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.

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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!

Chicken Cacciatore

Don't get all excited, I'm not making some fancy new recipe. I'm taking the easy way out tonight. There's a thread on a message board I frequent about what products people like from Trader Joe's. It's pretty cool because you get first hand reviews of things instead of having to try them and see if they're any good (although I've rarely--if ever--been disappointed with something from TJ's). It's kind of like TraderJoesFan.com, which I like to peruse before a trip to TJ's. Anyway, the TJ Chicken Cacciatore Simmer Sauce got some rave reviews by other mamas on the message board, so I picked up a jar of it recently. All I'm doing is cooking some chicken and boiling some water for pasta. Oh, and heating up some bread in the toaster oven. I love an easy dinner on a Friday night! I'll let you know what I think of the sauce. I tried to find a picture online of it somewhere but no dice. I guess I could take a picture of the empty jar. Maybe if I bring my camera in from the car (we went on a fire station tour today!!) and remember to grab the jar out of recycling before the husband takes it out. Basically if the stars align, I'll take a picture of the jar. ;)

Happy Friday everyone! I think we're going out to dinner tomorrow night because 1) we'll only have the baby with us (who is being ridiculously cute right now, by the way, chewing on a giraffe toy/blanket (thanks Aunt Brookie!!) and trying to roll around on the floor), and 2) the husband got a bonus recently, and we need to celebrate. I think we may go to one of my favorite restaurants, Z Tejas. Mmmmm...margaritas!!

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Mmmmmm. This was good. And easy. And a cheap dinner. Woo hoo--an all around winner!