More Menu's + 2 recipes

Here is our menu plan for the week

tonight...
Mashed Potatoes with hamburger gravy
Vegies ~ probably peas, green beans & carrots

Tuesday...
Spaghetti
garlic bread

Wed.
Chicken & Dumplings
vegies

Thursday
Soup or Chili (do in crockpot)
Cornbread

Friday
cookout at Allens in GA

Sat.
dinner at Greg's parents in VA

We are traveling over the weekend & all next week so my menu planning will go on hold for 7-8 days or so.  Since we are splitting up our 13-14 hour trip over 2 days (both there and back) we are going to eat a picnic in the car one of the days (sandwiches, chips) and the second day eat Dollar Menu burgers or tacos.  Friday nights cookout at Allens will probably be hamburgers, Granny's potato salad, baked beans, chips & a dessert.  Most of us are working hard on kicking the soft drink habit, so there will be lots of water, tea, lemonade and koolaid drinking.

Gregs challenge to Amy and I was to come up with a new crock pot recipe every week ~ since Pinterest is our favorite source for new ideas Amy found us a good one and we cooked it yesterday...

Slow Cooker Italian Chicken Alfredo (taken from Carzy Cook.com)

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (we used a package with 6)
1/4 cup water
1 packet dry Italian-style salad dressing mix (recipe below for homemade ~ used 2 tablespoons)
1 clove garlic, pressed
1~8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 can cream of chicken soup (we used mushroom)
1 can chopped mushrooms ~ 4.5 ounce can (left out since we don't like them)
1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley

Spray the crock of a slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray.  Place chicken breast in crock.  Combine Italian dressing mix and water in a small bowl.  Pour over chicken, sprinkle with garlic, cover and cook on low 4 hours.  After 4 hours, whisk softened cream cheese & cream of chicken soup together in a bowl. Pour over chicken, stir in mushrooms. Cover & cook of low 1 additional hour. (Seems like she left out a step...after the 4 hours, we removed the chicken from the crockpot to cut up, whisked the cream cheese & soup together in the crockpot, and added the chicken back in.  Since we used more chicken than called for ~ we added another can of cream soup & about a cup of water)
 Cook pasta according to package directions & drain.
To serve, spoon chicken & sauce over hot pasta and sprinkle with parsley.

**We used wide egg noodles last night.  But decided to try it again with a noodle with "ridges" ~ curly noodles, penne pasta, etc.  That way the sauce can cling to the noodle.
Also, we topped ours with Parmesan Cheese ~ yummy!

Italian Seasoning Mix (from Heavenly Homemakers.com)

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
2 teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon dried parsley
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1.4 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried celery flakes

Shake ing. together and store in a jar.
To make Italian salad dressing: Mix 2 tablespoon dry mix with 1/4 cup vinegar (she uses red wine vinegar), 2 teaspoons water and 1/2 cup olive oil.

**I did this recipe x 4 since I already had all the spices out.  Its stored in an old spice container from the grocery store)


I think next time I will try it with Cream of Chicken ~ and if I think ahead of time I can use the homemade dry mix instead of the canned.  I didn't have any made up yesterday & wanted to use up what I had on hand.

Happy cooking!