I LOVE to try new recipes and cook.  I would bet you love to create in the kitchen too, if you have what you need to do it.  One of my biggest pet peeves is finding some recipe that sounds really good, but missing one or two ingredients for it.  I hate that.  It almost happened to me today but fortunately, since I have been stocking my pantry with staples instead of processed foods, I usually have most of what I need.

Take today for instance.  When looking for a recipe for my chicken breasts I knew I had cream cheese to use up.  My other pet peeve is wasting food.. so when I search for a recipe I sometimes put in a couple ingredients to search by... today was chicken and cream cheese.  Then I stumbled upon a wonderful recipe for stuffed chicken breasts... yummy!  The only problem was that it called for chopped green peppers and 4 green onions...  ok, really???  HATE that!  Then I would have had to either run to the store before cooking OR lose the spontaneity of a sudden urge for cream cheese stuffed chicken breasts and PLAN them for next week.

Chances are, even then, if I planned some recipe for next week that called for 4 green onions, I would have had to buy a whole bunch and some of them then would have gone to waste in my refrigerator later.

TO THE RESCUE!!  Dehydrated chopped green onions.  I bought some a while back and used a few fresh and then dehydrated the remainder of them for just such an occasion!  And as for the green peppers?  I have several from the garden frozen in the refrigerator for just this reason.

Dehydrated food is easy to store... it even looks cool on the counter top, lasts virtually forever, and is easy to re-hydrate in order to use it for cooking.  I just put a few in a little prep bowl and added some of my purified water to soak them until time to use them in the cream cheese stuffing.

I happened to have some bacon in the freezer and my frozen peppers and was able to make this delicious chicken on the fly!  LOVE MY DEHYDRATOR!!

I bet you are thinking about this chicken now, aren't you?  Would you like the recipe?  It was seriously about the best thing I have made lately!  You will love it.  OK, here is the recipe.

Stuffed and Wrapped Chicken Breast

Ingredients:

8 slices bacon 6 ounces cream cheese, softened 4 green onions, chopped 1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper

1 teaspoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a small baking dish.
2.	Place the bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until the grease has mostly rendered, but the bacon is still very soft, about 3 minutes. Remove, and pat dry with paper towels; set aside.
3.	Stir together the cream cheese, green onions, bell pepper, garlic powder, salt, and pepper in a bowl until combined. Divide this mixture onto each chicken breast. Fold the breasts in half, and wrap with 2 slices of bacon. Secure with toothpicks as needed. Place into the prepared baking dish.
4.	Bake in the preheated oven until the chicken is no longer pink in the thickest part, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove the toothpicks before serving.

And before you start thinking, "I thought bacon was unhealthy"....  we buy uncured nitrite and nitrate free bacon and don't eat too much of it!

You should try it too!  Bacon is wonderful but not near to the extent that you need it in large quantities every day.