval Academy and saw their chapel and wandered their museum - neither of us had been there before, and it was pretty interesting!

Grandma kept us very active all weekend! We had been emailing ideas back and forth, and she asked if we had seen the movie October Baby. This sparked my interest as my boss had recommended the movie to our staff, but it is not playing in our area. I told Grandma we would like to see the movie while we were down, and my aunt and uncle joined us for it too. October Baby is about a 19-year-old girl who just found out she was adopted. She then finds out she was adopted because her birth mom had tried to abort her. The abortion failed and she went into labor and had the child, only to abandon her new baby. The movie follows this girl as she processes the emotions of finding all this out and trying to find her birth mom. Although a bit cheesy in parts, it was very good, and I highly recommend it. It was the first movie the has ever brought me to tears, so that says something!

After the movie my cousin joined the rest of us for a crab cake dinner! It was fun to spend time with family and for Nate to be able to meet some of them for the first time.

Nate and I did go rollerblading and running Monday morning before eating lunch with Grandma and heading home. It was a very full and very fun weekend!

Now Nate and I have visited all of our grandparents together. Grandma wins the prize for longest distance, and we were glad to find a weekend to make the trip down!