Recipe Review: Brown rice, Broccoli, Cheese, & Walnut Surprise

If you haven't noticed by now, I am a firm believer in menu planning every week. It helps tremendously in saving money on groceries. Each week, about half of the meals I make are brand new recipes that I'm trying for the first time. This week, one of the new recipes I tried was this Broccoli and Brown Rice Surprise. If you click on the link, you will be taken to the original recipe. I tend to do a lot of tweaking to my recipes. This one, however, I pretty much kept the same, and I absolutely loved it!

It seems so simple, and I was pretty skeptical that it would even taste that great. There's just something about the mixture of the crunchy nuts and grains with the cheese and broccoli. Here's what I did to make this recipe super quick and easy. It was ready in less than 10 minutes:

I used Uncle Ben's Ready Rice and Bird's Eye Steamfresh broccoli. Normally, I would cook this the slower way with regular rice and broccoli. I got these two items for almost free on recent grocery trips, though, so I decided this was the perfect meal to use what I already had on hand! Also, I didn't have cheddar cheese on hand. I had mozzarella cheese, so I used that. Since the rice and broccoli were microwave cooked, I didn't need the vegetable broth, so I just left it out.

Steps in cooking this meal:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. While pre-heating, chop onion and walnuts (keep separate).
2. Place walnuts on a small baking sheet, and bake for about 6 to 8 minutes, until toasted.
3. Microwave-steam the Bird's Eye broccoli.
   
4. While walnuts are baking and broccoli is steaming, saute onions and minced garlic in 2 tablespoons of butter on the stovetop. *I used at least 4 or 5 cloves of garlic. I love garlic, and always add way more than it calls for. My onion was also very large. Because of these two things, I used 2 Tbsp of butter, rather than just the 1 Tbsp the recipe called for.
5. When the broccoli is done, put the Ready Rice in the microwave to cook (only takes 90 seconds).
   
6. Combine the cooked rice, steamed broccoli, and onion/garlic butter sauce in a large bowl. Add mozzarella cheese and walnuts on top. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss.
7. Serve hot.

SO delicious, SO easy, SO quick, and SO healthy! This has your grains, veggies, and dairy servings in one meal! Try it out, and let me know how you liked it. My husband said it was great, but that he "wasn't as crazy about it" as I was. I think he's just used to my spicy cooking, so this tasted a bit bland to him. =)

Stay tuned for more recipe reviews in the future!!!