Food For Friday: Crockpot Mexican Chicken Chili

Today's Food for Friday:

Crockpot Mexican Chicken Chili

This is one of my favorite on-the-go or "dump" recipes as I sometimes like to call them. They are truly a throw in the crockpot, walk away, shred chicken, and eat kind of meals. Almost all of the ingredients are canned AND for the most part this is a healthy recipe. It is husband approved in my house and that always says a lot!

Ingredients
1 can of black beans (rinse before adding)
2 cans of chili beans
1 can of corn
1 can of enchilada sauce
3-4 chicken breasts (I used frozen)
1 package of cream cheese (optional)
2 cups chicken broth
1-2 cups milk
Tortilla Strips of Chips for topping
Salsa (optional topping)

Directions
In a crock pot add all of the canned ingredients. broth, and the chicken breasts. Obviously drain and rinse the black beans. I sometimes drain a bit of the liquid from the chili beans so that there isn't too much liquid, but that is totally optional. Cook in the crock pot on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. After cooking, take the chicken out and shred it. I throw mine in the bowl of my stand mixer and let the paddle attachment do the shredding for me. Then dump it back in the crock pot. At this point, you have to do what your taste buds are telling you. My favorite way is to add about 1 cup of milk and 1 brick of cream cheese to a mixing bowl and cream them together. To be totally honest, I pulled the cream cheese out of the fridge. Put it in a glass measuring bowl. Heated until it was soft. Added a little milk and stirred until it was good and creamy. Then I added it to the crock pot, stirring to mix well.

At this point you are ready to eat! We always top ours with some seasoned tortilla strips. They are usually found in the isle next to the croutons. This time around hubs and I felt that ours was missing something so he added hot sauce and I added Mild Salsa from Mexican Villa. This made it just right! I have also added a bit of cumin and chili powder in the past as well. That is the beauty of this recipe...you can throw whatever your family will eat into it. Most recipes similar to this call for Rotel or some kind of tomato. We don't really eat tomatoes so we obviously skip this one.

I have some left at home, so I will TRY and remember a picture of this delicious and simple dinner solution. Perfect for nights when you want something good, but you don't have a lot of time to do so! Enjoy! 

A Look Back at February

February went by in the blink of an eye! I was completely OK with this as it meant Spring weather and Spring Break were just around the corner! I am counting down the days to summer already!

A little picture recap of how our month went...

Have I mentioned that my boys both LOVE Honey Buns for breakfast?? Cole decided that Wrangler needed a honey bun. Then he proceeded to break down because the dog ate his HB (yes, the same one that he personally fed the dog...life of a toddler)

Around the beginning of the month our ceiling fell through in the milk barn. Luckily there were no cows in the barn at the time. There were feed sack remains and a large metal ball that busted the feed auger line eventually causing a break through. What a mess! 

We did some finger painting for Valentine's Day! 

The owner of Flame brought these to our classroom Valentine's Party. They were chocolate covered cheesecake bites. They were heavenly! 

Every couple of months we have a major barn cleaning day. Cole love to help with the cleaning. 

We started shopping around for mowers. We are not sure our little mower will make it this year. It takes three hours to mow our whole yard with the poor thing. 

Little man reading...just because he is cute this one made the list! 

We worked ground and planted oats. They are sprouting nicely and are bright green after the early March rain that we have received. 

We took some time to enjoy the beautiful weather and did some pond fishing. Cole is going to need his own pole as he wanted to do it all himself. 

We welcomed a new bull calf into the world. This one was tiny and a twin. Our first set of twins. The other one was not born alive. This little guy made it just fine. We have since had 3 more bull calves.

Little man was sick with a fever so we headed to the doctor to find out that he did NOT have an ear infection. Woo! Hoo! 

We worked our calves (de-horned and vaccinated) and Cole enjoyed some outside play time. 

That was February in a nut shell! Nothing super exciting, but just a little bit of life.