DudeFood: Chicken Tortilla Soup & Whine Free Dinners

Weeknight dinner awesome continues to happen thanks to a few key discoveries I’ve made about my children.

I will share them with you right after I let you drool a little over the warm, cheesy soup creation I popped off this week…

This friends is my chicken tortilla soup that basically makes itself if you have a crockpot.

But, before I marvel you with quite possibly the easiest recipe ever, let me tell you a few things about making dinner go off without a hitch, even if you only have 15 minutes to wolf it down while you also shimmy your kid into his football pads, take the dog out, correct homework, drive your car, and listen in on a conference call all at the same time.

Simplify Your Mom Game: How to Make Dinner Go From Plate to Belly, No Whining

1. Save the drama for your mama. And with it, the creativity. I know, a continuous rotation of rice and beans and chicken and potatoes is sooooo snore worthy, but so what?! Dinner creativity is for grown ups and people with time on their hands. When you’re a Dude mom of three always-going humans you’re not worrying about either of those things. For us, dinner is about getting a large quantity of good-for-you food inside of their bellies. So, I do what works over and over and over again, and save the creativity (and the drama) for Sunday dinners with Mimi.

2. Create convenience. You can cook a bunch of chicken nuggets and freeze them. Or spaghetti sauce and meatballs and freeze them. Or soup or pasta or whatever you can fit in your freezer. Then when you’re standing in your kitchen with only 30 minutes in front of you to do all of the things, you will be able to pop a frozen thing in your oven and throw it down your kid’s throat right before you leave the house.

3. Follow every meal with ice cream. Which at our house means tasty fruit smoothies infused with vegetables.

Ready for some warm dinner?

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Ingredients

1lb chicken breast (boneless is best)

1 can diced tomatoes with chilies (I use Rotel because it’s a little spicier but you can use whatever you like)

1 cup frozen corn (you can use canned if that’s what you have), thawed

2-3 cups chicken broth

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chili Powder

salt and pepper to taste

tortilla chips

1 cup shredded Mexican cheese

sour cream (optional)

avocados (optional)

Directions

1. Bust out your crock pots.

2. Toss in all of the things. Okay, not all of the things. All of the things except for the chips the cheese and the optional items. Don’t even cut up the chicken. Raw chicken cutting is for punks.

3. Turn on to high to the four hour mark.

4. Dance in your kitchen. G-chat your friend and her baby. Watch two episodes of The Walking Dead on Netflix. Watch 11 year olds dancing on YouTube and wonder why you can’t work it like that. Maybe do some work. That should eat up four hours.

5. Take chicken out and shred it up.

6. Put it back in the crockpot.

7. Stir.

8. Put one serving in a bowl.

9. Grab a handful of chips and squeeze them until they’re a little smashy, then sprinkle them on the soup. Go ahead and use 2 handfuls if you’re sassy.

10. Add cheese and the optional elements you want. Then, grub.

Note: if your children are insane don’t enjoy soup because they are INSANE make some rice and serve the soup on top. I drain the absolute best part juice a little and Dude 3 calls it Mexican chicken dinner before he disappears it.