As the family watches the Superbowl, I’m planning next week’s menu. I really tried to act interested for the first part while I ate my cheese dip. But then I realized that my mind was far away and I hadn’t paid any attention whatsoever to the game.
Monday – Chicken Fried Rice (Since I haven’t made any rice ahead of time, I’ll just use a little less water than normal when I cook it to make it dryer. This was a little tip I learned from a student’s “How to Make Fried Rice” speech when I taught in Thailand.)
Tuesday – Grilled Chicken Breasts and whole wheat pasta
Wednesday – Pre-cooked hamburger patties with mushroom gravy over mashed potatoes
Thursday – BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
Friday – OUT TO EAT!
Saturday – Leftovers
Sunday – Potato soup
My New Tip for Pre-Cooking Chicken:
If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I love to pre-cook meats as much as I can in order to prevent myself from making excuses when it comes time to make dinner. One of the most cost-effective meats that I buy is bone-in/skin-on chicken breasts, which I can get on sale for 1$ or less per pound. I typically buy 5 to 6 lbs at a time, and then boil them to make soup for our first meal. I then remove the meat from all of them, and divide it into 1 to 1.5 cup packages to freeze. These are great to have to throw together a last minute casserole or chicken fried rice. The only problem in the past was that the meat tended to dry out in the freezer. So last time, as I was dividing up the chicken into freezer bags, I spooned a bit of the fat that had risen to the top of the soup. I put about a teaspoon into each bag, and then smooshed it around after sealing the bag. The fat and the liquid that I added to the bag worked and when I defrosted the meat on 10% power, it was much juicier than it used to be.
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Not sure if it'd work for you, but for a while I tried hacking what becomes the normal boneless skinless chicken breast and using that as "normal" then cooking up the bone in parts and pulling the meat off. I haven't done it too much as I'm not crazy about bone-in chicken, but I can't get chicken as cheap as you do regardless! I posted about it here, and there are a couple of links to posts with pictures. Nice work with the fat – I'm sure that gave it a huge flavor boost!
PS – I gave thought to starting a facebook group called "I bet I can find 1,000 people who couldn't care less about the Superbowl". :>)
Yes, not too interested in the superbowl here either. Hope you had a nice evening though! Thanks for the chicken tips.
I thought I was the only one totally not interested in the Superbowl. 🙂 Thanks for the hint!
Years ago I worked in a fabric store. We had a big sale on SuperBowl Sunday and it was ALWAYS crowded with folks who couldn’t care less about the SuperBowl. Some were even chuckling about how they loved SuperBowl Sunday because their husbands didn’t care how long they were shopping that day.