2014 Recipe Challenge-Week 2

Last week I went to go visit my Grandma and she gave me a couple of cookbooks. My Grandma loved to cook, bake and just be in the kitchen in general. I think this is where I got my love for baking. My mom is known as the “Microwave Queen” in our family, so I guess it skipped a generation. :) So, this week we decided to flip through the cookbooks and make one of those recipes.

Picking out what to make is a bigger challenge than I thought it would be. Jesse will pretty much eat anything so it is up to me to figure out what we are going to make. We had some chicken in the freezer so I thought let’s do something new with that.


This week we were inspired by a recipe we found in the Women’s Home Journal: Quick & Easy Favorites, Zesty Chicken with Black Beans and Rice. The recipe called for Spanish rice mix, but we took a little different approach to it and we went with El Paso Cheesy Mexican Rice. This is a must any time we make tacos, so Jesse thought it would be fun to try it in this dish.

Week 2- Mexican Chicken Rice Cheese Goodness

1 lb skinless, boneless, chicken breast

1 box El Paso Cheesy Mexican Rice

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1 can diced tomatoes

Taco seasoning

Shredded Taco Cheese

Jesse started off following the direction on the package for the Mexican Rice and got that going. Then he put the black beans in a pot and poured in the can of diced tomatoes. Then he started on the chicken, while he was cooking it he decided to add some taco seasoning to it so the chicken will have some flavor.

Once the rice was done he added some of the black beans and tomato mix. He didn’t add all of it to the rice, just enough to make the mixture even.

We put the rice, black bean, tomato mixture on the bottom and added the chicken to the topped it with cheese.

This recipe was very easy to make and was packed full of flavor. I could have eaten just the rice mixture alone. It was nice to try a different type of Mexican recipe, that wasn’t tacos (which we eat a lot of). We also had some leftovers, which was another great lunch of me. I actually got 2 lunches out of the leftovers.

Jesse loved this recipe too. But of course he loves anything that he creates. He also thought another nice thing was it didn’t take long to make. The rice took the longest to cook, but everything was super-fast. He even got to sit down for a little while he was waiting for the rice because everything else was done.

The most impressing part about this week’s recipe is that we did it in the middle of painting out kitchen. We are giving the kitchen a major update, and I honestly thought Jesse would use this as a reason not to cook. This recipe didn’t take up much room, and the prep work was really little. Hopefully the walls will be painted by the time we do the next recipe….hopefully.