Quick & Easy Barbecue Cream Cheese Chicken Wrap-ups!

Every Sunday while I'm in church and I catch my mind wandering, it's always wandering to the same place--What am I going to make for dinner? As a single woman living alone, I get to make whatever I want without worrying about if other people will like it. If I have the ingredients and I think it sounds yummy, I'm going to try it.

I haven't always been this way. No, it's only been since living on my own that I've discovered how much I like to experiment with food. It also helped that I spent a good solid week at my internship just looking at cooking blogs. I know, it was a sweet gig.

But since my internship is coming to an end and I'll probably be moving back to home to Ogden soon, I need to start using up all the food I've acquired and I need to use it within the next couple weeks.

Today I thought about all the chicken breasts I had in the freezer. What can I make in with chicken tonight? I thought.

My go-to since living on my own is barbecue chicken. Thaw the chicken, grill it up in a sauce pan on the stove, put some barbecue sauce on it, and serve with a baked potato. Super easy! But this week I was lazy and didn't buy potatoes. I did, however, have Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough.

Ever since my mission, when a member of the church made this yummy dessert with cream cheese, strawberries, and crescent roll dough, I always make sure to have a can on hand. It's really simple to whip up a filling (for breakfast I do jam & cream cheese, for dessert I do chocolate sauce, chocolate chips, & cream cheese) and bake. But I'd never made a dinner filling.

Why not? I thought. So, I spent the rest of the church meeting planning what I'd make.

First, I filled a pot of water (enough to cover 2 chicken breasts) and put it on the stove. Next I added two frozen chicken breasts (because who has time for thawing?) and cranked up the heat. I figured they could thaw while the water warmed up. It took probably 40 minutes for them to cook all the way through, which was fine. I just watched Netflix at the kitchen counter while keeping my eye on the chicken.

When the chicken was cooked I took it out and shredded the breasts with a fork. Then I added my favorite barbecue sauce to the bowl (I love Sweet Baby Ray's Raspberry Chipotle Barbecue Sauce. Side story: I had never tried it, but the girl whose apartment I'm living in for the summer while she's away, had some in the fridge. So one day I tried it, and now I'm hooked. Don't worry, I bought her a new bottle and one for myself too. ;) Once the sauce and chicken were mixed I placed it in the fridge so the chicken could soak up some of that yummy raspberry chipotle flavor.

After a few hours, when I was starting to get hungry, I pulled out the chicken and put it in a sauce pan with a little more than half a block of cream cheese. As I was stirring it together, I started to get worried. Here's my disclaimer: I am not a professional or experienced chef by any means. But I am an avid watcher of Chopped, so I heard the judges voices in my head going, That's a rookie mistake, barbecue sauce and cream cheese. This will cost Chef Erin dearly at the chopping block.

But once the cream cheese was melted, I finally decided to try it. And can I just say . . . It was yummy! Sweet, but with a little kick thanks to the chipotle. Have you ever had jalepeno jam with cream cheese on a cracker? That's what this tasted like, but with chicken! Then I added salt and pepper (because, aren't you always supposed to add that? For flavor or whatever?) and set it aside.

After that it was just a matter of adding a generous helping of filling to each crescent roll, and then baking for 15 minutes at 350.

How delicious do those look! I just ate mine with a side of carrots, but you could pair it with chips, a salad, chocolate cake . . . You know, whatever.;) These are also great to eat on-the-go for a quick meal.

So, there ya go! Quick & Easy Barbecue Cream Cheese Chicken Wrap-ups! Thanks for indulging me & letting me try my hand at food blogging. XD Maybe I'll post more ideas in the future.

Barbecue Cream Cheese Chicken Wrap-ups Recipe

Ingredients
-2 Chicken Breasts
-1 pckg Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
-Barbecue Sauce of Your Choice (I used Sweet Baby Ray's Raspberry Chipotle Barbecue Sauce)
-1/2 pckg Cream Cheese
-Salt & Pepper to taste

1. Cook chicken breasts and shred.

2. Mix in 1 cup barbecue sauce until chicken is coated. Set aside in fridge to marinate a couple hours.

3. Place chicken mixture in sauce pan over medium-high heat. Add cream cheese.

4. When cream cheese is melted and chicken is hot, add salt & pepper to taste.

5. Follow crescent roll instructions for pre-heating oven.

6. Open crescent rolls & lay out on baking pan. Add heaping spoonful of chicken mixture to each roll, then carefully roll up. (P.S. The chicken doesn't have to be completely wrapped--it's okay if it sticks out the sides. Those pieces just get crispy and delicious.)

7. Cook wrap-ups in oven until golden brown.

8. Cool and enjoy!

Let Yourself Be Happy

I had kind of an embarrassing moment over the 4th of July weekend. I basically had an emotional meltdown with weeks of pent-up stress spilling out for my whole family and our 4th of July guests to see. I was shaking and screaming and fighting with people I love. Eventually, I had to just walk off by myself around the block to release some of the insane energy that had possessed me. It helped a little, but I still felt angry and like I might shatter into a million pieces.

It wasn't my proudest moment.

Moving to Provo has been great. I like living on my own and doing what I want, when I want. I love my internship. My ward and the people I've met there are nice. But until this weekend, I hadn't realized just how stressed I am.

See, being on my own has been good and bad. It's made me more responsible. I've become more thrifty. I've been able to prove myself, in a way. But it's been really hard being stuck alone with my thoughts all the time. I'm about halfway through my internship and I have no idea what I'm going to do after. That scares me. I don't know how I'm going to support myself. I don't know what kind of jobs to apply for. So then I stay up late with my heart pounding and my thoughts running in circles, and I scour the job boards. My life seems to start collapsing in around me and I can't see where my place in this world is going to be. It's scary.

These thoughts got even worse when I went home for the holiday. I was surrounded by my family, people that I love, and all I could think about was what a gigantic failure I am. I feel like I've been faking success up until now and that if I don't get a job quickly after my internship, everyone will finally see through my facade. They'll too realize that I'm a failure. That I'm worried. That I have doubts. That I'm afraid. My meltdown let people see that side to me a lot sooner than I'd been mentally prepared for. My confident exterior had cracked and I felt completely defeated.

Driving home that night back to Provo, back to another week alone in my apartment, I blared music loud to try and shut out my thoughts and feelings. I wanted to keep burying myself and my problems. I kept trying to tell myself I was fine. But as I sang along with the radio, tears blurred the road and my voice cracked.

I can't keep doing this. I can't keep feeling this way. I need to get out of my head. Out of the house. When was the last time I did anything for fun?

I couldn't think of a time in the past couple weeks that I did something that actually made me happy. Instead, everything I did made me feel guilty.

You should be looking for a job, I'd think as I washed the dishes.

You should be working on your books, I'd think as I cooked dinner.

You shouldn't be spending money on that. Your bank account's getting low, I'd think as I bought groceries.

This guilt and the ridiculous standards I was holding myself to were going to kill me. I couldn't keep feeling guilty about everything that brought me a little bit of happiness. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to not feel like a failure.

So on the drive home, I made a list of all the fun things I could do. Drive to Draper and visit the aquarium. Go see a movie in the theater. Get an ice cream cone at the BYU creamery. Visit my friends and have lunch. Go the mall and buy myself something from Bath & Body Works.

But when I got back home to my apartment, I felt discouraged. My guilt was rooted in real issues I'm facing--the plummeting number in my savings account, the lack of a plan after August, and the neglect of my goals. My problems wouldn't just go away because I went to the aquarium or got some ice cream.

With this mix of emotions creating a volatile cocktail in my blood, I turned on my computer and opened YouTube. That's a skill I could put on my resume--Great at avoiding her feelings and problems by surfing the internet. One of my recommended videos caught my eye and I decided to click on it. This was the video.



Now, don't tell me that at the chorus you didn't find yourself swaying along with the drunken customers? And don't tell me you didn't laugh your a** off when the wife started singing about her cunning little husband. Cause I did. And after I did, I felt a lot better. My problems were still there. But I felt lighter. And I realized, sadly, that I hadn't laughed for real in a long, long time. It was magic.

That's when I decided I'm going to let myself be happy. I love Broadway shows and musicals, but didn't let myself watch them because they're "a waste of time." Not anymore. If I feel like watching that Les Mis clip three times a day for the rest of my life, I'm going to do it because it makes me happy. If I want to make brownies, I'm going to do it, because it makes me happy. If I want to have a Friends marathon, I'm going to do it, why? Because it makes me happy.

My problems are going to be there whether I'm obsessing and miserable about them or not. So I might as well obsess and find happiness where I can.

Now that I've let myself feel some happiness, things are getting better. But I still worry. And I still have no clue what's going to happen at the end of August. However, I've found that despite the worry and the fear, there are little pockets of sunshine that get me through the darkness. My pockets of sunshine are juggling. Playing the piano. Reading a book for fun. And I've discovered something weird.

As I've let myself be happy, I've become more motivated to write. I decided to update this blog. I cleaned up my apartment. I did my dishes. Allowing myself to be happy has done more to improve my desire to reach my goals than all my guilt-tripping ever did.

So, my advice is to let yourself be happy. Watch that funny YouTube video. Take 5 minutes away from homework to play the guitar. Call up a friend and chat. The dishes will wait. The worrying will wait. Your problems will wait. But they're a lot less scary when faced with happiness in your heart.