Cafe Rio - Chicken Breast Salad

image from www.caferio.com

I love salad. I'd eat it every single day if it wouldn't result in protest from the family.  Today, I had the grilled chicken salad from Cafe Rio. 

One word:  Delicious!

It comes in a big flour tortilla "bowl" and has black beans or pinto beans, (I hold the rice), shredded grilled chicken, pico de gallo, guacamole, cilantro, lettuce, tortilla strips and cotija cheese, with creamy tomatillo dressing (or you can choose cilantro lime vinaigrette). 

The sensation of flavor in my mouth is nothing short of symphonic.  My only complaint is that the ingredients are layered, meaning the beans are on the bottom, then the chicken, then pico, then huge leafs of lettuce and then a sprinkle of cheese and tortilla chips.  The guacamole is dropped in two balls on either side. 

I always run out of lettuce before I get to the bottom, which does NOT stop me from eating the whole thing it's just that halfway through it becomes (lettuce)less salad and more of a glob of beans, pico, chicken and dressing. 

Overall, I don't care because it's delicious.

The above product was purchased by me for my personal use.  I am not being monetarily paid for this review.  I will give my honest opinion and thoughts regarding said product.

 

 

Originally posted 8/18/14 2:47 PM

Cheesy Chicken Asparagus Rolls

Photo from Google Images

Ingredients:

½ cup mayonnaise

4 Tablespoons Dijon mustard (or spice it up a bit and use horseradish mustard)

16-30 asparagus spears, trimmed

5 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

5 slices provolone cheese

1 cup bread crumbs

Salt and Pepper to taste

(feel free to get liberal and try other seasonings - either in the sauce or in the breadcrumbs – you know what your family likes.  I seasoned my breadcrumbs with oregano, garlic powder, basil, a hint of cayenne pepper and celery salt)

Mix the mayo, mustard, salt and pepper in a dish and set aside.  Preheat your oven to 475 degrees.

Cook the asparagus (wash and rinse it first) on a paper plate or paper towel in the microwave for 1 to 3 minutes (depending on the microwave) until bright green and just tender.  Set it aside. 

Take the chicken breast and pat it dry.  Then beat the hell out of it with a mallet or a good rolling pin, until its flat, about ¼ inch thick.  Then you add a slice of provolone cheese and three or four or six asparagus (depending on how many you want, how big they are, etc.), and roll up the chicken nicely and place in a baking pan seam down (spray the pan with cooking spray first).  When you’ve rolled all of your chicken and cheese and asparagus and placed it seam down in the pan, spread on the mayo/mustard mix evenly with a pastry brush or a plastic spatula coating all of the exposed chicken.  Sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and press the crumbs in to make a coating of sorts.  Bake at 425 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes, depending on the thickness of your chicken.  Chicken is done with the juices run clear and the breadcrumbs are browned.

The original recipe also called for 1 lemon zested and juiced to be added to the mayo/mustard sauce but we found that to be a very intense flavor that we weren’t really fans of once I made the chicken without the lemon the next time I made it.

Feel free to experiment and make this recipe better for your family.  My kids are picky.  They’re teenagers now, I’m lucky to find something they’ll eat more than once that isn’t made of Doritos or cookie dough.  

All in all, we like these chicken wraps and I’m making them next time with broccoli to see how that turns out.  I served them with buttered spaghetti the first time and smashed red potatoes (I used crushed red peppers and Parmesan cheese instead of rosemary) the second time.

Originally posted August 7, 2014

Easy Peazy Chicken Tetrazinni

1 lb cooked angel hair pasta (or spaghetti or linguini)
5 chicken breasts (cooked and cubed)
1 medium bell pepper (chopped)
I cup chopped celery
1 Tablespoon garlic 
3 10.75 oz cans creamy soup (I used two cream of mushroom and one cream of celery)
1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
2 cubes of chicken bouillon
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (or sharp cheddar is good too!)

Boil chicken breasts and set aside to cool.  In a separate pan boil the pasta until done.  Cube the chicken and set it aside.  Drain and rinse the pasta and put in a large mixing bowl.  In a sauce pan, mix the water and chicken bouillon until bouillon melts then add soup and mix well.  In another pan melt the butter and saute the celery and bell pepper until just tender and add to soup mixture (including pan drippings).  Mix soup, veggies, chicken and pasta together and pour into a baking pan (spray it with Pam or some other non-stick spray).  Top with cheese and bake for at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Serve with garlic bread and a salad.  

[Originally published August 26, 2014]

Thursday Thirteen - The I want candy edition

 

 

Milk Duds

Whoppers

Skittles

Sour Patch Kids (only the orange ones)

Sweet Tarts

a plain, good old fashioned Hershey bar

Payday

Milky Way*

Almond Joy

Idaho Spud

Rocky Road

Charleston Chews (the minis, trust me)

Hot Tamales

*Snickers are gross. Don't at me.

Oreo Sour Patch Kids

Oreo has a new cookie flavor: Sour Patch Kids.  These are the same shape and size as regular Oreo cookies.  That my friend is where similarities end.  

Everyone knows the rule to Oreos is to eat the filling first, then dunk the cookie in milk and eat that. At least until you're a grown up - then you dunk the cookie and eat the whole thing together, as nature intended. 

The Sour Patch Kids filling smells very much like the powder in the bottom of fruity cereal like fruity pebbles or froot loops. There are little colored flecks or granules in the cream.  The cream itself doesn’t taste like anything - it's basically lard with a hint of sugar.  Oreo missed an opportunity there.  Texture wise, the cream is gritty due to the little colored fleck/granule things.  I thought they'd be like the sour granules on the outside of Sour Patch kids. Ya know, the stuff that makes the candy sour - and they'd burst onto my tongue with the fruity/sour flavors.  I was wrong.  There is no burst of flavor or sour. It’s more like a little tiny flavorless zing on your tongue as you wait for that sour that never arrives.

As for the cookie I expected something. 

Maybe a sour/citrus flavor? Or maybe a lemon or lime that might counter what should have been the strong sour coming from the filling.  I couldn't  have been more wrong.  Imagine a graham cracker that’s been dunked in pink lemonade and left out to dry.  There is just a hint of maybe pink lemonade taste. Barely a whiff.  It’s like eating a graham cracker and somebody across the street screamed PINK LEMONADE! Even that is being generous. 

Notably, given the lack of actual flavor - these cookies leave a weird aftertaste that I cannot describe.  Milk didn't help. I even tried Pink Lemonade as a chaser to see if that would be a flavor enhancer. It was not. I yelled SOUR PATCH right before I ate the second cookie. That didn't help either.  These taste like the Wish version of sour. They're not sour-ish, or sour lite. I wouldn't even describe them as diet sour.  They're sour deficient.

Overall, I think this is a fail for Oreo.  And that makes me sad, because I had hoped for an enjoyable cookie experience.