Dinner of the Week: Crock Pot Italian Chicken and Potatoes

Busy day ahead?  
The Crock Pot is your best friend.  Just prep it and run.  In 5-ish hours you'll have a delicious dinner waiting for you when you walk through the door.
Crock Pot Italian Chicken and Potatoes

Mondays are my days off and I generally have more flex time to try a new recipe or putz around the kitchen chopping and dicing.  Today I only had two things on the schedule to do, other than general housework (Hallelujah!): I had to take my friend to the airport and bring my daughter to her riding lesson.  The day took a bit of a detour when my friend's flight was cancelled.  No big deal, after I  picked her up from the airport, we schemed a way to get her back to the airport on time.
It was only after I was getting ready for trip #2 to the airport that I realized that my dinner wouldn't be ready for my very hungry family when we returned from riding lessons.  This used to be the part of the story where I would just throw in the towel and stop at the local pizza place on our way home.  But we've really been trying to spend less on eating out and focus more on eating healthfully.  That was when my trusty crock pot came to mind!  Problem solved.

It doesn't get much easier than this.  

 Place 4-5 frozen chicken breasts in the crock pot and drizzle with Olive Oil and lime juice.  Wash and cube up 3-4 russet potatoes and toss those on top of the chicken, drizzling on a bit more Olive Oil and Lime juice.  Sprinkle your family's favorite seasoning on top (our favorite is Italian Seasoning, but Ranch Seasoning comes in a close second place).  Then turn on your crock pot to high (for 4-6 hours) or low (for 6-8 hours) and walk away.  

After 4 hours on high, I check the internal temperature of the chicken (each piece should be at lease 165 degrees F) and test the potatoes by piercing a few to make sure they are tender.  If everything is good, I plate it up (with steamed green beans) and drizzle the drippings from the crock pot on top of the meal.  By my son's request, we also had fresh peach slices.

This is what else is on our plates this week:

Monday:  Crock Pot Italian Chicken and Potatoes, steamed green beans, and sliced peaches.

Tuesday:  French Dip sandwiches, roasted cauliflower, blueberries and bananas

Wednesday:  Baked Ziti casserole, salad, honeydew melon cubes

Thursday:   Rotisserie chicken (store bought), crescent rolls, corn on the cob, watermelon slices

Friday:  Oven-baked fajitas, cottage cheese, clementines