Hump Day Happenings..... A Fiesta Menu!

Ok,  we now have both kids home from college and yesterday was an exciting day of surprises!  Right now, I can't share those but I will....believe me I will share!  :0)

It's dinner time and we have both of our college kiddos, Austin (the boyfriend) and our friend Mark, who came to borrow a ladder and got dinner too!

M&M Crunch Cookies... Let me preface by seeing these were really good....when they were hot.  Afterwards, they got a tad too crunchy for my taste.  A very crisp cookie after cooling.

Let's check out the cast of characters:

You will need:

1 box white cake mix with pudding (I couldn't find so I used cake mix & a box of pudding)

1/2 cup softened butter

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups plain M&M's

1 cup crushed potato chips     (you say that right!!)

Preheat oven to 350

Mix cake mix (pudding mix), butter and eggs and then beat on medium speed 2 minutes until combined well.

Stir in the candies and chips.

Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and place on cookie sheet...like so:

You will need to spray your cookie sheets or if you are lucky enough to have a mama like mine, use that silpat mat.  It's divine peeps...truly divine!!!

Now pop those in the oven and bake for 16-18 minutes until vey light golden brown.  Remove from the oven and cool on pan for 2 minutes then transfer to cookie racks.

OK...tear yourself away from the warm goodness of the cookies and let's get the dinner going.

Grilled Ckn Soft Taco's

Cast of characters:

Take about 1/4 cup of olive oil and mix in that packet of Fajita seasoning. 

Now mix that up really well and pour over the chicken breasts and coat each side really well.  Yes.... I bet your are saying those are some BIG chicken breasts!!  Compliments of Sprout's.  I'm telling you their food is CRAZY GOOD!!!   Plus Wednesday is double ad day....you get two weeks of sale prices on one day.  Chicken....1.99 lb for those butes!! 

Ok....pop those bad jamma's in the fridge and let them chill-lax until you are ready to fire up the grill.

I'm gonna start the rice now peeps.

Yellow Rice with Black Beans

1 16 oz package yellow rice mix

32 oz of Chicken Broth

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 - 15 oz cans black beans, rinsed and drained

1- 4.5 oz can chopped green chilis

Get your rice ready according to package directions but use the chicken broth instead of water and the olive oil instead of the butter.  Shock and dismay.. I actually used the olive oil too!!!

Once the rice is ready, empty the beans and chilis into the rice and give it a good stir.

Since I went to Sprout's yesterday they also had these gorgeous peppers on sale so this is what I did to them:

One big red beauty, an orange one and a yellow one joined together with some onion.  Yeah, my mama would be soooo happy!

I just doused those pups with some olive oil and put them on a grill pan...they are gonna go hang with the chicken on the grill....

These big ol' breast cooked for about 7-8 minutes each side.. and as hubby would tell me "honey, you have to stir those veggies around on the grill or they will burn"....Whatever... I  like mine a little burned but that's just me apparently.  :0)

So, since we had two additions to the dinner table I grabbed some of my prechopped green peppers out of the freezer and tossed them in a pan with a little bit of butter and got them all cooked and tender and then I added a bag of frozen corn.   I thought it was pretty tasty myself!

I have to tell you... I completely forgot to get pics after this point. It was 7:30 people and I was starving and so was the dinner crowd.   Fortunately I made my plate...jumped up and yelled "Oh crap... we need pictures"  So we snapped these of my plate, hopefully you can see that we had a great dinner and a full table which as you know....makes me VERY happy!

This is my plate, you can see the rice and the corn and my yummy fajita.

In the lovely Christmas bowl is the hottest queso dip....hubby and the Abogg made that over the weekend while the boys were home alone.  Also the tortilla's are compliments of Rosa's as were the tamales.

You can see we pulled the chicken off the grill and sliced it into fajita sizes and then there was avocado slices, tomato's, regular cheese and lime wedges to garnish with along with some salsa.

Hope you enjoyed our evening becuase we sure did!!  Nothing like a table of food and laughter!

Peace, Love and Yummies !!!