I’ve gotten into the habit of cooking a chicken in the crock pot on Sundays. Cooking it in the crockpot is easy (and doesn’t require the oven – it is still hot in Southern California!) and creates delicious, flavorful and really easy shredded chicken.

I’ve been eating buffalo chicken salads, curried chicken salads and plain chicken in my current favorite salad: greens + cucumber + chicken + avocado + hemp seeds + balsamic vinaigrette. There are endless ways to use shredded chicken – here are some of my favorites:

• Mexican Influence: enchiladas, tacos, quesadillas, nachos, tostadas
• Salads & Appetizers: pesto chicken salad, chinese chicken salad, buffalo dip, chicken satay, lettuce cups
• Soups: tortilla soup, smoked chicken chowder, creamy chicken pasta soup, spicy thai coconut soup
• Sandwiches & Wraps: BBQ sandwich, chicken caprese sandwich, chicken caesar salad wrap, chicken panini
• Pasta & Pizzas: baked pastas, lasagna, peanut noodles, bbq chicken pizza
• Casseroles: chicken & broccoli noodle casserole, chicken pot pie, bbq-stuffed potatoes 

What do you make with shredded chicken? 

If you have a garden (or visit the farmers market) you’ve got to have a ton of tomatoes. Right? In addition to having a dog, part of our house-sitting duties were eating the food from the garden! Turns out, that is a very fun chore.

We had a drawer full of tomatoes and they needed to be eaten. Besides throwing them in salads, using them in summer crostini’s and roasting them I was kind of running out of ideas.

So like anyone, I turned to the internet for some tomato inspiration. Here are some of the favorite recipes I found…

market salad with goat cheese and champagne-shallot vinaigrette *photo credit

tomato-basil sauce with polenta

fresh corn and avocado salsa

heirloom tomato bloody mary

fresh tomato soup

white bean, garlic, and tomato salsa

garlic-basil grilled chicken with caprese salsa

canned heirloom tomatoes *photo credit

creole tomato salad

mozzarella and tomato sauce omelet

slow-braised tomatoes 

tomato, onion & gruyere bake

If you’ve got a favorite tomato recipe, please share below! 

PS. While we are on the topic of tomatoes…go read this post about fairly harvested tomatoes and send a message to grocery store chains demanding slave-free tomatoes. (It takes seconds!)