A Happy Accident

Tuesdays are my crazy day.  That's not really saying a lot since I have a 7 1/2 month old who is a wiggly, giggly little guy but still...  On Tuesdays I do some volunteering from 12:30pm-4:30pm  and usually don't get home until 5:30.  Plus I also give a piano lesson from 6:00 until 6:30.  So on Tuesdays I like to go the "easy dinner" route. 

I had some leftover cooked chicken that I decided to use in a Mexican Rice Bake.  I've made this dish a million times in a variety of manners (rice cooker vs skillet, from scratch vs pre-packaged, etc) and all with great success.   Tonight I decided to use up a pre-packaged rice/spice mixture that I had gotten free at Meijer.  I started getting the rice going around 7:00 and figured, based on experience, that it would be ready for consumption around 7:30.  Not bad, all things considered!

Fast forward 20 minutes and I heard the tell-tale click of the switch on my rice cooker ticking up to "Keep Warm" from "Cooking".   I walked into the kitchen, lifted the lid and immediately knew there was something wrong.  The rice still looked small and when I gave it a taste test, sure enough it was still hard.  I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, added more water, and flipped the switch back down to "Cooking".  Fast forward another 20 minutes and the rice was still small and still hard and I was annoyed because it was 7:40 and all I had to show for my (minimal) effort was a rice cooker full of food that could potentially crack a tooth. Sigh...

The Offending Rice

Trying to quickly flip through my mental cookbook and check the results against what I knew I had in my cupboards and fridge I decided that I would fry up some bacon and we would have BLT's instead.  I was pretty excited by this prospect because I do love BLT's.  But just then (Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles!  Anyone?)  I happened to glance over to where I store my produce and realized to my immense excitement that I had the makings of one of our most favorite meals: chicken, bacon, avocado quesadillas (courtesy of this blog)!!  Sweet goodness I was excited!  I went out to the garden, pulled some green onions to cook with the chicken and got to work. 

I added some ranch dressing to combat the lack of sour cream, it was pretty tasty!

I also added some garlic to the bacon grease when I fried the quesadillas, mmmmm!

Regrettably this meal isn't for the faint of heart clogged of artery because you're supposed to cook the chicken and onion in the bacon grease.  You also use it to fry up the quesadillas.  I'm sure there are healthier alternatives, but I haven't explored them yet because these are SO good as is!  So needless to say around 8:15 we finally sat down to dinner.  Despite the fact that I actually ended up making two dinners I was quite pleased with the delicious result!  Unfortunately I now have to go clean up my kitchen which looks a little like a disaster zone...