Cravings For Rice...

Fast becoming a Saturday tradition, I set out to make a dish that would feed me for a handful of meals in the upcoming week. I'm now in the mode of thinking about dishes I might get in a restaurant, which would still be within my feeble grasp to make. And so there I was, thinking about a fine chicken and rice dinner I've had on several occasions at Cracker Barrel. Mmmm, OK, let's do it.

The recipe, "Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice", came out of Betty Crocker's Slow Cooker Cookbook. The slow cooker is great for making a stew or something mid-week, you come home and the whole house smells delicious. But this recipe turned out to be a good choice for the weekend, because it was only 5-6 hours cooking, so if I had tried it on a work day I would have made mush out of the rice.

Only minor speed bumps on the ingredients. The recipe calls for the rice to be provided as an 8.25 ounce package of "skillet-dinner mix for mushroom and wild rice". As yummy as that sounds I could not actually find a decent match on the shelves at Tops: in fact, neither "wild rice" nor "mushrooms" were represented. So, I took a flyer and went with Zatarians New Orleans Style, French Market Vegetables & Rice Mix. It was going to be a zesty time in the ol ' kitchen tonight.

I also needed to get instant chopped onion, but zig-zagged and instead went with - instant minced onions. Yes - it's crazy! It also came in a bigger container at about half the unit cost. I supposed that the only difference between chopped and minced was in the level of cutting or shredding, and they looked about the same to the naked eye, so what the hell? My mother-in-law later confirmed that this really can't even be called a substitution because they're basically the same thing. So there. I've got minced onions for life now. Maybe they go good on salad.

Preparation was nothing: everything into the pot! Oh, but I did add one more, very special ingredient: cilantro! Damn those crafty Kraft bears, but I still have a crapload of it from the lasagna last week, and it's use-it-or-lose-it time. Plus I got to work on my chopping skills, so in went a quarter cup. This proved interesting, because when I peered down through the clear lid a couple hours into the cooking, all the cilantro had floated to the surface, and the whole thing looked like Ellicott Creek in July - algae city!

But no, it turned out just fine. It is just a stew basically, nothing pretty to look at, so sorry, no pictures this week. But tres yummy. The rice might have been just a shade overcooked, next time I'll check it at 4 hours and make a game day decision. Until then, I have some big honkin' meals all lined up for Monday and Wednesday this week - sweet.