Thai Red Curry Chicken

I fell asleep on the couch this afternoon while everyone else in my house was napping. Did I mention everyone but me is sick? Actually I have the tail end of a cold but as the healthiest adult I've had to buck up and just deal with it. The husband has a sinus infection, the boy has pink eye, and the baby is teething. Or he has a cold--or both. Needless to say, our house is not a fun place to be right now.

Wednesday nights are normally slow cooker dinner nights because we have Bible study groups at 6:30. I had planned on making chicken fajitas, but I was sleeping during my "window" to get everything thrown in the crockpot. Oops. So not only did I need to scramble when the boy started calling for me at 3:40 when he woke up from his nap to shower and finish my reading for Bible study tonight, I also needed to come up with a new dinner plan. I went back through my blog looking at chicken recipes and found a couple that would be quick and easy to make. I gave the husband his choice of chicken stir fry or chicken and dumplings, and he chose the stir fry. I came across a bottle of Trader Joe's Thai Red Curry Sauce in my pantry recently, so I'm going to use that instead of my usual teriyaki for stir fry. I'm hoping it's not met with complaints. I'm excited to try it--I love Thai curries! The husband is not a fan of Indian curries, so I'm hoping the Thai one will go over with him okay. I first checked TraderJoesFan.com for ideas on what exactly I could do with my bottle of sauce. This is what I found, which is pretty much what I had in mind anyway.

Thai Red Curry Chicken

1 pkg. frozen Asian Vegetables
1 bottle Trader Joe's Thai Red Curry Sauce
2 chicken breasts - cubed
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion
1 tsp chopped garlic
salt and pepper to taste
Basmati Rice to serve

Heat oil in a stir fry pan on medium heat, add in onion and garlic and stir fry for 1 minute. Then add chicken cubes, salt and pepper and brown chicken for about 10 minutes. Then add in frozen pack of asian vegetables. Saute vegetables and chicken for another 3 minutes and add in the bottle of thai red curry sauce. Simmer for another 5 minutes and serve over basmati rice.

You can add water to the stir fry if you like saucier, but then you may need a little more salt and pepper.

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I feel kind of silly even posting a recipe for this since it's pretty simple. I'm excited to have this. Maybe the curry will help spice out my family's sicknesses.

*****

This sauce was really tasty!! The husband seemed a bit unsure about it, and the boy complained at first that he didn't like it, but then he ended up eating pretty much everything on his plate. I love the sweet-spiciness of a Thai curry. Really eating this made me want desperately to go to a Thai restaurant. This was a super easy dinner to throw together which was exactly what I needed last night.

I'll have to take a picture of the leftovers because I think I forgot to take one of my plate last night--I was too excited for Thai!

Crockpot Deviled Chicken

Okay, if I'm going to follow this new format I decided on--to post after the fact instead of before--I need to either post right away the next day or at the very least keep my meal plan from the prior week so I can remember what exactly it was that we had. I checked my "Cooking Blog" photo folder, and this was the only new thing in there. I just uploaded pics, so I know there aren't any on the camera that I just forgot to upload. Well, that's not entirely true because I did take pics of last night's dinner that need to get uploaded. Anyway, I guess we had all repeat dinners last week and that's why I didn't take any pictures. I swear before I had kids I had a fantastic memory, but if you have kids you're familiar with both "pregnancy brain" and "mommy brain." I don't know how that woman with 19 kids does it...I'm pretty sure if I had that many kids I'd be walking around with my mouth hanging open and a dazed look on my face.

I don't even remember how I decided to make this. I think I had slated chicken of some sort but wasn't really excited about the recipe I had chosen, so I went to RecipeZaar.com to find something different. Or maybe I just wanted something that could go in the crockpot. Regardless, I searched for crockpot recipes that had chicken. I had everything on hand for this one, and it sounded pretty good...and I had enough time for it to cook!

Crockpot Deviled Chicken
RecipeZaar Recipe #41882

3 lbs skinless chicken breasts or skinless chicken legs or skinless chicken thighs
2-4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup prepared mustard
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1-2 teaspoon curry powder

Place chicken in slow cooker. Combine all remaining ingredients and pour over chicken. Cook for 4 to 6 hours on high or 6 to 8 hours on low.

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I didn't change it around a whole lot. I used chicken drumsticks because I had some in the freezer that needed to be used soon. I used dijon mustard instead of regular, and I went kind of easy on the curry powder because the husband doesn't like curry. So hopefully he doesn't read this and find out there was curry in it. I also went easy on the butter to make it slightly healthier.

This was really tasty, and it was so easy to throw together--especially since all the sauce ingredients are things I always have on hand. A lot of the comments on the recipe said they thickened the sauce and poured it over the chicken, but I didn't bother. They also served it over rice or noodles, but no one in my family is really a rice fan, so I skipped it. Plus I think I was out of rice anyway. Hmmmm...now I remember why I ended up making this. I was going to make a Rick Bayless dish with chicken, rice, and beans, but I didn't have enough rice. See? If I can get some kind of trigger I'm much better at remembering! We had some leftover roasted butternut squash and a frozen peas/carrots blend as side dishes.

This is definitely something I'd make again. We all really liked it, although I think I would maybe cut back on the honey. I didn't measure it so it's entirely possible my estimate of half a cup was actually more than that. It was just a little bit on the sweet side, so I think I'd cut back the honey (or measure it) and be a bit more generous with the curry powder.