Drooling on my keyboard

Wow.  I'm not sure if I'm more in love with the original recipe or the leftover creation.  I have photos of neither. I've been on an anti-food photo kick for ages and until I find (ha!) the time to create an awesome food photo station in my kitchen chances are you will have to take my word for the fact that something looks as good as it sounds (or maybe better).

I was in a rush yesterday morning and knew I was leaving at 1130 and wouldn't be home until 6pm. Mike's "new" job is kind of nuts and he doesn't get home before 6pm so there was no chance he was going to be able to swoop in to serve dinner unless we ordered take out which we have done once this week already.  A long winded way to say that I decided the slow cooker had to come to the rescue. The tricky part was that I only had 15 minutes to find a recipe and pull it together. Enter Google.

I searched for slow cooker chicken breasts with tomatoes knowing I had thawed chicken and an accidentally opened can of whole tomatoes sitting in my fridge.  In swoops Dishing With Leslie's slow cooker Balsamic Chicken recipe.

I skimmed the recipe and a couple comments following and decided to try it out.  Of course as I was dumping the ingredients in I realized I did not have balsamic vinegar on hand  DUH so I improvised (yep Google to the rescue once again) and used a mix of red wine vinegar and sugar (1 tbsp red wine vinegar:1/2 tsp sugar). I was also out of garlic which I can confidently say would up the fabulousness of this recipe.  Who runs out of garlic?  I used a can of whole tomatoes which I hacked at with a knife before dumping them in, turned the cooker on low, woke up my sleeping baby and flew out of the house just in the nick of time while crossing my fingers and toes.

Fast forward to 550pm when I rushed back into the house with my hungry almost three year old and a tired baby.  The house smelled FANTASTIC.  For once the Rock Star didn't ask "Ew. What smell is this?!".  Instead he asked, "Dinner ready, Mommy?"  Thank you whoever invented the slow cooker.

I tossed some egg noodles into boiling water, Mike arrived home and less than 10 minutes later we sat down for dinner. I figured my boys wouldn't appreciate the sauce and chicken on noodles but they love butter on egg noodles and they both need some fat on their bones so butter it was for them with the chicken on the side.  I on the other hand dumped ladles of tomato goodness over the chicken which sat on my noodles.  Delish.  Surprisingly super yummy.  It smelled great and tasted even better. I love a meal that makes everyone happy without being boring for the one person in the house who doesn't mind their food "mixed up".

After gorging myself on a super easy and yummy dinner I was packing up the leftover chicken when something told me to dip into the pot and gulp down some sauce.  Oh. My. God.   I dumped the liquidy goodness into a jar deciding soup would be on the menu for Mama tomorrow.  That's when I popped back over to Leslie's blog and checked out the Balsamic Chicken files where I found a recipe for soup using the leftovers.  Great minds think alike so Leslie must be pretty freaking awesome.

Today I made the soup.  How was it?  Well.... I ended up having soup as my second lunch (yay for breastfeeding) and dinner. Mmmmmmm.

Thanks, Leslie for posting this outstanding recipe. It is definitely a keeper and I have no doubt I will be making it over and over again!

Rather than posting the how to over here I feel like I should link to Leslie's original post.  Show her some love by visiting her blog and trying out here delicious dishes. I know I will be back.