Santa Fe Chicken

One of my go-to meals for company, or just when I want something quick and easy and delicious is Santa Fe Chicken.

chicken (2ish pounds)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1-2 cups corn
1 16 oz. jar of salsa
half a package of cream cheese
a cup or two of shredded cheese

Throw the chicken, beans, corn, and salsa in the crock pot and cook for at least 5-6 hours on low (or about 2 1/2 or 3 hours on high). Add in the cream cheese and shredded cheese a half hour to an hour before you're ready to eat. If you want to eat it with rice, throw the rice on about now, too.

The original recipe I got from a friend said to cut the chicken before you threw it in the crock pot, but I've learned it's easier to just throw in whole chicken breasts or chicken tenders and if they cook long enough they get really tender and easy to tear apart with a fork when it's all done. I usually serve it over rice, but it's also good as a burrito if you have tortillas on hand, too.

And a side note about the rice: when we started this GF thing I read all about this quinoa stuff (pronounced keen-wa). We tried it and I guess since it looks kind of like rice I was expecting it to taste kind of like rice. It doesn't. I have one recipe that I really love that uses quinoa straight, but other than that I usually just throw half a cup, or a whole cup in with the rice along with the same amount of water, and it adds the nutritional value (which people on a GF diet often need a boost in since they generally eat less whole grains), but doesn't really affect the taste. So, for instance, here I put 1 1/2 cups of brown rice and 3 cups of water in my rice cooker (the normal ratio), then added a 1/2 cup of quinoa and 1/2 cup of water. Quinoa really expands a lot, so 1/2 a cup goes a long way.