Blog Love: Chicken Tortilla Chip Casserole

Lately when it comes to dinner I’ve been pretty proud of myself.  I’ve actually been cooking pretty much every night except for Fridays because we always have pizza for dinner on Fridays.

 

Have I mentioned that I kind of live for Fridays?

Anyway, when it comes to cooking lately I’ve been leaning toward recipes that encompass two things:

1. Inexpensive ingredients.  Maternity leave, although incredible and wonderful and all things amazing, does not pay much.  Therefore a big fat budget has been established and now we try to eat out only once a week and eat everything else at home.  And the things we do eat at home?  I’m kind of getting a kick out of seeing how low we can make our grocery bill each week and still have a wide variety of foods.  It’s sort of a game for me now!
2. Things that are easy to make.  This should come as no surprise since I don’t really want to take time out of my busy snuggling, face-making and diaper-changing schedule to cook a full meal.  Not to mention it’s about a billion degrees in our house these days thanks to a crazy-warm Colorado spring and the inefficiency of tri-level houses.  I’ll take easy dinners any day of the week!

That being said, this is exactly one of those one-dish wonders that makes me stoked to eat the leftovers and allows room to sneak in lots of veggies.  Cover it all in a cheesy blanket and you’ve got a dinner that’s great on its own, or can be served with beans or a side salad.  Now that I’m writing about it I’m kind of craving it again!

 

I only made a few changes to the original recipe from Kelli’s blog, Made in Sonoma:

1. I added a zucchini and a couple of handfuls of spinach to the sauce, mainly because I didn’t feel like making a salad and needed to get some more veggies in that day.  Plus the overabundance of zucchini has already struck this household hard…get ready for too many zucchini bread recipes to come your way!
2. I cut the number of chips in half, although I think it would have tasted better with the full amount.  I only had half the amount on hand in our house and zero time to get to the store.  Still delicious though!
3. Rather than use a rotisserie chicken I boiled and cubed some chicken breast meat that we had on hand.  All in the name of saving money, although a rotisserie chicken would probably have a tad more flavor.

I’m telling you guys, this bad boy is delicious and is definitely on the dinner rotation at our house now. You can find the original recipe here.

 

Thanks so much for the amazing and super simple recipe Kelli!