I have distinct memories of blue cheese lingering on my taste buds. The flavor has been lingering for a few weeks…every since the Spicy Chicken Chili.

In clearing out the freezer, I found 2 baggies of chicken breasts that I had frozen with Frank’s red sauce as a marinade. Trying to figure out how to use it up in a fun, clever way wasn’t too hard. These blue cheese memories were lingering in the forefront of my brain. And with all the buffalo chicken dip talk with the Super Bowl happening this weekend…these enchiladas seemed to be in order.

I had corn tortillas leftover in the freezer from the last enchiladas I made, as well as the shredded cheese. I had the canned tomato sauce in my stockpile, so the only ingredient I needed to purchase for this meal was the blue cheese. I managed to squeeze that into this past week’s very small grocery budget.

And even though our green couch is in the dining room, our (we cleared out our playroom to do some painting and deep cleaning…then rearranging before we list the house) dinig table is covered with toys, an Ikea trofast shelf and more. But we needed a night in, after a few meals out earlier in the week…so I made these enchiladas for my husband and I…and I made the kids some “cheeseless” buffalo chicken wraps, using the last of the flour tortillas that we had.

Frank’s Red Hot Sauce Coupon

So here’s how it went down…

I dropped the partially thawed chicken and Frank’s hot sauce marinade into the slow cooker, high for 6 hours. Once finished, I shredded it with 2 forks.

Drop a couple forkfuls of shredded chicken into a corn tortilla, then sprinkle blue cheese crumbles on top.

Roll, seam side down…and stuff the pan full. I got 12 enchiladas into a 9×13 comfortably…probably could have squished in 2 or 3 more.

Mix taco seasoning into the tomato sauce (like I did here)…this is not lazy, it’s efficient!

Pour the tomato sauce over top. Then the cheese. Then the bake. Then cool a bit. Then let the taste bud explosion begin.

This chile verde from Elise at Simply Recipes looks so so so scrumptious! Makes me want to run to the store and buy a bunch of tomatillos so I can make it for dinner…yum-my!

• Chili Verde from Simply Recipes

Might want to add tomatillos to your grocery list now. And enjoy this chili next week!

Photo Credit: Skinny Taste

A fantabulous chicken chili…made in the slow cooker…from Skinny Taste!

• Slow Cooker Chicken Chili

You can pre-make these and store in the fridge, to grab later for an “anytime” meal, on-the-go fast food, or a late night dinner.

I was delighted to find Perdue chicken nuggets in the reduced meat section of our local store.  It didn’t matter that they were shaped like “cars.” My teens didn’t mind at all!

The lettuce in this reduced package was colorful, convenient, and inexpensive.

We do a lot of bulk cooking because our schedules are crazy during the week but we really prefer to serve home cooked meals to our five kids.  This is a super simple recipe as well as a great way to cook once and eat many times! 

I just bought 40 pounds of boneless chicken breast for a great deal but I need to get it put up in the freezer pretty quickly so I put half of it in the slow cooker and cooked it all at once. When it was ready I used three of the breasts for supper then cut most of the rest into cubes and shredded the remainder.  I ended up with five packages of cubed chicken and three packages of shredded that can be used for all sorts of quick homemade meals like BBQ sandwiches, enchiladas, quesadillas, casseroles, pot pies, salads, fajitas, pizza, soups and pasta dishes.  I was also able to put four containers of chicken broth in the freezer.

You can make any size batch that you’d like, as long as the lid will close on the slow cooker.  The recipe below is for a smaller batch of 4 to 6 breasts – double the recipe if you’re making a larger batch.

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If buffalo wings could be made into soup form, this is it!

Chicken. Spice. Celery. Blue Cheese.

Seriously. Yum!

I decided to double this recipe…some for us to enjoy at home, and some to take a potluck this past week. I only made a slight change to the recipe that I served my family…I added half as much of the red hot pepper sauce. I didn’t want the kids to complain, or have red hot lips and tongues. And I took another pot to a potluck, made as directed.

There was nothing. And I mean nothing left in the pot. I brought a little tub of blue cheese and printed out a simple instruction card so people would know to add a spoonful (or two, or three) of blue cheese to their little bowl.

I will be making this again for the Super Bowl…it’s seriously like wings in a bowl! And would be perfect for game day…or any weeknight for that matter!

(And don’t forget to load ingredient e-coupons to your Kroger (and affiliates) Plus card!)

And there’s more!

I want you to try to give every night a new flavor too…so we’re giving away the following this week!

• $25 Kroger gift card
• Recipe cards
• A variety of ConAgra products needed to create the recipes

Enter to win and you’ve got a few meals ready for your family to try!

Giveaway Details – {Closed! Congrats to Sharon, our winner!}

1. Contest ends Friday at 9 pm EST. Winners will be announced back here on this post, and notified via email with further instructions.

• Entry #1: Visit Give Every Night New Flavor, then share what recipe you think will be your next family favorite.
  
• Entry #2: Like Kroger on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.
• Entry #3: Sign up for free email updates, or RSS posts from $5 Dinners.

5. Winner will be selected by Random.org.

**NOTE: If you receive the email newsletter and wish to enter this giveaway, click on the title of this giveaway to get to the site and leave a comment on the site with your name and email address to be entered!

*Disclosure: This is part of a sponsored campaign on behalf of Kroger and ConAgra foods. Opinions are my own. It really did taste like buffalo wings soup. And the potluck pot really was empty! More recipes and giveaways coming next week!

My family loves stir-frys. And I really appreciate how quickly they come together. However, some days I feel like using one pan for rice and another pan for the stir-fry is one pan too many when it comes time to clean up. It’s not because I am lazy… oh who am I kidding? It’s totally because I am lazy!  This recipe combines our favorite Asian flavors in one easy skillet dish.

I used white basmati rice, which cooks in about 20 minutes. If you use a different rice, use one with a similar cooking time. The recipe calls for chicken broth. I make chicken broth in a slow cooker to stretch my grocery budget a little further. If you do not have chicken broth, you can substitute vegetable broth or water.

I added sesame seeds to this recipe. I save money on sesame seeds by buying them from the bulk section of our grocery store. I can buy a pound of sesame seeds for less than the price of a bottle of seeds in the spice section.

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I made these enchilada gems for my husband and his dude friends…just before Christmas. We hosted a guys night and I made 2 pans of these for the guys to snack on. (And I may have had a few…in the name of quality control!)

The recipe is written for 2 pans…but you could easily half the recipe to make it for just 1 pan.

And before you go all “these can’t be real enchiladas…they don’t use corn tortillas”…calm down. I realize that these don’t use corn tortillas. I don’t like enchiladas that are “cream sauce” based, or “green sauce” based that are made with corn tortillas. For some reason they don’t mix well or taste good to me. So I apologize to all you “enchilada purists”. And I encourage you to give the flour tortillas a try in your next “green or cream sauce” enchiladas!

Freezer Friendly: These would also freeze nicely either before or after they are baked. Thaw completely before baking at 350 for 30 minutes to reheat. Make in a disposable foil baking pan for easy delivery to those in need of a meal!

Fixins for the spinach sauce for inside the enchiladas.

Rolled up.

Sauce-ified. Cheese-ified.

Ready for the oven.

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Party food! Both frugal and easy to make in large quantities with just three to four ingredients. This recipe I learned from my Aunt Patti, is one of the most requested.

And today I’m sharing two ways to make it! Whip up roll ups with cream cheese, chopped black olives and salsa, as pictured above.

Or tuck some of pimento cheese into a tortilla. I offered this as a last minute appetizer over the summer with bites of watermelon. I shared my pimento cheese recipe here on $5 Dinners as a frugal way to feed a crowd.

These variations have served many around the holidays, at bridal luncheons, meetings and Super Bowl parties. On New Year’s Eve, we often just serve plates of appetizers. Roll ups are easy for my children to handle and to eat – in large amounts!

Cream cheese roll ups are safe for my nut and egg-free household. Cream cheese is also the allergy-friendly adaptation in my egg-free pimento cheese version here.

Which version will you make?

This is a variation on a dish my mother made when I was young. My mother made very few international dishes. Most of our food was basic Central and Eastern European cooking. Lots of meat, lots of potato, lots of sauces and gravies. My mother never even made spaghetti. That is why this dish stands out in my memory so much, because other cuisines were just never represented in our house, which I think is quite typical of must immigrant households.

In my mother’s very carnivore house, her version was served as a side dish, not a main course. When I do make this for my mom, she always comments how this is not quite like her version (I love the addition of the hoisin sause and other tasty things) and that it really needs a chicken leg to go with it. Feel free to serve it that way, but I love it because it is a complete meal in one dish, easy to serve, easy to eat and great for lunches because it is delicious cold as well as hot!

Frugal Tip: To wrap Christmas and other gifts, I have made and purchased lots of fabric bags. My recipients know that they need to return the bags to get another gift next year. The easiest solution is to buy decorative pillow cases at the thrift store or at the dollar store. If you can sew, it is really easy to sew up a drawstring bag which makes it super easy to wrap: drop the gift in, pull the drawstring, BAM, done!  For gifts to people who I do not feel comfortable in asking for the bags back, I make gift bags and containers out of junk mail. Check out my blog for more information.