sage chicken and rice

1 large onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 tsp dried sage
1 1/4 cups chicken stock
2 chicken breasts, cut in 1-inch pieces - do not pre-cook
1 1/3 cups mixed wild rice and brown rice
14 ounce can chopped tomatoes
dash of Tabasco sauce
2 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
3 1/2 ounces lean ham, diced
salt and pepper

1 - Put the onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and sage in a large pan and pour over the chicken stock. Bring to boil, cover pan, simmer for 5 minutes.

2 - Add chicken to the pan, cover, continue to cook for another 5 minutes.

3 - Stir in rice, chopped tomatoes, Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper to taste. Bring to boil, cover, simmer for 25 minutes.

4 - Stir in zucchini and ham. Cook another 10 minutes uncovered, stir occasionally until rice is tender and heated through.

My notes: I skipped the ham because we didn't have any. I don't know how this would have changed the flavor, because I screwed up with the rice.

I didn't have wild rice, so I used only brown rice. This had 2 effects, neither of which went over very well. First, it doubled the cooking time - the step where it's supposed to cook for 25 minutes, I had to cook it for about an hour so the brown rice was soft enough. That meant I had to keep adding liquid to it to keep it from burning the bottom of the skillet. It's cooked in chicken stock and I kept adding water, which totally diluted the flavor. It ended up being pretty bland. I should have at least added some more chicken stock when continuing to put liquid in it.

It was good other than that, so I'm definitely planning to try it again.

This is from a Lowfat cookbook I have, and each serving is only 390 calories with 4 grams of fat.