Cumin Chicken Crockpot Stew

I LOVE being a New SUBURBAN Pioneer...  I thoroughly enjoy all the connections that I make via social media sites like Facebook.  I have facebook friends that I have never met that mean a lot to me.  I ask for advice and get bunches of suggestions from hundreds of friends that see my posts.  Social networking is truly one method I enrich my life with other people's knowledge and experience.  Much of my research is done via others' blogs as well.  I don't consider my time on line to be a waste when it is so helpful.

This brings me to the story of this Cumin Chicken Crockpot Casserole idea.  Again, another HUGE hit in my house because it is very healthy and was delicious and easy.  I love my crockpot.  It now sits on my counter where the deep fryer of a few years ago sat.  (smart trade up)

Yesterday morning I had 2 whole chicken breasts and some whey left over in the refrigerator and of course my trusty crockpot.  I sent a facebook status out to my hundreds of friends asking for a good recipe to build around those items.  I got some great suggestions but many of them included recipes with boxed or canned ingredients (which I don't use because they are processed and usually contain ingredients I have rejected for my family).  One suggestion leaped out and caught my taste-buds attention.  It came from my friend Sheri, who I don't get to talk to frequently enough but am obviously glad she is in my life in some form!!  She suggested adding black beans and cumin as a seasoning.  YUMMY!!  Black beans - great source of fiber, vitamins and protein.  Cumin, one of the standard spices I keep in my cupboard!  I decided to use this as a base for a wholesome stew with my chicken.

So while the chicken was slow cooking in the whey (additional milk proteins and enzymes), I cut up the following fresh vegetables:
3 White potatoes
1 large sweet potato
1 small onion
2 very large organic carrots
2 cloves of garlic

I threw that all in the crockpot and ran to the store to buy some black beans.  I found a can of organic black beans on sale at Whole Foods for $1.49 and ran home to add them to my crockpot.

I added a nice bunch of Cumin to the cooking stew, in addition to some Cardamom and a little Turmeric, and of course some salt and pepper.

The finished result was this:

The dark you see is just a result of the long cooking time and the cumin on the top of the chicken breasts.  It turned out to look a lot like a beef stew and I served it with the cornbread that I posted about this morning.  Absolutely filling and nutritious with no added preservatives or chemicals!!  If we don't eat it all in a few days, I can freeze some of it for a later meal.  But we will have leftovers for quite some time. So the moral of the story is be creative in your kitchen.  Try new combinations.  If something bombs as a recipe the first time it can usually be upcycled into something else delicious later! 

I stay frugal in the kitchen by:

• Freezing leftovers before they become something scary in my refrigerator
• Using the leftover whey from yogurt and cottage cheese making to enrich my cooking (use in place of water or broth.
• Using some of the dehydrated food stock in my soups and casseroles.  This particular stew features some home-dehydrated hash browns which were not a hit a hash browns, as they turned brown in the dehydrator and did not look appealing.  As they were still good food, they made a nice filler for the stew.
• I could have thrown any dehydrated vegetables or even leftovers from a previous meal into this stew.

Waste not, want not!  When I am grocery shopping I look for fresh produce that is running at or below $1.00 per pound.  I fill my pantry with that when it is on sale and dehydrate or freeze what I cannot use when fresh.  I look for organic foods from the "Dirty Dozen" list of the dirtiest produce and buy the rest at the local grocery when on sale.  It takes some time and a little forethought but it has enriched our diet and our health as a family.