Day 4 - January 4, 2014: Apricot Chicken With Peppers Over Rice

So, the basis of tonight's recipe actually comes from one of my favorite blogs, crockpot365.blogspot.com.  If you have a crock pot and you haven't been to this blog, you should really head over there, by the way.

Ingredients for tonight's dinner:
6 Chicken thighs: $1.75 (99¢/pound, manager's special!)
2 Peppers: $3.00 (I could have done better at Aldi - 3 peppers for less than $2.00, or Trader Joe's - $1.19/pepper, but I was too far away from either of those stores)
1 10 oz jar of apricot preserves: $2.79
1 1/4 cups of rice: $0.79
1/8 yellow onion: $0.10 (Stephanie uses dried minced onion, which I have been out of for a while but always forget to pick up when I'm at the store; hence the fresh, chopped onion in this recipe)
Condiments, as detailed by Stephanie O'Dea on this site: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/03/crockpot-apricot-chicken-recipe.html: ~$0.15?

Total: ~$8.58

I did serve a green salad on the side, which probably added about 2-3 bucks (thereby putting me over the limit for my challenge), but we had company over for dinner and I just thought it would be uncouth to not serve a salad ;o)

Directions: Trim as much of the fat from the chicken thighs as you like and plop them into your slow cooker (I used a 4-qt slow cooker).  Add chopped peppers and onion.  Mix the sauce: jar of apricot preserves, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp Dijon mustard, 1/4 tsp ginger and 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper.  Pour over chicken and set slow cooker to 4 hrs on high.  That was enough for my semi-frozen chicken thighs.  Boil rice and serve chicken and sauce with the rice, like this:

Or, if you have company, like this:

Verdict: The apricot chicken went over really well, as usual.  Everyone liked it, kids and dinner company included :o)