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Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Easy Chicken Santa Fe and American Idol

That's what was on our menu/agenda for last evening, but I didn't get a chance to blog about it.

We didn't actually have Easy Chicken Santa Fe for dinner last night, but I did make some. We ended up going out to our local Mexican restaurant to celebrate our boys' excellent report cards - both received all A's. Or did we go because DH loves to go on Wednesdays for Margarita night?

It was a bit weird to go out to dinner and then come home and cook anyway, but it was for a good cause. I cooked the meal for a teacher at our school who is fighting cancer. He was diagnosed in 2003, the same year that my husband was diagnosed with colon cancer (long story, maybe for another time, but things are going very well now). We formed a bit of a kinship, trading war stories about chemo, radiation, etc. He's a young man, much too young (about 28?), and is having a very rough go of it. There has been very little time in the past 2.5 years where he hasn't been battling this disease - chemo, radiation, bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, you name it. Our staff at school help his family and him out (he has a wife and a 2-year-old daughter) with meals and babysitting. Sadly, they are having to face the possibility that this disease will not, in fact, go away and that he may not ever get better. Very sad. Their strength and positive outlook are very inspiring.

But back to the food......

Easy Chicken Santa Fe is a crockpot dish that I actually enjoy. I have nothing against crockpots, it's just that I don't often find things to cook in it that I think actually come out well. This dish, not surprisingly, is nothing fancy and actually doesn't even look all that pretty, but it's one of those dishes that almost everyone likes and it's so easy to put together. I have changed the original recipe, cutting back on the chicken, adding more salsa and sometimes doubling the beans. It's a flexible recipe, one that's easy to adjust to your own preferences. It can also easily be cooked on the stove (which is how I did it last night) and I'll include those instructions with the recipe.

Along with the chicken dish, I brought my co-worker a salad, tortillas and cheese (for the chicken dish) and Giant Chocolate Chunk Cookies.

It's becoming harder to blog these days. We got a second computer (though we're having trouble with our wireless network - too darn slow), but now the new seasons of 24 and American Idol are cutting way into my blogging time! :) But I'm totally addicted to both and will just have to find time to watch AND blog.

Nothing much is on tap for tonight. Once again we are overrun with leftovers and it's also Tae Kwon Do night for my oldest DS. Youngest DS and I will head to the YMCA for some much-needed exercise and then home for leftovers. Not sure what's on tap for tomorrow, but I have lots of time - I'm taking the day off to take DH to the hospital to get his chemo port removed. He hasn't had chemo since spring of 2004, but chose to keep the port in, just in case. Once that's over (it's an easy surgery, but I suppose that's easy for me to say), the day is mine, so of course my mind turns to cooking......

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