Kickin' Chicken Marinade

Photo courtesy of SweetLittleBluebird.com

Today, I thought I'd share one of the Winslett family's new favorite recipes - Kickin' Chicken Marinade from Sweet Little Bluebird.

In our house, we love anything buffalo chicken. Remember that Crockpot Buffalo Chicken Sliders recipe I shared a while back? [You can find it here.] Naturally when I ran across this recipe on Pinterest, I just had to try it out and it did not disappoint.

My favorite thing about this recipe besides how easy it is? It's low fat and no butter. Seriously!

The original recipe from Sweet Little Bluebird says to marinade the chicken for four hours. I let it sit over night and it tasted even better!

I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Miranda

You'll Need:

2 lbs of chicken strips

1 cup of hot sauce

1/4 cup of olive oil

1/4 cup of lime juice

2 cloves of garlic

Ziploc gallon bag

Step One. Open gallon bag, dump in all above ingredients and leave in the fridge for at least four hours.

Step Two. Open gallon bag again, throw the chicken in a skillet or on the grill and feast!

[[See! I told you it was easy!]]

Monday: C.R.A.F.T., Craft-O-Maniac, Making the World Cuter, Keeping It Simple Crafts, Rain on a Tin Roof, The Dedicated House, Alderberry Hill, Mad in Crafts, I Should Be Mopping the Floor, The Gunny Sack, Home Stories A to Z, Home Coming

Tuesday: Kammy's Korner, Sugar Bee Crafts, Chef in Training, Not Just a Housewife, Him and Her, A Stroll Thru Life, Mad Cap Frenzy, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Coastal Charm

Wednesday: We Like to Learn as We Go, Polkadots on Parade, No Minimalist Here, From My Front Porch to Yours, Yellow Bliss Road, Sew Much Ado, Seven Alive, Simply Designing

Thursday: 52 Mantels, Live Laugh Rowe, A Glimpse Inside, Stone Gable, The Girl Creative, Bloom Designs, Blissful and Domestic, Crafts a la Mode, From My Front Porch to Yours

Friday: The Dedicated House, Blissful and Domestic, Craft Dictator, DIY Vintage Chic, Shaken Together, 504 Main, Craftionary, The Grant Life, Thirty Handmade Days, Redoux Interiors, Simply Sweet Home, Just Us Four, Romantic Home, The Jenny Evolution

Crockpot Buffalo Chicken Sliders

Photo credit: The Unmarried Life

We're having the family over tonight for dinner. At first, I panicked a little bit, because Nana will be joining us as well. Nana is one of seven sisters who collectively have published two amazing cookbooks. What do you cook and serve a lady who is known around this county for her food?!

Nana's cookbooks get a lot of use in our kitchen!

Not to mention, I don't consider myself much of a cook to begin with. However, I am a self-professed master of the crock pot. It's kind of hard to mess crock pot meals up as long as you follow the recipe. 

R.J. and I have been digging this recipe lately for buffalo chicken sliders so hopefully it'll impress our family chef extraordinaire. (Seriously, ya'll haven't lived until you've eaten a dinner at this woman's house. It's uh-mazing!)

This recipe is delicious, easy to prepare and goes in the crock pot which has Miranda written all over it. I hope you like it Nana!

Put it on the menu for next week. You won't regret. Maybe, I'll even end up in the next cookbook.

Enjoy!

Miranda

You'll Need:

2 tbsp Butter

2 tbsp Minced Garlic

Boneless Chicken Breast

1 Bottle of Hot Sauce

1 Bottle of Louisiana Wing Sauce

1 Packet of Dry Ranch Mix

Buns

Directions:

1. Turn the crock pot on low and add butter and garlic.
2. Cut raw chicken into cubes and throw into the crock pot as you go.
3. Add some salt and pepper to your liking. 
4. Empty that bottle of Louisiana Wing Sauce in the crock pot and half of the bottle of hot sauce. 
5. Sprinkle the ranch mix on top and stir it up really well.
6. Put the top on the crock pot and let it cook for two hours stirring occasionally. 

After two hours, slap that stuff on a bun and drizzle it with some ranch dressing. Your diet can wait until tomorrow, right? ;)

Grocery Grumbling: Save by Buying Wholesale

Welcome back to our last installment of Grocery Grumbling! If you missed any of our previous posts, you can catch up here and here.

When we moved into our house, I was in awe of all the space we had in comparison to our 600 square foot apartment. Most notably, I was thrilled with the pantry space we know had. I have not one, but two pantries in our new home. I finally had the space to be able to buy in bulk and stockpile some nonperishable goods.

Shortly after we moved in, we got a membership to our local wholesale club, BJ's. After some trial and error not to mention a lot of math, I've compiled a list of the most cost-effective items to purchase at your local wholesale club like BJ's, Costco or Sam's Club.

Best Bang for Your Buck

Dog Food - there is usually always

a coupon for dog food and it'll get you a huge bag of food for a little bag price!

Olive Oil 

Toilet Paper

Potato Chips - I always go for the 50 count Snack Pack.

 It's perfect for lunches and lasts a month!

Snack Items - This includes: fruit snacks, granola bars, etc.

Toiletry Items - This includes: shampoo, conditioner, soap, 

toothpaste, deodorant, etc. Usually always have a coupon for these items.

Only have to buy them 1 or 2 times a year!

Ziploc Baggies: Another thing to get with a coupon that is almost always cheaper 

than the grocery store.

Contacts - Seriously! It's the least expensive place in town (and online) we've found

for the hubby's contacts!

That said, this is not a comprehensive list of the only things you should buy wholesale. These are simply the items that I have found to be most cost-effective. The most important tool to use while shopping wholesale is KNOWING PRICES. You can't spot a good deal without know what its counterpart at the grocery sells for. 

My tips for shopping wholesale? On average, I go to BJ's once a month with a strict budget. Everything is written on the list and typically has an accompanying coupon. Don't stray from the list. I know that stuff in the middle is tempting as is the mega size bag of Reese's on the candy aisle, but resist the dark side. If you don't, you'll have a hefty price tag at checkout. 

Before going, I use a price list to give me an idea of what I'll be spending to make sure it fits in my budget. Looking for a price list? Check them out here:

Costco Price List

Sam's Club Price List

BJ's Price List

What are your tips for saving by buying wholesale?

Miranda

Grocery Grumbling: How We Only Spend $60 a Week on Groceries

After my How to Buy a House in Your 20s series, I had several readers email and message me on Facebook asking the same thing: "How do you only spend $60 a week on groceries?!"

Well, what do you know?! That question has sparked this mini series I'm going to dub "Grocery Grumbling." What is in store for this mini series? I'll let you know how we grocery shop, we will meet a couponer via guest post to learn her method for beating the grocery grumbles and finally explore the wholesale world.

Let's get to it shall we?

Rethink where you shop.

When we first got married, I shopped at Publix or Kroger where I would spend $90-$100 per week. When we started really saving for the house, we switched to Walmart where I would spend $70-90 per week. Today, I shop at Food Depot. While this is not a nation-wide chain, it offers something that most grocery stores do not - dirt cheap meat.

By dirt cheap meat, I don't mean bad meat. One perk to having a husband who is constantly working in and out of grocery stores is he learns a thing or two about how it works behind the scenes. While grocery stores like Publix or Kroger have a meat prep team, they do not cut their own meat. They only package it - charging you a higher price. Food Depot has a team of butchers who both cut and package the meat - allowing for a cheaper price.

We fed nine adults hamburgers on July 4th with six pounds of ground beef that we paid a whopping $10 for. We had about six patties leftover too which I ate for lunch over the next week.

Buy store brand. 

I think this one is pretty common knowledge, but sometimes we need to be reminded that brand naming isn't everything unless you've got a coupon for it!

Freeze. Can. Freeze. 

My husband's boss was nice enough to pass down a chest freezer from her restaurant to us. We definitely put it to good use!

Right now, our parents and grandparents are sharing their garden surplus with us. I'm up to my ears in squash, zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes. I've been sticking it in the freezer. Actually, just last night I tried my hand at canning stewed tomatoes and I'd like to think it was an epic success. Hehe!

Here's some instruction on freezing squash and zucchini. Here is the tutorial I used for canning the stewed tomatoes.

Photo courtesy of Sherelle Christensen Designs

Consider freezer meals. 

Lastly, when I get in a cooking mood and have enough room, I cook freezer meals. These last us forever! Usually, we can eat on these two days in a row. (Remember, there is only two of us!) You can click here and here for my favorite freezer meal recipes. 

Enjoy!

Miranda

Freezer Meals 101

Greetings readers!

I thought I'd share with you a little experiment I did during the month of December. 

Truth be told I am not much of a cook. It isn't that I can't cook - I just really don't like too. I love eating the food, but not necessarily putting in the elbow grease to make the food. For some, half the fun of eating is the cooking. Me? Not so much. 

After some reflection, the fact that I don't like to cook probably contributes to our frequent eating out (which was killing our budget!). After chasing around 13 two-year-olds, writing awesome blog posts and knocking out some Etsy orders, the last thing I want to do with my time is cook. 

Last month, I experimented with doing freezer meals which entails a three to four hour cooking marathon. The cooking marathon leaves you with approximately a month's worth of meals ready to be popped in the oven. If you don't like the chore, you might as well do it once and get the pain over with, right? 

For us, it worked wonderfully! I filled our chest freezer with: homemade spaghetti sauce, chicken and bean chili, this beefaroni stuff, BBQ chicken, meatloaves and chicken spaghetti. All I had to do was thaw it, throw it in oven for a few minutes and open a can of beans to go with it. Now, that's what I call cooking!

I haven't actually done a cooking marathon for this month because we STILL have leftover meals from December. Because of the holidays, we didn't eat at home every night. 

We definitely have picked out a few favorite recipes which I'd like to share with you.

Chicken Spaghetti (2 - 8x8 casseroles)
4 chicken breasts - boiled & shredded2 cans cream of mushroom soup1 green bell pepper, diced1 onion, diced4oz jar of pimentos, diced3C thin spaghetti, broken into small pieces2C shredded cheese1 tsp seasoned salt1/8 tsp cayennesalt & pepper to taste
Boil chicken, keep 2C of broth. Cook spaghetti in the remaining broth. In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together. Mix in the saved chicken broth gradually. You want the mixture to be creamy, slightly soupy, but not drippy. Press into pans and top with more cheese. Wrap in foil.Reheating - Thaw casserole. Remove foil & place back in baking dish. Cook at 350 for 45m.
1C chopped zucchini
1/2C chopped onion
1-1/2lbs Italian sausage
3 garlic cloves, pressed
26oz jar spaghetti sauce
30oz beef broth
1C water
1-1/2C uncooked pasta (egg noodles, radiatore, ziti work well)
basil
Chop zucchini & set aside (I cut it in slices and then cut the slices in half but I like bigger chunks). Cook sausage until no longer pink, add onions & garlic. Add spaghetti sauce, broth & water - bring to a boil. Stir in zucchini, cook 2-4 minutes until tender, add basil.
Chop zucchini & set aside (I cut it in slices and then cut the slices in half but I like bigger chunks). Cook sausage until no longer pink, add onions & garlic. Add spaghetti sauce, broth & water - bring to a boil. Stir in zucchini, cook 2-4 minutes until tender, add basil.


Lazy Lasagna Chili (made 3 - 4C bags)

For more recipes, click here!

It's safe to say freezer meals have found a place in both my freezer and my heart. As I run across more delicious recipes, I'll be sure to share the love!

Until next time!
Miranda