recipe // chia pudding

So I jumped on the Chia Seed bandwagon! Ordered my self a bag of them and have been putting them in basically everything (well some what)- drinks, smoothies, yogurt.

The other day I saw someone post a photo on Instagram (inspired by Tumbleweeds Handcraft) of Chia Pudding, until then I had no clue such a thing existed. I browsed through a few recipes online and decided to give it a try. You can really make it any way you want, there doesn't seem to be an exact recipe you need to follow. And you can pretty much customize the flavoring to your liking.

recipe // creamy chicken pasta salad

 Sometimes I feel like it takes so much work to come up with new dinner ideas, which makes the task that much more daunting. Luckily we live in the new age, which means we have Pinterest to help out- not sure if it's a good thing or bad. And while I do love browsing for new recipes for hours beyond hours (ok so I might not look at recipes the entire time) I find that most of the time I never have on hand what I need to fulfill the newly pinned meal of choice. And yes I could easily plan out my meals like a normal, organized person... But I don't. I then came across this recipe, I didn't have all the ingredients listed, but I had enough of the ingredients to adapt it to something I could feed my family. And we liked it so much, this is our second time eating it with in a week! Bonus Factor is it makes a lot so there is plenty of leftovers!!

crock pot chicken & brussel sprout pasta

Yesterday I was finding it a little challenging to come up with something to make for dinner! If you are like me, you like to utilize your crock pot as much as possible. But we are at the point where we need to hit the grocery store, because dinner ideas with what we have in the fridge are becoming ridiculous! And if you are like me, you dread grocery shopping with the munchkins because you are bound to forget at least half the items on you list. That's why we have Husbands though right??!

Okay, back on track. So we basically didn't have the essentials for a commonly made dinner, so I had to pull from other sources to make this possible...My Mom!! I had chicken tenders and brussel sprouts, but had no clue what to make with it, since that was about all I had. (Did I mention that the Hubs will be going grocery shopping when he gets off work?? I should probably mention that to him). Of course a quick phone call to my mom to save the day!!

Crock Pot Chicken & Brussel Sprout Pasta

Crock Pot Ingredients:

About 9 frozen chicken tender (you can use chicken breasts if that's what you have)

a bag of brussel sprouts; cleaned and stem ends trimmed off

2 tsp Original Mrs. Dash 

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp garlic & herb spice

1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice

**If you have bacon, which I didn't and wish I did, you can add some chopped bacon to this too**

Place brussel sprouts in the crock pot, followed by chicken (and bacon if you are using any). The sprinkle the remaining ingredients over the top. Place lid on and set to cook low for 6-8 hours or high for 4 hours.

Once you get to about 30 mins left on the crock pot, you can start the pasta.

Pasta Ingredients:

package of pasta, cooked to package directions

3 Tbsp olive oil

3/4 cup almond meal

2 tsp garlic salt

pepper to taste

Cook your pasta as the package suggests. When done, drain and place in a medium bowl. Add 3 tbsp of olive oil to the noodles and toss the noodles until they are coated well. Add the almond meal, garlic salt and pepper and mix with noodles until well coated. TADA!

 Now just serve your chicken and brussel sprouts with your pasta, you have a yummy and healthy dinner!! Little did I know that my Hubs doesn't like brussel sprouts... OOPS! So he opted to to just eat the chicken and pasta. I like to keep my pasta separate when storing the left overs too, it makes a nice little snack or lunch the following day, but the Hubs ate all the pasta.... 

**You can substitute the pasta for gluten free noodles, and you have a GFree meal.**