Aztec Chicken - Food from the Grizz House

So my husband's college buddies rented a house near their campus. It was affectionately named The Grizz House. And from this house emerged a beautiful recipe for an easy, yummy chicken dinner.

Aztec chicken was one of the first recipes my sweetie suggested (besides Poppyseed Chicken! That is an other post that desperately needs to be written!) So naturally I was excited to make it for him. It's all pretty simple ingredients : 

- Two jars of salsa (your choice...we like spicy!)

- Two blocks of Neufchatel cheese (no one said this would be healthy!)

- One can if corn

- One can of black beans

- Diced Jalapeño (totally your choice...i usually keep a couple chopped ones in the freezer. 

- Two to three chicken breast 

(This makes enough food for us to eat off this 2-3 times)

So you can make this recipe in the crock pot or dutch oven. I'm usually never prepared enough for a crock pot meal....but hey we still eat dinner so no bigs. 

So clean up your chicken breast and toss them in the dutch oven.  Add pepper. I skip the salt since there is a lot of canned stuff. If you have time by all means use frozen corn and soak the beans yourself. It won't ruin the dish. It's pretty fool proof!

Next I open the cans of beans and corn and rinse them off. 

Then crack open those jars of salsa and just pour them over the chicken breast. 

Toss on the corn and beans. 

I usually wait and pour the 2nd jar of salsa last. Add those jalapeños if you wanna. 

Cover the pot and stick it in a 350 degree oven. 

Let it cook for about 1.5-2 hours. 

Once the chicken is fully cooked shred the chicken and cube the cream cheese. 

If you have a stand mixer pull out the chicken and shred it in with the beater attachment. Talk about an awesome cheater step! 

Put the chicken back in the pot, cube the cheese, recover and put the pot back in the oven for about 15 more minutes. This allows the cheese to melt. 

After the cheese melts it will all mix together nicely. Goodness my mouth is watering right now adding these pictures! 

Serve over rice and/or corn chips! Enjoy :) compliments to college dude cooks! 

All Natural Liquid Laundry Detergent

So I am a fan of homemade laundry detergent! I'm sure that's obvious by the two other post I have made on laundry detergent (Original recipe here and then we have the Concentrate recipe) 

But this laundry recipe it's all natural, so no colorants or artificial fragrances. Plenty of wholesome clean goodness and so easy to make!

What you are gonna need is 6 oz of grated pure coconut oil soap (that you can buy here https://www.etsy.com/listing/234868161/made-to-order-100-coconut-oil-soap) 

Washing Soda 

Borax 

Essential Oils if you want 

So first off put the grated soap into the pot and add four cups of water.

Turn your heat on medium. 

Just patiently wait for all the chunks to melt down.

Can we get a woohoo for natural goodness?! 

Ok, back to bussiness! 

Measure out one cup of washing soda and one cup of borax. 

I always have clumps in my powdered stuff so I like to break them down.

Slowly pour the soda and borax into the melted soap mixture. Mix well and make sure that it all dissolves. No clumps or grits allowed! Just kidding, but if they aren't gone it'll mess it up....so yeah ;) No grit allowed! 

Once everything is smoothly melted (add you essential oils now if you want them. I used lemon and lavender) then go ahead and slowly pour you mixture into a five gallon bucket.

Add warm-ish water to the bucket till it's about half way full. You'll want to try and keep the bubbles on the low. 

Some bubbles will happen so I just break them down gently while mixing the whole batch really well.

Cover and let is settle un-disturbed for about 12-ish hours.

After is gels mix up with you hands and smooth out the lumpy-ness. I always wear my wedding and engagement rings while doing it cause they come out super shiny and clean! So a win win!

Pour your mixture into your bottles and then you are good to go! Separation is going to happen, it inevitable. So just give your bottle a good shake up before you use it in your laundry. I usually use about 1/4-1/3 of a cup per load. And I use it in my HE washer. Never had a problem with it in my washer either.  

Hope you enjoy your day! I'm wrapping up mind watching a little New Girl on Netflix and folding some freshing washed laundry ;D 

Homemade Liquid Hand Soap

Since I've started soaping I have wanted to try out liquid hand soap. As I looked into it turns out it's pretty simple. 

Here is what you'll need -

A grated bar of soap (I used my own homemade soap)

One gallon of water

A pot

A little bit of patience....waiting 8-12 hours is too long for a project in my opinion...but it's well worth it. 

 

Pour the gallon of water over the grated soap shreds. Set your heat to medium and make sure you keep an eye on the melting soap. Any hotter than medium heat may result in a boiled, burnt mess. Trust me, ya don't want that! 

This process usually taks about :30 minutes. No need to rush it. 

Once all the soap chunks are melted away remove the pot from the heat and let the mixture cool.

Cover the pot and let it just hang out for 8-12 hrs.

You'll know your soap is ready when it gells up. Some soapers call this snot soap....how true that adjective is! 

So this part can get a little messy (but hey, it's soap! It's a breeze to clean up!) 

If you don't have a stand mixer you can use a hand mixer. 

Mix up all of the solution and make it smooth. I had to mix it in a couple batches cause my bowl was too small. 

Now you just pour it into your container and tada!! You have a gallon of homemade soap! 

Here are some nuggets of wisdom for you -

If your solution is too watery just grate more soap, re-heat the solution and melt down the new shreds. 

If your solution is too thick for your just add a little more water till you get the consistency you want.

I used a fine mesh strainer to pour my soap through before I bottled it to make sure there weren't any chunks. This may be a good idea if you're using a soap with dried herbs or flowers in it. 

I usually use a name brand more natural store brand soap. So I did some math to compare prices. A 32oz refill from Walmart was $9.99. There are 128 oz in a gallon. So for 128oz of the store bought soap it would cost $40!! Woah...yeah! So homemade is sooooo much cheaper and I actually know what ingredients are in my soap. 

Hope this is helpful and provides a way to be more frugal with the money God has blessed you with. 

 

Make Your Own Diffuser Necklace

So recently I wanted to get a diffuser necklace. My sister in law got one for Christmas and I loved hers! So I went on Etsy to look for one, then I had an idea! Why not just make my own? Looks easy enough and I seriously already had all the things I'd need to make one. So this really isn't a tutorial (cause it's that simple), so more of an inspiration. 

Here is all you need - 

- A locket with an open design on one side (so you can actually smell those good oils)

- A necklace chain

- a scrap piece of fabric. Something like jersey or fleece

So all you need to do is put the locket on the chain, snip out a piece of fabric to fit in the locket and that's it! Just use 1-2 drops of any essential oil or blend and now you can have the aromatic benefits of essential oils with you all day. 

My favorite oil to wear is Now brand Peace and Harmony (it smells just like Young Living's Peace and Calming at fractions of the price!) I also love a mix of lemon and lavender. So for every different oil I use a different piece of fabric.