WineLife365

 Brrr!  Baby it’s cold outside. Yesterday was just a typical cold January day for us. The added bonus however was the freezing snow and ice that made things just a little more painful. The day started out with scraping the frozen tundra off of the cars, the driveway, the sidewalks and ducking for cover from the “ice balls” being thrown by my excited children who had just heard that school was closed. Unfortunately, my wife and I still had to go to work and hoped to arrive in one piece. 

So after a day like this one, all you want to do is to take a hot shower or bath, get comfortable in your warm PJ’s and contemplate what to have for dinner, open up a bottle of wine and relax.

I stumbled into the kitchen, opened up the refrigerator door and discovered that it was nearly bare. I looked inside the freezer and cabinets to find the same thing.  I said to myself, “this is not good”. “We’re hungry and I’m not going back out there”. Besides, American Idol is getting ready to come on (I think).

 It’s time to find something to eat tonight. Upon evaluating what was left in our refrigerator, freezer and cupboard, I was ready to make something out of nothing.

Here were the ingredients for tonight’s dinner: 

2 individual chicken breasts

1 can of Progresso Traditional Chicken Noodle soup

About a half cup of frozen red and yellow frozen peppers

About a cup of frozen carrots, cauliflower and broccoli (not a cup of each) it was one of those Birdseye frozen blends

And the spice lineup looked a little something like: 

Garlic Salt

Regular Salt

Black Pepper

Crushed Red Pepper

Mrs. Dash “Grilling Blends” –for chicken

Thyme

Ground Cayenne Pepper

Paprika

Ok now it’s cooking time.

Grab the big pot. Warm it up. Spray the pot with PAM spray or coat the bottom with olive oil or regular oil. Next, drop the 2 chicken breasts into the pot. Start adding the spices listed above. There is no measuring here. Just put in a little or a lot of whatever spices that you like. I will say this -given the use of the cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper and paprika you could make this dish spicy as hell if you’re not careful about how much you are adding.

As the chicken was almost cooked through, I cut it up inside the pot into small pieces. Make as many small pieces as you like.  Then the veggies – nothing like pre-cut frozen vegetables! You can toss the frozen peppers right into your chicken pot. Cook them with the chicken. While the chicken and peppers are simmering, microwave the other vegetables until hot then throw into the pot.

The pot was super hot by the time I reached this point so I poured in some tap water just to keep things from burning on the bottom of the pan (as the following ran through my head: “remember this is all that’s left is the house. If you ruin this, you’re screwed and will starve tonight…and your lovely bride will give you hell.”)

 So, after cooking the chicken and vegetables, I added in the can of chicken noodle soup last and let it simmer up.  When I went to serve it I couldn’t figure out if I should label it soup or some whacked out stew.  I settled on stoup…although I think Rachel Ray might have come up with that terminology already.  Then I couldn’t determine if it required a spoon or a fork. So I gave my wife a fork and spoon just to cover all bases.  I served it up in some cool red bowls that we bought from Crate & Barrel…it all just screamed “fancy dinner”.

The dinner was a success based on my wife’s reaction – she asked for seconds. I have to say it was pretty damn tasty whatever it was. I paired this creation with a bottle of cheap French Chardonnay from the Languedoc.  White wines from this region to me seem very smooth and crisp. Usually these wines seem to have tastes of apple and pear predominately. They tend to have little to no oak (meaning it’s not like your drinking part of the barrel that it was made in) on your taste buds. The wine worked very nicely with this dish.

If you’ve never tried a wine from Languedoc France it’s definitely worth a try.  As for this dish, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. It was pretty darn good and you’ll only have to clean-up one pot and few bowls.

Until the next time that we run out of food!