Crock-Pot Apricot Chicken

I have a love/hate relationship with my crock-pot. Whenever I try to cook something on the high setting, it burns. When I try low, it's not fully cooked. I think it just hates me. Yesterday after grocery shopping, I decided to give my slow cooker another change and tried Apricot Chicken from Six Sister's Stuff. I found the recipe on Pinterest. I made a couple substitutions, so I'm not sure if it would taste the same as the original recipe. First off, instead of a packet of dry onion soup mix, I used a can of Cream of Celery soup. I substituted this because I thought I had a packet of the soup mix left over from a previous recipe that I've tried, but alas, I did not and since I had just gotten back home from grocery shopping, I refused to leave again. My second substitution isn't really a substitution at all...instead of chicken breasts, I used chicken tenders because again, I didn't have chicken breasts, but I have a huge Costco-sized back of chicken tenderloins. My third and final substitution again really isn't a substitution. It called for apricot preserves..I used apricot and pineapple because, again, that is what I had in stock from another previous recipe I've tried.

Substitutions/alterations aside, it was good! Had barely enough left over for my lunch today. I didn't put enough chicken in the pot because while they were frozen, I put as much as my crock-pot could fit, but shrunk down when they thawed/cooked. So there was WAY more sauce than chicken, but that's alright, I made mashed potatoes too so I used it as a gravy. Pretty much licked my plate clean. Hubs didn't complain about it either, so I chalk that up for the win category!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend, I know I did. (Anyone see the 58-0 shut out of the Cardinals from Seattle?! Crazy!!)

Dec. 8, 2012

Work has been extremely hectic lately with training for a new position and prepping for our HR files to be audited next month. I haven't been very diligent with my 5k training..I might have to put that on the back burner until after the holidays, I'm not sure yet.

Yesterday I took a much needed day off from work. Thank the Lord for PTO! Friend Jamie and I drove down to Woodburn Company Stores outside of Portland to do some tax-free Christmas shopping. I scored as usual at the Gap Outlet for gifts for my second cousins and hubs' nephew. We high-tailed it outta there to get back home in time for my work Christmas party. We had fun, and I was starving so the turkey and ham with all the fixin's hit the spot!

Today has been a very lazy day. I did some cleaning, but not as much as I should have. Paid a few bills, balanced the checkbooks, took the dogs for a few walks..the usual. Tomorrow will consist of more cleaning, laundry folding, more dog walks, and maybe a little shopping if there's time. Who am I kidding? The shopping with most likely happen first. Sundays are my grocery shopping days.

Happy December!

I love this time of year. Christmas is my fave!! I love the sights, sounds, smells, you name it. Since it is officially December, my goal for this weekend is to holiday-ify our townhouse. Last week I hung the stockings above the fireplace. Hubs was none too thrilled [He's a total Scrooge]. He will be putting up the Christmas tree this week on his next day off though. He said he was waiting until December 1st and when I asked him to do it yesterday because it was his day off, he said no because it wasn't December yet. Hmmph I say!

I mailed out our Christmas cards today. Yay! Very excited to get them off our buffet, they've been sitting there for a few weeks now.

I love the festive Forever Stamps!

We also received our first Christmas card in the mail yesterday, Jason's friend, April, who is also a new partner at Jay's dad's CPA firm. So happy for her! I need to figure out how I want to display cards this year. I think I'm going to hang some ribbon on our kitchen cabinets and just paper clip them on...or something of that nature..I'm not sure yet. I may need to peruse Pinterest for ideas.