RQ cooks- half assed Spanish rice

It's the half of the month where dinner becomes "interesting" because we are scraping the bottom of the fridge and the wallet. Last weekend the awesome produce stand down the street had roma tomatoes on sale for 39 cents a pound, so I made a bucket of pico de gallo and we had tacos (2x) and tortilla soup (half assed again cause we had no actual meat to put in it) and casadillas with cheese and avocados.

Last night I was soooo tired of anything Mexican flavored that I bought a cheap pack of pork ribs and we had that and half assed rice pilaf for dinner with a pile of lettuce for something green. Anyways, this recipe comes from the leftover rice (basically white rice made with chicken stock instead of water).

In a large skillet, heat up some oil. Add in finely diced onions and cook till a little blackened. Add half a diced bell pepper and then the leftover chicken rice. Add some minced garlic and turn heat to medium.

Now spices. Generously add some chili powder, paprika, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes. Add a wee bit of cumin if you like (cumin goes a long way). At this point the rice is probably getting a bit crispy. You need to add some liquid.

You can use chicken stock or water, but my creative ass drained the liquid out of the remaining pico and poured that in. Once it was almost all dried out I added the remains of the pico (at this point about half a cup) and cooked till the liquid was gone.

Now I am typing and happily stuffing my gullet with yummy goodness. And pico de gallo week is officially over. Maybe next week will be 18 ways to eat pesto or potatoes.