Chow Mein aka Beef and Rice

 

I know I know…. this is NOT Chow Mein.  For some reason in my family that is what it was always called.  Along with grilled cheese being called cheese toasties.  I mostly call this dish beef and rice now, I got use to it after I was married and Mike looked at me like I was crazy when I said I was going to make Chow Mein…. and this is what I served him!

Whatever you call it, it’s good, easy, fast… and in one skillet!  You can also make it in the oven, which is how I always use to make it until I realized I could use minute rice and cut down the cooking time by a lot and I could do it on the stove and not heat up the house for over an hour.

Sweet and Sour Slow Cooker Chicken W/Orzo

Just saw this on one of my favorite food blogs beginning of the week and knew I had to make it this weekend!  I love crockpot recipes.  I of course tweaked this one a bit and I will be making it again.

The recipe calls for 4-6 chicken breasts, well I only had 3 and I thought it would be enough.  I really didn’t want to make Mike run to the store for more.  It was good with the 3 but I am going to use more for sure next time and it will be REALLY good.  The picture above is with extra “sauce” on it, the kids and I didn’t add the extra sauce to ours and it was still really flavorful.  I couldn’t believe how good the chicken itself was.

Also, you could use white rice instead of orzo pasta but I didn’t think I had enough rice on hand so I opted for the orzo.  I have put the recipe below for the orzo as I didn’t just use water.

Crock Pot Roast and Rice

There is nothing better than throwing something in the crock pot and not thinking about it until dinner time.  It lets you not think about dinner all day and then it’s like, Presto, dinner is done!  One thing I love is roast.  I have never cooked one any other way than the crock pot.  Usually what happened is on Sunday we would have a roast, maybe potatoes, rolls and a veggie.  Then on Tuesday or Wednesday we would dig the left over roast out with the gravy it automatically makes when cooked, shred it up and serve it over white rice.

But my boys, they don’t like roast all that much, so on Sundays they didn’t eat a lot of meat.  But they LOVED and raved over the leftovers.  So my mom had a brilliant idea.  Once the roast is done cooking, put rice in the crock pot and have roast and rice that night and you will still have it left to have leftovers later in the week.