A Better Bag of Groceries

Six Sisters’ Slow Black Bean and Corn Salsa Chicken

Monday, January 23, 2012 at 07:01 AM

Back in the day, I used to have dinner parties with colleagues and we would share recipes.  That’s how I got the recipe for the Christmas Salad (Crunchy Romaine Toss) that I shared with you (and that I have received a gazillion emails about – thanks for the recipe love!)  That recipe came out of a dinner party that my husband and I hosted for about 17 people that I worked with at the time.  I remember it because my husband and I had to put about 3 tables together in our little house and squeeze every iota of space that we had to fit everyone in.  It was a fabulous time – and we all shared recipes after the event. 

It was also before we all had kids and busier lives – and before our networks became more global.  Now, my recipe sharing with colleagues is more virtual – but still very cool.  That same salad recipe is now being made by Dr. Tyra Carter, Corporate Dietitian for United Supermarkets in Texas.  Dr. Carter writes me to say that she made the Christmas salad, that she and her family loved it, and that it made enough dressing for several salads.  And I get new recipes too!  Tracey Cullen, from King Kullen Supermarkets, sent me this gem.  She says, “I heart slow cooking. Made this last night, very good.”  And so that is how I came to be making Slow Cooker Black Bean and Corn Salsa Chicken from the Six Sisters Stuff Blog.

Ingredients

2 cans black beans, drained (Eden No Salt Added Canned Black Beans get a score of 100 – Wow!!)

2 cans corn, drained (Del Monte No Salt Added Canned Corn gets a score of 93)

1 package taco seasoning (Bearitos Taco Seasoning gets a NuVal score of 23)

4-5 chicken breasts (NuVal score of 39)

1 cup salsa (Ortega Black Bean & Corn Mild Salsa gets a NuVal score of 55)

3/4 cup water

Directions

Rinse beans

Rinse corn

Put beans, corn, taco seasoning and water in crock pot and mix together until seasoning is dissolved.

Place chicken breasts on top.

Spread salsa on chicken.

Cook on high for 4 hours.

Shred meat and serve however you want. 

We had this on whole grain tortillas with parboiled rice…

some grated cheddar cheese…

some avocado…

some non-fat plain Greek yogurt…

Everyone loved it.  Especially the kids!! 

This is a very versatile dish. You can even make it into a chili after shredding the chicken.  This is a new fav!  Thanks Tracey!

Posted by: Melissa 9 comments

Posted in: King Kullen, Slow Cooker Recipes

Tags: Slow Cooker, Slow Cooker Recipes

Crock Pot Girls!

Monday, September 19, 2011 at 07:10 AM

Crock Pot Girl, Jenna, from the Crock Pot Girl Website

Crock Pot Girl, Nicole, from the Crock Pot Girl website

Today’s post needs to be a quickie!  My week is insane!  So, I guess it is appro-po that I am talking about my crock pot! 

I just want to give you all a good re-co.  (See I’m even speaking in short-hand today!)  Have you checked out Crock Pot Girls on facebook?  If you haven’t yet, you should! 

I made like a gazillion Crock Pot recipes here last fall, winter and spring.  My crock pot nearly saved my life as I transitioned from a part time job with NuVal to full time (plus).  OK, that’s a little dramatic, but you know what I mean.  Seriously, whether you work outside the home or not, crock pots rule!  As we all try to balance school, work, sports, activities, social commitments and the like, sometimes the only way to ensure that a meal is coming out of our kitchens and not the drive-through is by using our crock pots.

Crock Pot Girls is a facebook page that you can “like”.  On the page, there are tons of recipes that people send in (some have photos, some do not).  The Crock Pot Girls facebook page has become so popular in the one short month that it has been up and running, that the girls are already beginning to take their idea to a website.  Their site is still under construction, but stay tuned, because I think this is going to be huge.

Now, you know, for me, it’s all about nutrition. So, I do tell you to approach with caution.  As I perused the facebook page, I decided to skip over “Bacon Ranch Slow Cooked Chicken”.  Um, probably not the best NuVal scores!  But I found this Chicken Cacciatore recipe:
4 bls/skls chicken breasts cut in chunks (NuVal score of 39)

1 jar favorite red sauce (I used Prego Veggie Smart, NuVal score of 42)
…
1 T chopped garlic (I used the jar kind, Cosmos Ready to Use Chopped Garlic,  NuVal score of 91)

1 T Italian dried Seasoning

1 Red Pepper Sliced, NuVal score of 96
1 Onion Sliced, NuVal score of 93

So, a huge thank you to the Crock Pot Girls for bringing this recipe exchange to facebook! 

You can find lots of crock pot recipes here on A Better Bag of Groceries by putting “slow cooker” in the search box above!

Question of the Day

How often do you use your Crock Pot?  What’s your favorite Crock Pot meal?

Posted by: Melissa 7 comments

Posted in: Slow Cooker Recipes

Tags: crock pot girls, crock pots, facebook, Slow Cooker

Slow Cooker Recipe: Chicken Paprikash

Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 07:11 AM

I am not putting away my slow cooker for the summer.

If anything, the beautiful weather is even more of a reason to keep using it!  When we get home from our busy work days, we want to enjoy the lasting daylight with our kids.  My son wants us to join him for one-on-one basketball and we love to take family bike rides, so if we come through the door to dinner ready and waiting for us, this is much more likely to happen.

This month’s Family Circle caught my eye and landed in my shopping cart. 

I think it was a combination of the beautiful lilacs on the cover, the promise of low-cal, slow-cooker recipes, and the low price of $1.99.  In any case, I did find some time to flip through and check out the recipes.  We made Chicken Paprikash this week and it was awesome!

The recipe was pretty “healthy”, but I found a couple of ways to make even more nutritious by trading up by making some substitutions for better NuVal scores.

Oh, and it was so easy!  I actually put it together on Monday night in about 15 minutes, while making my actual Monday night dinner, wrapping up my workday, watching the kids, and getting ready to go teach Pilates.  How’s that for multi-tasking?

Then, before leaving for work and school Tuesday, I put it on the slow-cooker.

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1 inch pieces (NuVal score of 30)

2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 pound fresh green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces (NuVal score of 100)

1 cup frozen pearl onions, thawed (NuVal score of 91, if my husband had purchased Bird’s Eye Deluxe White Pearl Onions.  BUT, he mistakenly purchased Bird’s Eye Pearl Onions in Real Cream Sauce with a Delicious Touch of Sherry which score a 24)

2 cans (8 ounces each) tomato sauce (NuVal score of 68  for Testa’s)

3 Tablespoons paprika

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3/4 cup reduced fat sour cream (See how I substituted for a better NuVal score below)

Cooked egg noodles, for serving (See how I substituted for a better NuVal score below)

Directions:

1.  Coat slow cooker bowl with nonstick cooking spray.  In medium-size bowl, toss the chicken thighs with flour. 

Combine in slow cooker with green beans, onions, tomato sauce and 1 cup water. 

Stir to blend, then add 1 tablespoon of the paprika, the salt and pepper.

2.  Cover slow cooker and cook for 4 hours on HIGH or 6 1/2 hours on LOW.

3.  In a small bowl, whisk sour cream with remaining 2 tablespoons paprika.  Scoop 1/2 cup sauce from slow cooker and gradually whisk into sour cream.  Slowly stir sour cream mixture into slow cooker.  Serve paprikash over noodles.

Some Notes on This Recipe

OK, so first of all, the recipe tells you to cut the boneless, skinless chicken thighs into 1-inch pieces.  But probably since I was multi-tasking, I missed that part!  So, I put the chicken thighs in whole.  And they came out great!  They just fell apart.  My cooking time was longer than the recipe (because we are gone for longer than 6 1/2 hours) so this was probably a good mistake on my part.  So, my advice?  Skip that cutting of the chicken and cook it on LOW for 9 1/2 hours.

Now this one is kind of funny.  My husband did the grocery shopping on the Saturday before this dinner.  Every Saturday morning, we grab a cup of coffee and review the week ahead together and plan out all of our upcoming activities and meals.  Of course, for us, this includes blog giveaways and recipes too.  Grocery shopping kind of alternates between the two of us, depending on who has what going on that particular Saturday.  We go over the menu, the recipes, make the list together, and one of us runs with it.  So my husband knew he had to find some frozen pearl onions, but he bought “creamed” pearl onions instead.  Oops!

I’ll tell you – in my early days of blogging, I probably would have gone back out and bought the correct onions.  But now I kind of roll with it.

So, I prepared the creamed onions according to the package directions – 5 minutes in the microwave.

Holy heart attack!  Look at those! 

Then, I put them in a colander and rinsed off all the cream sauce.

Voila!  About 1 cup of pearl onions, just as the recipe called for.  Whew!

OK – now for the Trade Ups.

This recipe called for reduced-fat sour cream.  But I never use sour cream anymore.   I always replace it with non-fat plain Greek yogurt instead.  Hood Light Sour Cream scores a 31 on the NuVal scale.  Chobani Non-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt scores a 93. 

That’s a pretty good trade-up, and I find that it tastes almost exactly the same.

And finally, I traded up the egg noodles for Dreamfield’s Rotini. 

And here’s why.  I know that egg noodles would be the more Hungarian accompaniment for this recipe.  But my NuVal experience tole me that egg noodles don’t get the highest Nuval scores.  For example, Amish Kitchen Wide Egg Noodles only score a 12 on the NuVal scale.  There are some egg noodle alternatives out there, but I haven’t had much luck.  We tried a whole wheat egg noodle to accompany a German recipe that I made a few months back and the result was not good.  The leftover noodles sat in our refrigerator for days – looking all grey and pathetic.  So, I made the executive decision to forgo egg noodles this time and instead turn to one of our old favorites, Dreamfield’s Rotini.  Perfect!

The Verdict

Well, my Taste Test Team LOVED this recipe and gave it the two thumbs up.  Well, everyone except my son, who gave it one thumb up.  He found it kind of spicy, which is typical for him.  Next time, I would either cut back on the paprika or take out his serving before doing the whole paprika/Greek yogurt mixing thing.  This recipe is a keeper – especially for summer.  Gotta love that 15 minute prep time that can be done the evening ahead.

Enjoy!

Posted by: Melissa 6 comments

Posted in: Slow Cooker Recipes

Tags: Slow Cooker Recipes

Slow-Cooker Solution: German-Style Beef Roast

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 08:15 AM

Like most Modern American Families, ours is a mish-mash of many different heritages, but the one country that is probably the most strongly represented among us – is probably Germany.  My husband’s father was born of German immigrants, so I guess that makes my husband 1/4 German, right?  Anyway, he grew up having an “Oma” and an “Opa” who spoke German and who made German food, so now and then, I like to try my hand at learning to make something German.  I must admit, a lot of traditional German food is really not to my liking (bratwurst, eeek!) but I did find this German-Style Beef Roast recipe  for the Slow Cooker that looked pretty easy and it went along with my New Year’s resolution to become one with my Crock Pot.

Ingredients

• 1  2-1/2- to 3-pound  boneless beef chuck pot roast (We used a top loin and we kept it to 1 1/2 lbs for our family of 4.  NuVal score for top loin is 30)
• 1  tablespoon  cooking oil (We used Canola oil, NuVal score of 24)
• 2  cups  sliced carrots (NuVal score of 99)
• 2  cups  chopped onions (NuVal score of 93)
• 1  cup  sliced celery (NuVal score of 96)
• 3/4  cup  chopped kosher-style dill pickles (We haven’t scores these Boar’s Head dill pickles yet, but Claussen Kosher Dill pickles score an 8 )
• 1/2  cup  dry red wine or beef broth
• 1/3  cup  German-style mustard
• 1/2  teaspoon  coarse ground black pepper
• 1/4  teaspoon  ground cloves
• 2    bay leaves
• 2  tablespoons  all-purpose flour
• 2  tablespoons  dry red wine or beef broth
•     Hot cooked spaetzle or cooked noodles (See note below)
•     Snipped fresh parsley (optional)

Note:  I’ve looked a lot at pasta scores since working for NuVal.  There are some fantastic pastas that score a 91 on the NuVal scale, and I’ve always noticed that the lowest scoring pastas are egg noodles.  If you want to be traditional here, you might go with Gia Russa Spaetzle Enriched Egg Noodles, which score a 24 on the NuVal scale.  Alternatively, Food Club, a private label brand sold at many supermarkets around the country, makes a yolk-free egg noodle which scores a 57 on the NuVal scale.

Directions:

1.  Trim fat from meat. If necessary, cut roast to fit into a 3-1/2- or 4-quart slow cooker. In a large skillet brown the meat on all sides in hot oil. Drain fat.

2.  Chop carrots, celery and onions.

3. Chop Pickles

4. In the cooker, combine the carrots, onions, celery, and pickles.

Place the meat on top of vegetables. In a small bowl combine the 1/2 cup red wine, the mustard, pepper, cloves, and bay leaves.

5.  Pour over meat and vegetables in cooker.

6. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 8 to 10 hours or on high-heat setting for 4 to 5 hours. Remove the meat from the cooker and place on a serving platter; cover with foil to keep warm. (Note:  Be sure to cook on very, very low if going for the low and slow method.  In fact, you may want to add more liquid.)

7. For gravy: Transfer vegetables and cooking liquid to a 2-quart saucepan. Skim fat. Discard bay leaves. In a small bowl, stir together flour and the 2 tablespoons wine. Stir into the mixture in saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 1 minute more. Serve with vegetables, gravy, and hot cooked spaetzle. If desired, sprinkle with parsley.

The Verdict

I always tell the truth here at A Better Bag of Groceries – so here it is.  This recipe gets an A+ for aroma.  When I pulled into my garage that evening and got out of my car, I thought I was in the Black Forest!  It smelled so good!  I would recommend adding more of the broth and/or wine for cooking because the liquid dried up a bit – or be sure to keep your slow cooker on very, very low.  Sometimes recipes need some tweaking – and this one may need a little – but it sure was unique and my husband appreciated the effort.

Yesterday’s Giveaway

Congratulations to Commenter #23 Cathy.  You’ve won yesterday’s Almond and Apricot giveaway.  Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can mail your prize out to you.  Thanks to everyone who entered.

Posted by: Melissa 1 comment

Posted in: Slow Cooker Recipes

Tags: German Recipes, Slow Cooker Recipes

Slow-Cooker Recipe: Guinness-Braised Corned Beef

Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 06:57 AM

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day – back by popular demand – I share with you my favorite recipe for Corned Beef.  This one is from Cooking Light Magazine and it goes in the slow cooker.  It’s Guinness-Braised Corned Beef. 

It’s sooooooo good.

Ingredients

Directions

Combine first 11 ingredients in a large electric slow cooker, stirring until well blended; top with beef.

Cover and cook on HIGH 8 hours or until beef is tender. Remove beef; cut diagonally across grain into 1/4-inch slices. Discard broth mixture.

For more corned beef recipes and ideas on how to throw a great St. Patrick’s Day party, check out last year’s St. Patrick’s Day post: How to Throw a Green Party

NuVal in Another New York Supermarket Chain!

Today, Tops Friendly Markets, which has 126 stores in Upstate New York and Northern Pennsylvania, announces that they have introduced the NuVal nutritional scoring system in their stores.  As the NuVal Customer Manager for the Northeast, I have been the Project Co-Lead for Tops, and I have been dying to tell you about this exciting launch.  Check out the Tops website  to learn more.

Posted by: Melissa 2 comments

Posted in: corned beef, Slow Cooker Recipes, St. Patrick's Day

Tags: corned beef, Slow Cooker Recipes, St. Patrick's Day, Tops