Yummy Food!

This past weekend was a lot of fun in grocery shopping and budgeting and most of all, trying out something new! My goal for this year was to try a new recipe every week. I figure we would try about 40 to 50 new ones this year. I'm so excited about it.

Last week we didn't try anything totally new (we made a cheese sauce that my mom gave me the recipe for but I *think* I've made it before) but this past Sunday started out our newest creation!

Southwestern White Chili
Prep 20 minutes
Cook: 8 hours (low) or 4 hours (high)
Slow cooker size: 3.5 to 5 quarts

Ingredients:

3 - 15.5 oz cans Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed (I used white kidney beans)
4 cups of reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 cups of chopped cooked chicken
1 cup of chopped onions (2 med)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups of shredded Monterey Jack Cheese (I used mozza cheese) (about 8 oz)

sour cream (optional)
fresh cilantro leaves (optional)
2 4-oz cans of diced green Chile pepper (optional)


Directions:

1 - In your slow cooker, place beans, broth, chicken, Chile pepper (opt), onion, garlic, cumin, oregano, and cayenne. Stir to combine.
2 - Cover and cook on low heat setting for 8 to 10 hours or on high-heat setting for 4 to 5 hours. Stir in the cheese until melted. If desired, top servings with sour cream and cilantro. Makes 8 servings

Pre serving: 429 cal, 14g total fat (7 g sat. fat). 72mg chol, 570 mg sodium, 41 g carbo, 9 g fiber, 37 g pro.

We made this for our Landlord, Steve, when he came over for dinner. I warned him I didn't know what it would taste like since it was our first time making it but he was adventitious.

It turned out wonderfully:






Aside from that and some serious Costco shopping (which required about 2 hours of splitting things up into smaller containers when we got home) we didn't do much. I did manage to snag this photo of the boys today, totally by accident.



They are watching their new Handy Manny DVD.