Have you ever stood in your kitchen on a beautiful afternoon, wondering "What am I going to make for dinner tonight?" One of Chris's favorite types of cuisine is Mexican food, and thankfully, some of his favorite dishes can easily be made into quick family meals using shortcuts and a meal kit purchased along with the ingredients. Instead of spending hours in the kitchen, I've started using Kraft Recipe Makers and pre-cooked chicken to create a ton of easy meals on those evenings when I just want to spend time with the family.
I've used the Kraft Recipe Makers to make all kinds of quick family meals like chicken Cacciatore, New England Pot Roast and most recently, Verde Chicken Enchiladas. I love these meal starter kits because everything you need to create an awesome dinner is listed right on back - so you know exactly what to pick up when you're buying it! All of the meal starter recipes are super easy to make and there are step by step instructions right on the back of the boxes.
I used the Kraft meal starter to make Verde Chicken Enchiladas this weekend, and it took me 30 minutes from start to finish! I bought precooked chicken so all I had to do was shred it - that was the extent of my meal prep!
Kraft Recipe Makers Verde Chicken Enchiladas Recipe
Ingredients
Kraft Recipe Makers Verde Chicken Enchiladas Meal Starter
4 cups shredded chicken (cooked)
1 cup Kraft Mexican blend shredded cheese
12 corn tortillas (6 inch size)
small can of chopped green chilis (this is totally optional, but Chris loves them so I try to incorporate them into a lot of stuff)
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and spray a 13x9 inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Place tortillas on a microwave safe plate and place a damp paper towel on top, microwave for 30 seconds.
If your chicken isn't already shredded, go ahead and shred it. Toss the chicken in the filling sauce until it's completely covered.
Pour one of the finishing sauce packets into your prepared baking dish. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the chicken mixture into each tortilla, wrap it up and place seam-side down in the baking dish.
Once the baking dish is full, pour the second packet of finishing sauce on top, making sure to get all of the enchiladas! Then sprinkle the shredded cheese on top. I love a cheesy enchilada more than life itself, so I used about 1.5 cups of cheese as opposed to the 1 cup the recipe called for.
Sprinkle the chopped green chilis on top and bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
Super easy, right? I was making dinner early, and we ended up eating as soon as they came out of the oven. Chris is not a picky eater, but he doesn't compliment my cooking very often, either.
However, he was hovering over me while I was trying to photograph the enchiladas for this blog post, asking "When can I eat it?! They smell so good!"
Not only did they smell good, but they tasted amazing!
With all the time I saved making dinner, Chris and I had time to take a drive down to Biscayne National Park. Of course we could have easily just thrown a movie into the Blu-ray player, or played a game of Scrabble, but with the weather getting nicer in Miami, I really wanted to get out of the house and enjoy the sunshine.
Once we got to Biscayne National Park - which is part of the Florida Everglades National Park system - we decided to drive down to Flamingo Park, which is about 38 miles out. We'd actually wanted to do this on Saturday but we didn't have enough time to go all the way out there and back.
Once we got there, we took a walk around Flamingo Marina and came across this hawk eating a fish! Of course I've always known that certain birds eat fish, but look at how big that fish is! This hawk was pretty intense, he kept looking right at me, then he'd turn his head and look directly at Chris. It was almost as if he was watching to see if we were going to try to take his food!
Now, if you know me well, then you know that I have a fascination with alligators and crocodiles. Part of the reason I wanted to go to Flamingo was because that is one place near Miami (it's not actually in Miami, but on the outskirts of Florida City, about 20 miles away) that has a ton of crocodiles and they aren't shy.
I've never been fishing in Flamingo, but my parents and Chris go there often and they always see crocodiles. My goal for the afternoon was to see one! Of course we didn't have a boat, but we walked all around the marina looking for crocodiles off the ramps and in the mangroves.
We weren't there for 5 minutes when we saw our first one!
We walked along the edge of one of the boat ramps and got pretty close...and then it actually turned around and swam directly at us! It came right up onto the boat ramp and we stood about 20 feet away on the pier.
I was totally freaking out that it would rush at us as soon as we left the pier and started walking back to our car but it turned around and swam away.
So instead of slaving away over a hot stove all afternoon to make my family a delicious dinner, I used a Kraft Recipe Maker and whipped up one of my favorite quick family meals, Verde Chicken Enchiladas.
Then we set off on an afternoon adventure and saw some pretty amazing wildlife. You may not want to go crocodile hunting in the place of cooking, but I'm sure there's something you'd rather be doing with your time, right? Go check out Get Your Chef Together to get some time-saving quick family meal ideas for yourself, and don't forget to visit the Kraft Foods Facebook page for lots of time-saving cooking tips!
