Barely Cooking!

I know most of my posts are about lunches but this past week I made a family favorite and used the leftovers to make a new family favorite. And I barely even cooked!!

Several years ago I stumbled across a recipe for Salsa Chicken in a  crock pot, I'm not even sure where the original recipe came from.Every time I make it I tweak it to what's in my cupboard so now I just wing it,lol! But it is my daughters all time favorite thing and she requests it often. You can also use it lots of ways. Typically my family likes it on rice, I like it in a flour tortilla and we all like to cover it with cheese :)  To make the Salsa Chicken:

3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/2 packet taco seasoning ( the original recipe called for a whole packet which I think is way too much)
1 cup salsa
1-2 cans cream of chicken soup ( you could use mushroom or celery as well)
1 can black beans,drained
and about 3/4 of a 16oz bag frozen corn ( if you use fresh or canned, I wouldn't add until maybe the last hour or it may get mushy)

Throw it all in your crock pot. I like to use the liners because I am lazy and hate to clean. Cook on low about 6-8 hours. You know it's done when the chicken shreds easily. Shred all the chicken and mix well. Serve alone, on rice or in flour tortilla shells. Top with cheese, sour cream or crushed tortilla chips.

There are only 3 people in my household so we always have leftovers. I had a roll of the seamless crescent roll dough in the fridge for another recipe but it just seemed like it would be perfect to fill it with the leftover salsa chicken. So I cut the dough into 4 equal squares. Spooned a bunch of the filling into the middle of each and topped it with cheddar cheese. Then I just folded the 4 corners in and made sure the seams were sealed. Brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with some bread crumbs. I then baked them for about 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. They turned out so yummy!

I was so happy that I was able to use leftovers and not feel like we were eating the same thing over again. Plus it was great to get 2 meals from barely even cooking!!

Tomorrow is reveal day for Foodie Pen Pals, so be sure to come back and see what I got this month!! And make sure if you haven't done so already you enter my giveaway for a copy of the Allergy Friendly Food for Families cookbook, there's something for everyone in it!

                                                                   Have a great night!
                                                                           ~Jen

Allergy Friendly Food For Families Giveaway!!

As many of you know I am a Moms Meet Ambassador and I often get asked to try different products and let you know what I think about them. This time I was asked to review a  new cookbook from the editors of  Kiwi. The cookbook is called Allergy-Friendly Food For Families and it's filled with 120 gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and soy-free recipes your whole family can enjoy!

First I have to say that I do not have an allergy in our household, however we have other friends and family that do and I found this cookbook to be loaded with lots of great information I can use to make things that everyone that comes over can enjoy! Besides the recipes it has information on allergies as well as a guide to building a natural allergy-free pantry. And they have a great website you should check out as well!

One of the recipes I made was chocolate cinnamon crisps. These were so fast and easy and as you can tell from the picture my daughter and her cousin really liked them. In fact they liked them so much that they ate them all before I could make a dip to go with them,lol! I also liked that I could cut them into cute shapes to put in lunches and will definitely be making them during the school year.

Another recipe we tried was the Polenta Mini Pizzas. First let me tell you that these are a piece of cake to make and something you can easily have the kids help make. In fact alot of the recipes in the book are geared to having the kids help in the kitchen. Which I think is great and really makes them want to try what they worked so hard on. Anyway back to the pizzas. After having my daughter help me put them together (literally about 10 minutes!!) we put them in the oven and waited not so patiently to try them. My daughter deemed them just okay, but said if she couldn't eat "real" pizza these would definitely be a good substitute. I on the other hand really liked them and on top of being allergy friendly they are super low in calories and fat making them figure friendly too! I will be making them again and trying some different toppings. Kiwi has given me permission to pass the recipe on to you so here you go:

                                                        Polenta Mini Pizzas
 Canola oil for coating the pan
1 (18 oz) tube of prepared polenta, sliced into 12 rounds
3/4 cup of you favorite tomato sauce ( they also have a great recipe for one in the book )
3/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly coat a rimmed baking sheet with canola oil.

2. Place the 12 polenta rounds on the prepared baking sheet. Top each with 1 scant tablespoon of sauce,1 tablespoon of mozzarella and 1 teaspoon Pecorino Romano cheese.

3. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cheese is bubbly.

Per Mini pizza:
66 calories
2g fat
3g protein
8g carbohydrates
1g dietary fiber

This recipe is gluten-free,nut-free,egg-free and soy-free.

** You could also add any other toppings that you want such as veggies, herbs or pepperoni.**

There are many other recipes in the cookbook and they are all nicely organized by category and clearly labeled as to which allergy they are for. A majority of the recipes are safe for all the allergies listed. To purchase this cookbook please go here and they will also throw in a free subscription to Kiwi magazine as well.

Now for the best part Moms Meet and Kiwi are allowing me to give away a copy of this great cookbook to one lucky reader!

To enter to win please comment on why you would love to win this book. Please make sure you leave an email so that I can contact you if you win.

Contest is open to residents of the USA and ends on August 6th at 10am. Winner will be chosen by random.org. CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED!!

                                                                      Good Luck!!

Disclaimer: I received this product for free from the sponsor of

the Moms Meet SM program, May Media Group LLC, who received

it directly from the manufacturer. As a Moms Meet SM blogger, I

agreed to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My

opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media

Group LLC or the manufacturer of the product.

Zucchini Season!!

Summer is in full swing and that means lots of zucchini!! My garden isn't doing as great this year but we do have some zucchini! One of my family's favorite things is zucchini bread and my daughter's all time favorite is chocolate chip zucchini bread. Now many recipes are heavy on the sugar and not so great for you but I use a recipe from  Skinnytaste and it is wonderful. In fact I haven't tried a recipe from her site that isn't awesome, so make sure you visit and look around, you won't be sorry you did!!

I like to make mine into muffins because it makes it easier to pack them in lunches and I control the size. When I do the loaf everyone takes giant slices,lol! The bonus is these are low fat as well!! The recipe can be found  here :)

Enjoy!!!

~Jen

Foodie Pen Pal Reveal Day!!

In an earlier post you read the guest post from my Foodie Pen Pal Tracie. If you missed it you can check it out here to see what I sent her. Now I am going to reveal what my pen pal Danielle sent me!!

As you can see from the picture Danielle sent me a wide variety of stuff!! According to Danielle, who hails from Oklahoma, they love their spicy Tex-Mex flavor!! I already love spicy so I was excited she took the risk and sent me some spicy stuff! She even sent me some homegrown peppers ( which for some reason did not make the picture, sorry!) We used those in some chili and salsa-YUMMY! She also sent some chili dried mangoes, I'm still trying to decide if I like them or love them,lol! They have such an interesting flavor and I would never have bought them for myself. Another thing I would have never bought, but is my new favorite, is the Chili Lemon Peanuts. OMG!! They are so yummy, I sure hope I can find them up here! She even sent my fave Luna bar flavor without even knowing it was!

My daughter of course had to get into the eating action and stole the Mallo Cups and the chocolate hazelnut wafer cookies. I was lucky enough to get a few of the wafer cookies with my coffee ;)

Danielle also included some cool things from her job at a local college that has medical based courses. She sent a fun "pill" pack filled with M&M's, some lip balm they made and a toothbrush. I love that even though they weren't foodie items she still included some things that defined who she is and what she does.

I loved my box from Danielle and it was a great experience. So much so that I will doing it again in July!! You do not need to be a blogger to be a foodie pen pal, so if you want to join in the fun go to The Lean Green Bean  to learn the details and sign up!! Thanks again Danielle for a great box!!

Have great day!!

~Jen

June Foodie Penpals Guest Poster Tracie!!

This month I participated in Foodie Penpals over at the The Lean Green Bean Blog.I was given Tracie's name to send her a surprise goodie box. Foodie Penpals is really a fun program and Tracie does an excellent job explaining it all in her post. Today I will post Tracie's post, to whom I sent a goodie box, and I will also reveal what my penpal Danielle sent to me in another post. So take it away Tracie!

Hi One Cool Lunch readers!  My name is Tracie and I am excited to be doing this guest post for Jen on foodie penpal reveal day.  This was my first month participating and I believe it was Jen’s first month too, so if you are wondering what a foodie penpal is then read on.  You can also check out Lindsay’s blog, The Lean Green Bean.  Lindsay is the founder and coordinator of the foodie penpal program.  She pairs everybody up each month so that you send a package to one person and receive a package from a different person.

I was lucky to be paired with Jen this month.  Jen and I exchanged a few emails and I had checked out her blog (which I think is great and I’m not just saying that because I am doing a guest post) so I was excited to see what she would send. I was not disappointed.  The note she included in the package stated she had sent some of her favorite things.  Check out the great package she sent! 

The first thing to be grabbed out of the box (yes, literally) by my kiddos were the cookies and cream magic milk straws.  We have never had these before so we had to try them immediately.  

They were a huge hit.  The day the package arrived we were packing for a camping trip so I packed the Peanut Butter and Co. dark chocolate and peanut butter.  We ate it with pretzels after our hike one day.  We had to go buy more.  Jen also included a package of Biscoff cookies.  This was another newbie for me.  I am so glad she introduced me to these cookies.  I don’t think I ever would have bought them because I tend to lean more towards chocolate type cookies, but these were delicious.  They had the perfect amount of sweetness and just the right crunch.  I only hope I can find them local.  I was excited to see a packet of Tastefully Simple onion onion seasoning.  I have used this before, but it has been a while.  I used it in the traditional way and made a veggie dip with it.  I made it to take somewhere, but it was so good I left it home for us to enjoy.  We also enjoyed the box of Annie’s macaroni and cheese.  We just discovered this macaroni and cheese and it was an instant favorite in our family.  I was completely unfamiliar with two of the items in the box (I think this is one of the fun parts of the foodie penpal program).  Jen included a jar of Penzeys Forward all purpose seasoning.  I have not tried it yet, but hope to this weekend.  She also included Primula tea.  This one threw me and I had to look it up to figure out how to use it.   The box also contained granola from a local company where Jen lives.  The original granola was super yum on yogurt.  It took me longer to try the dark chocolate and coffee granola because I am not a coffee drinker.  I really did not think I would like it, but as it turns out it was one of my favorite items in the box.  Who knew?  

Thanks Jen!  The box you sent was full of fun new foods for us to try.  If you want to connect with your own foodie penpal, here are a few of the details.

-On the 5th of every month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact your penpal and get their mailing address and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.
-You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal!
-The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box, to a fun recipe…use your imagination!
-You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)
-Foodie Penpals is open to blog readers as well as bloggers. If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you are to write a short guest post for your penpal to post on their blog about what you received. If two readers are paired together, neither needs to worry about writing a post for that month.

Thanks Tracie!! I'm so glad you enjoyed it and look for those Biscoff cookies at your local Wal-Mart store ;) To see what I was sent look here !!

Busy As A Bee!

I don't know about you but these last few weeks of school have been super busy!! We are now in the home stretch with only 1.5 days left,finally!! Tomorrow my daughter is having an end of the year picnic at lunch with her class. Of course she wanted me to bring a treat and requested tye dye cupcakes. While I do love making them it was a bigger project than I wanted to tackle this week. So I decided a picnic isn't complete without a few bees buzzing around!

These little peanut butter bees aren't just cute they are very yummy as well. They taste like buckeyes, if you have ever had one of those! The original recipe was from Taste of Home. For mine I used my favorite peanut butter Krema Natural PB. It is so smooth and creamy it's perfect for this recipe. And it has only one ingredient-peanuts. So you don't have to worry about the oils and other junk. I also used candy melts for the chocolate stripes instead of chocolate chips because I think it melts easier, tastes better and is easier to work with, but use whatever you have on hand.

These are quick and easy to make and I got 46 of them from the recipe which was exactly enough for 2 per person for her class. Which was good for me because these are very addicting and it's hard to stop eating after just one. So I didn't even have to worry about eating too many myself ;) And they are nice and small so they make a great lunchbox treat anytime of the year.

Now I know many people have nut free classrooms or nut allergies in their own home. I think you could probably make these with Sunbutter or whatever substitute you use for pb. And for the wings Wilton makes some large heart shaped confetti sprinkles that would probably make great wings too!

                                                               Have a great day!!
                                                                       ~ Jen

Time on My Hands

One of the comments I get most is "you must have lots of time on your hands". While the comment really bugs me, I understand where it's coming from. I will start off by saying like most moms I do not have enough hours in the day to get everything I would like to get done accomplished.You can tell this by my blog slacking lately ;) So like most of you I have to decide what's a priority for me and my family. One of my top priorities is making sure my daughter eats healthy foods.  Her lunches are a part of that and so I make the time to do them.

With that said most of her lunches take me less than 15 minutes from start to finish. That includes the mad scramble to find the right cutter or pik or any last minute requests! I make them in the morning before school while I enjoy my latte. I suppose I could do them the night before but that's family time as my hubby works alot so for us the morning works best.

As I'm sure you can tell from my lunches some are more detailed than others. And I don't make a "cool" lunch everyday and some days are more healthy than others. The point is you don't need to spend a ton of time to make it fun and healthy and get you kids to eat better lunches. For example, the other day I packed a snack of apple slices and a baby cuke for my daughter in a small bento box. At first it looked like this:

As I was packing it my daughter walked by, picked up a pink dog pik from the counter and stuck it in. It then looked like this:

I don't know about you, but given the choice I'd pick the snack with the doggy in it :)

So it doesn't really matter how much time you have or don't have even something as small as a dog pik can make a big difference. So start small but think big!!

                                                            Have a Great Weekend!!

                                                                     ~Jen