A Spicy Mess No More!

Ok. So, yes, I'm super behind on blogging anything lately.  I have had many thoughts of "oh, I should type up something about that and post it to my blog" but alas, time gets away from me with two little ones these days.  This post is super short, so I had time to post it up quickly.

I was doing some morning reading online and when I was finished I jumped on Pinterest to look for a valentine's craft to occupy my little guy this morning.  (Don't judge the amount of pins and likes I have; I often jump on Pinterest when nursing.) Back to the topic at hand--the shelf I keep all of our kitchen spices is a total disaster. I can never find what I need quickly.  This pin spoke directly to me.  I don't know how I didn't come up with something like this sooner, since I actually do have something similar for boxed pasta and rice in my pantry, but for whatever reason it never occured to me to organize my lesser-used spices! I read this and BAM!  I now have a system for the spices I rarely use.

I took the idea one step further and typed up a quick list of what spices are actually in the basket.  This is helpful when I need something that I think I have, but in reality I probably just thought about buying it at some point.  We also have the amazing, wonderful Dekalb International Farmers Market not too far from our house where I buy some of my spices in bulk.  These containers stack great, but I have to take them all out to get what I'm looking for.  These are also on the list I created.

Here's to trying to organize my life one small step at a time! (My BIG job of cleaning and organizing our Florida room starts this weekend!  Say a prayer for me.)

Slow Cooker Zesty BBQ Chicken

You should know by now that I’m a HUGE slow cooker fan.  You can thank John Shaffer and Stephanie O’Dea for getting me hooked!  John is a guy we know from church.  While riding to a praise team practice together, Joe, John, and I got to talking about slow cooking.  In that conversation he recommended O’Dea’sbooks Make It Fast, Cook It Slow.  I quickly purchased Volumes I & II from alibris for a great price.  I’ve made countless recipes from these books.

This recipe is a mixture of O’Dea’s “Lazy Chicken” and a BBQ chicken recipe I found while doing a Pinterest search.  We were craving some Shane’s Rib Shack chicken, but I wanted to try and make something similar at home.  Behold, this had a lot of the same flavors and was super simple to prepare.  We loved this dinner (even the 3 year old) and will definitely be making it again!  I served it with baked potatoes and green beans.

As prepared, this made 4-6 sandwiches. This recipe can easily be doubled.  

Slow Cooker Zesty BBQ Chicken

3 large frozen chicken breasts

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

1 cup BBQ sauce of your choice, plus more to put on finished sandwich

¼ cup Italian Salad Dressing (I used Kraft Zesty Italian)

¼ cup brown sugar (unpacked)

1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Place frozen chicken breasts in slow cooker.  Sprinkle salt and pepper over chicken in crock.

In medium bowl mix all other ingredients.  Wisk for a minute to make sure all brown sugar is well incorporated. Pour over chicken.

Cover.  Cook 3-4 hours in high or 6-8 hours on low.
About a half hour before serving, take chicken out and shred.  Put back in crock and stir with the sauce at bottom of crock.  Cover and let everything cook together for a half hour longer.