Bombay Potatoes and Egg

As we continue to clean out our pantry, freezer and fridge, my meals are getting weirder.  Honestly, there's no other way around it.  Tuesday night's dinner was no exception.

When I had to cook dinner on Tuesday night, I found a package of Tasty Bite Bombay Potatoes that Tasty Bite sent me back in September.  It was ridiculously hot in my kitchen and I decided to use this shortcut as the base of my meal to avoid any real cooking.

I took out a few pieces of the Tyson Grilled and Ready Chicken Breast Strips from the freezer and warmed them up on the stove.

When the chicken was warmed through, I added the package of Bombay potatoes to the pan.

I let all of these ingredients simmer while I quickly cooked up an egg to serve on top.

Like I said before, this was definitely a weird dinner.  While I actually don't mind eating Tasty Bite products as a quick shortcut for Indian food, nothing seems to be able to mask the processed flavor of the chicken breast strips.  The egg, however, was probably the best part of the dish.  After all, I love a good runny egg yolk, and serving the Bombay potatoes with an egg was definitely the right choice. 

I am definitely looking forward to cooking normal meals again once the packing, the moving, and the unpacking is over.  In the meantime, stay tuned for more weird meals from this half-packed kitchen!

Easy Chicken Tacos: Tyson Grilled & Ready Chicken Breast Strips

While I love cooking a lot of meals from scratch, I'm definitely not opposed to taking a shortcut or two.  I recently received a coupon to try out a package of Tyson Grilled & Ready Frozen Chicken Breast Strips courtesy of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program.  I was definitely curious to give these a try because pre-cooked chicken would definitely help cut down my cooking time.

After my huge brunch on Sunday, Bret and I had plans for the afternoon that were cancelled at the last minute.  We instead spent the late afternoon going for a leisurely stroll along the Charles River to enjoy the summer weather.  By the time we returned home from our walk, neither of us really felt up to cooking an elaborate meal.  We decided to make chicken tacos using the frozen chicken and the tortillas that I received from the tortilla party.

The prep for this meal was super easy.  Bret sliced up half a white onion and sauteed them in a pan.  I had a leftover roasted jalapeno that I didn't end up using for my spicy roasted salsa.  Bret diced the roasted jalapeno and added it to the pan with the sauteed onion.  I thinly sliced up a bunch of romaine lettuce for some shredded lettuce.  We had lots of my spicy roasted salsa leftover, along with leftover spicy buffalo cheddar cheese that was easily grated.  The actual "cooking" just required warming up the chicken breast strips in a pan while I cooked the tortillas in a non-stick pan.

Once the chicken was done warming up, they were cut into bite-sized pieces, we opened up some sour cream, and dinner was ready!  We loaded up our tortillas with all of the fixings.

No seriously, we loaded our tacos up!

I liked the pre-cooked chicken breast strips when they were in the chicken tacos.  But when I tried a piece of chicken on its own, it just tasted too processed for me.  While I like taking shortcuts and definitely appreciated the easy prep with this meal, I think I'll stick to picking up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store before picking up these frozen chicken breast strips again.  There is still a lot of chicken breast strips in the freezer and I'd hate for them to go to waste, so I'll probably find a way to use them that masks the flavor a bit.

Tell me, what are some ways that you take shortcuts to save time in the kitchen?