Totes Easy Recipes

Okay I give up some food is just too good to photograph and apparently I will never remember to take pictures of my food before I eat it. This should not be surprising to me as evenings are the most hectic time of day around here. It pretty much is a non-stop flurry of OMG FINISHDINNERBEFOREMELTDOWNGETABATHGOTOBEDSORTOF!

So anyway, this is a family favorite and it is the easiest thing I have ever made except maybe toast. The amount of ingredients here is just a suggestion, basically just put in as much chicken as you think you want and then enough salsa to cover that chicken.

Crockpot Chicken Tacos

Ingredients:

16 ounces medium salsa

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts

Flour tortillas

Your choice of toppings

Steps:

Place salsa and chicken in crockpot, cook on high for 4 to 6 hours or low for 6 to 8 hours. When chicken is done it should shred easily with a fork. I like to shred all the chicken up and then let it sit a little while so that all the little bits soak up some salsa before serving. We eat these all the time. We like to put shredded "fiesta cheese" or "mexican blend" as it is sometimes called and Gallo Pinto (which is a rice and beans recipe I'm including as well) on the tortilla along with the chicken and wrap it up like a burrito. I don't remember where I found the original recipe for this, but it included adding an onion and a packet of taco seasoning to the crockpot ingredients which I used to do until I didn't have those on hand and I couldn't tell the difference.

Gallo Pinto is a Costa Rican dish that I picked up when I lived there for a very short time. In fact, I just learned from Wikipedia that it's the national dish. There are as many ways to make it as there are fish in the sea so pretty much as long as you include rice and beans you've done it right. I've experimented a lot to get it as close to what I remember tasting in my area at the time and think I've finally gotten the taste (if not the exact ingredients) correct.

Gallo Pinto

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked basmati (or whatever) rice

1 can black beans, drained

1 tablespoon butter

4 cloves minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon cumin

salt to taste

Steps:

1. Cook rice to package instructions.

2. Melt the butter in the rice. This will help keep it from getting clumpy.

3. Add drained beans and spices, and stir it up nice.

It's totally easy and delicious and the measuring of ingredients is not that necessary as it's also very forgiving.