It would have been because of the chicken

Not because of my cooking, of course, if I hadn’t survived.

See, a couple of months ago, I bought some ground chicken (of the Smart Chicken 93/7 variety) because I had never tried it and my grocery store was having an insane sale.  The woman behind the meat counter saw me eying (WordPress says that that is really how you spell that word, but it just looks really odd to me right now – does that ever happen to you?) it and called out that she loved it.  She said she thought it tasted better than lean ground turkey, which I had tried before and really wasn’t fond of.  I even grabbed a tube and went over and compared the nutritional stats between it and a tube of the lean ground turkey nearby and I don’t know if it was just the brands, but the stats on the ground chicken were a bit better.

Over the weekend, I was throwing some things in the freezer and noticed the tubes that I had completely forgotten about.  With me, it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind (and no cracks about me being out of my mind anyway!).  So I started looking up recipes online to see what I could make with it.  I know that the woman at the store mentioned chili and chicken burgers, so I found some recipes for those, but already knew that I was rather short on supplies (i.e., onion, etc.).  But I pulled a tube out anyway and stuck it in the fridge on Sunday night to thaw.  I figured that I’d try one of the simpler recipes (of which I had everything in stock) and/or run to the store after work one night.

Well, um, remember I said out-of-sight, out-of-mind?  Yeah.  I forgot about it.  Luckily, I happened to catch a glimpse of it last night when I was looking for an after-work snack.  The thought I had?  “Oh crap.  Now I have to cook.”

I should share something for those of you who don’t know me well – I don’t like to cook.  I really don’t like to cook.

Okay, maybe once in a while, but not often.  Of course, I always love having prepared meals or fresh banana bread muffins on hand, but actually doing it?  Not so much.  Which is really kind of funny, because when my brother and I were little, we used to grab a glass in the kitchen and then just start filling it with things:  water, various spices, you name it.  We had such a blast just mixing up various concoctions.  Did my mom enjoy our hobby?  Not so much.

But maybe it’s just my lack of confidence in my cooking ability.  I mean, I know that I can follow a recipe.  I’ve never really made something from a recipe and had it come out bad.  I just follow the directions.  But when it comes to coming up with things on my own, or hell, even tracking down a good recipe and ingredients, that’s where my lack of confidence comes in.

Last night, I was already tired and just wasn’t in the mood to hunt up a recipe that I actually had the ingredients for and I just wanted to get the chicken cooked before it went bad.  So my initial thought was just to throw it in a skillet and cook it like ground beef.  (By the way, have you guys ever noticed how much more difficult it is to chop up lean ground meat in the skillet than it is higher fat meat?)  So then I started thinking about things that I could throw in it like veggies and onions, etc.  But, of course, I had none of those things on hand.  (Of course, now that I’m writing this I realize that I DO have some frozen veggies in the freezer.)  So then I thought tomatoes!  I did have a can of petite diced tomatoes (with no added salt) on hand, so after cooking the chicken, I threw it in with it.  I cooked that for a little bit and while I was doing that I was thinking about what seasoning I could add.  I do have some spices on hand, but just wasn’t in the mood to do a trial and error run, so I thought Mrs. Dash!  There are several versions that I like, but my recent favorite is the Southwest Chipotle.  So I sprinkled a bunch of that on it (I thought it would end up being too much at the time).

Then I started thinking about how I could kind of make it into more of a spaghetti sauce type dish that I could put on pasta or couscous or veggies or even eat by itself.  As it was, I knew that it would kind of be on the soupy side.  So my next thought was tomato sauce!  I dug through the cabinet and finally found a small can of no salt added tomato sauce (which amazingly hadn’t expired yet) and threw that in, too.

After that, I turned down the heat and let it cook for about 20 minutes, stirring fairly often.  When I got around to actually tasting it, I was pleasantly surprised!  I actually really like it!

When it was done, I divided it into 5 servings at 3 points each.

So this noncook is starting to turn into a cook (I know, I know, the Mrs. Dash kind of negates the whole thing and there really wasn’t much to it, but let me work my way up, okay?).  And maybe if I keep taking some chances and risks, I might discover a hidden talent.  Hmmm….I guess that could apply to a lot of things in life.  (I’m not holding my breath in this case, though.)

So what about you?  Do you like to cook?  Do you have a favorite recipe?  What is it?  Is it your own or did you snatch it from someone else?