This is a recipe from Kathi’s Test Kitchen, where I test various recipes from other chefs, foodie blogs, cookbooks and cooking shows. Sometimes, I change them up a bit; sometimes I make them exactly as written. Then I evaluate the recipe against a variety of rating factors. This week, I made Aarti Sequeira’s (Aarti Party) Chicken Tikka Masala, along with the cauliflower recipe from traditional Indian fare called Aloo Gobi.

I loved them! If you like Indian food, you’re going to love how accessible and easy Aarti makes it. I’ve tried quite a few of her recipes, but this is one of my favorites so far. I think I could eat it every day.

I didn’t have as great luck making Aarti’s Simple Basmati Rice recipe, but that may have been because I substituted brown Basmati rice for the regular white variety. Brown rice doesn’t have quite the same consistency. I happen to like it better, but that’s just me.

The chicken though, along with the cauliflower side dish, were so scrumptious.

To read my whole review, visit this Chicken Tikka Masala page on my main site.

This Greek Chicken Rice Casserole recipe is a riff on an old standby family recipe that my entire extended family loves. The traditional version is very American. I decided to play around with different flavor profiles to add some ethnic flair to this tried and true recipe… in order to make it a bit more current.

One result was this Greek food-inspired version of MacNaughton Chicken Rice Casserole. It adds in some black olives and feta cheese and substitutes a wheat thin topping for potato chips. Plus, it has oregano, the original Greek spice, of course!

You can make the recipe healthier by using skinless, boneless chicken breasts, brown rice, and substituting Greek yogurt for at least some of the mayonnaise.  And low fat, low salt cream soup would help, as would using your own veggie broth, rather than bouillon or canned broth.

However, you mix it though, this is one delicious and flavorful recipe. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Here’s where you’ll find it:

Greek Chicken Rice Casserole

Other pages you might enjoy on the Thrown Together Meals site include:

• Easy chicken recipes for dinner
• Make ahead casserole recipes
• Kathi’s test kitchen, where I test recipes from famous cookbooks, other foodie websites and more

Do you like lasagna as much as I do? Mmm… hearty goodness, Italian-style! But let’s face it… traditional lasagna isn’t necessarily the healthiest meal around, no matter how great it tastes. In fact, my mom, never known for her tact, said to me yesterday afternoon when she heard I was making lasagna… “Wow… I’m surprised you’re making that… it’s not very healthy!”

My response was that THIS lasagna recipe was going to be healthy… and low fat. It was also thrown together, since I made it by using up foods I had on hand, without a set recipe. I’d had some ground chicken in the freezer for a while, along with some eggplant, so I thought why not combine them for a new take on lasagna?

You’ll find this delicious Chicken Veggie Lasagna recipe here… I hope you enjoy it! We sure did!

I’m always looking for new quick & easy & delicious dinner recipes too, so please feel free to share your favorite recipes, won’t you?

Or, if you have a favorite cookbook, I’d love to have you share a cookbook review with my other visitors too…

In fact, on that note, did you see my latest Rachael Ray cookbook review? This time it was her Just in Time Cookbook. Find out what I said about Rachael’s Just in Time offering right now…

That should keep you busy until next week!

Threw together a new dinner meal the other night. Had some frozen chicken breasts, was in the mood for rice and as I stood in my kitchen, thinking “What to make? What to make?”, I felt an inspiration for “Island Chicken”.

What’s that, you ask? Well, to me, it was fresh, tropical flavors. All of my meals include lots of veggies, because I’m very into healthy eating. And I had gotten a great deal on red, yellow and orange bell peppers at the store last weekend. So this seemed a great way to use them!

You can see the recipe on my Thrown-Together-Meals.com website. My family (and I) loved this meal!

Chicken Broccoli Alfredo is a thrown together meal recipe using a simple white sauce recipe with chicken and broccoli… yummo!

One night I had a hankering for Alfredo sauce (yumm… Parmesan), and I had chicken and broccoli on hand, so I decided to put them together in one quick dish. A few other ingredients and a new classic was born!

To view this recipe, go to our Thrown-Together-Meals.com website and visit the Chicken Broccoli Alfredo recipe page. You can also find more great chicken recipes or share your own special recipes. Enjoy!