This is an amazing meal that comes together FAST when you come home tired and don’t feel like cooking at all. In fact, we suggest keeping a bag of this chicken in the freezer for just such an emergency or “just in case” meal when you have had a super busy day.

Menu: Orange Chicken, brown rice & veggies

Tonight we used these three products from Trader Joe’s:

• Mandarin Orange Chicken
• Brown Basmati Rice
• Zucchini squash

Here are the steps we used (to feed 2 people):

1. Pre-heat: Get  the oven warmed up, to heat up the chicken.

2. Start the rice: We used 1./2 cup of the rice and 1 cup of water. Brought this to a boil in a pan with a lid, and the turned it down to a low-medium heat to cook for 30 minutes. Then we checked and added a bit more water (2 spoonfuls) and stuck the lit back on, and let the rice continue to cook, until it was finished cooking. Total time 40 minutes.

Since we chose fresh veggies this time, we cut up 3 zucchini squash into half-moons and started to steam them on the stove.

4. Start the Chicken: As there were only two of us eating tonight, we only heated up half the bag of chicken on a cookie sheet in the oven, following the package directions. We also stuck some hot water in a coffee cup and dropped in the frozen sauce packet to warm up. The rest of the package went back into the freezer for another night.

WARNING: the chicken  is so GOOD, you might want to heat up the whole package!

5. Eat: Now in the 20 or so minutes that it takes the chicken to warm up in the oven, the rice and the zucchini will finish cooking.

Ta-da–  Everything ready to eat at once!

Have you tried the Mandarin Orange Chicken? What do you think? Drop us a line when you get a chance and let us know.