Freezer Meals: Part 4

This is the final installment in my freezer meals series, though I'm sure other freezer meals will pop up again.  This past week, we made the fig balsamic chicken, which smelled incredible and had a tangy (but not overly balsamic) flavor.  Given the chicken's flavor, I had spent the last two weeks trying to come up with side dishes and pairings that would keep us from getting bored of it.

Let's start from the beginning, I had seared the chicken and cooked up the onions before freezing them.  Then the day before it was time to cook them, I put them in the fridge to defrost.  Once defrosted, I put the chicken and sauce ingredients in the crockpot for a long day of cooking.  I did a combination of chicken thighs and breasts in hopes of getting moist results while still being sort of healthy.  The thighs nearly fell apart in the slow cooker becoming very tender while the breasts were good (but not as delicious).

For its inagural night, we served the fig balsamic chicken with stir fried vegatables... this side dish is becoming a house favorite.  It was a perfect combination with the sauce from the chicken adding an extra dimension and flavor to the vegatables.  The following night we added the chicken chopped into pieces to pasta with tomato sauce.  Again, the chicken and whatever sauce came with it made the pasta sauce more complex and flavorful than it otherwise would be.  I had the chicken for lunch one day, and at that point, I reached my maximum of eating the chicken for one week.  Hubby, on the other hand, couldn't wait to have it again for dinner.

The following night, hubby was craving Chinese food, and I was hoping to avoid the chicken for a fourth meal.  Then it hit me... fried rice!  When I was a kid, we had come up with our own ad hoc way of making fried rice, which was a great way to use day old rice and make an easy dinner.  In our case, I had to make fresh rice, which is not as good as using leftover rice for whatever reason.  I made the rice and stirfried together the chicken, some cubed ham, a scrambled egg, and a pea and carrot frozen veggie mix we had on hand.  I was pretty impressed that we had all the basic ingredients I would usually add.  I mixed the rice with the stir fried mix and added soy sauce.  Voila!  Fried rice!  Hubby was very impressed with my thrown together dinner concoction, and I was impressed that the chicken tasted quite good in the rice mixture.

The chicken's grand finale in fried rice!