Faux Rice A Roni Mix

These days I'm always trying to think of new ideas for mixes to create and the best place to look is always in the grocery store. It seems like every time I go shopping they have come out with new packets of side dishes (like side kicks or noodles and sauce) and judging from the number of them for sale they must be pretty popular!

Today was another one of those days where after a doctor's appointment for my daughter, grocery shopping for her birthday party this weekend and a play date with one of her little friends when it came time to make dinner I realized I had forgotten to defrost the meat. Whoops.

We already did Thai take out once this week and I'm going out for dinner tomorrow night so I wanted to keep the cost down- which meant chicken from the deli counter at the grocery store and home made side dishes. What a perfect chance to try out a new mix.

I decided my first one should be the original starchy side dish mix....

Faux Rice A Roni Mix (single use)

2/3 cup uncooked rice
1/3 cup broken uncooked spaghetti pieces
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon dried garlic flakes

Nutritional yeast can be purchased in any health or bulk food store and is the key ingredient in another mix of mine: Low Sodium Bouillon Mix. If you can't find any you can replace the yeast flakes and salt in this recipe with 2 tablespoons of bouillon, but this allows you to avoid MSG or other chemicals found in store bought bouillon.

What else you'll need

2 tablespoons butter or oil
2 cups water

Combine mix, butter, and water in a saucepan and simmer until rice and noodles are tender. I used a rice cooker to make mine because I wanted to run out and buy the chicken while it was cooking without burning our house down. It came out perfectly in the rice cooker.

I quickly tossed a salad to go with our chicken and noodles. Not bad for the last second is it?

I don't think I've actually eaten Rice A Roni since I was 10 years old but it tasted exactly the same and it tasted GOOD!