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What to Do With Overripe Bananas

March 9, 2022 by Laura 1 Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Need any ideas for ways to use your overripe bananas? Here’s a quick list of our favorite banana recipes!

We love it when our bananas become over-ripe. Otherwise, how could we make these great recipes?

What to Do With Overripe Bananas

Look through these and try them all!

  • Coconut Flour Banana Muffins
  • Easy Banana Cheesecake Muffins
  • Banana Bread and Muffins
  • Flourless Banana Chocolate Muffins
  • Easy Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
  • Easy Chocolate Banana Bread
  • Easy Banana Pudding
  • Simple Banana Pancakes
  • Low Sugar Banana Cake

Yum

 

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Delicious Pie Recipes

November 10, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

It’s that time of year again! Baking season! I think we’re going to need us a list of Delicious Pie Recipes.

I’m here for you. I have such a list. Oh, and if you recall, I also gave us all permission to buy pre-made pie crusts if we need to.

If you make several pie crusts ahead and freeze them, or if you purchase them already made in the freezer section, it is super easy to put together any of these great pie recipes!

10 Delicious Pie Recipes

  • Chocolate Fudge Pie – After eating this one, we might wonder why we would ever need any other pie recipes??
  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie – But then again, this one combines chocolate with peanut butter, so…
  • Chocolate Cheesecake Pie – And this one involves cream cheese. We most definitely need ALL of these recipes.
  • Vanilla, Chocolate, or Butterscotch Cream Pie – In other words, use any of these pudding recipes to fill your pie crust.
  • Peanut Butter Cream Pie – I highly recommend that you make this pudding recipe and then pour it into a Chocolate Pie Crust if you have time to make a crust from scratch.
  • Pumpkin Pie –  Well. Pumpkin Pie is what makes fall, fall. And Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving. And if you’re me, breakfast, breakfast. I hereby give us all permission to eat Pumpkin Pie for breakfast. Is it or is it not made from an orange vegetable? Tell your kids I said you’re welcome.
  • Apple Pie – Topped with vanilla ice cream, please.
  • Honey Pecan Pie – This pie turns out so delightful! And it can be made so quickly!

Just for kicks, I wanted to re-mention this fun Chocolate Pie Crust idea.

And it only makes sense that I end by telling you more about eating Pumpkin Pie for breakfast. In March?? Read about that here.

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Fast No-Brainer Stir-Fry!

June 13, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

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Don’t feel like cooking? Here’s how to make Fast No-Brainer Stir-Fry!

Yum

I promised you meal ideas for the hot summer days when you just can’t find inspiration to cook.

Did you try our 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken yet? It truly only takes 5-minutes of effort to make. Perfect for this summer (or next winter, obviously).

And now, I encourage you to spend a few minutes putting together some Stir-Fry Packets so that you can quickly make stir fry on a busy evening.

It looks something like this:

  1. Gather Veggies.
  2. Rinse Veggies.
  3. Chop Veggies
  4. Baggie Up the Veggies.
  5. Freeze the Veggies.
  6. Pull Out the Veggies on an “I Don’t Wanna Cook” Day

Oh, and while you’re at it, make several baggies at once. It only makes sense!

Having baggies of chopped veggies like this truly has been a life-saver for me. It makes for very quick meals, and does it go without saying that these meals are full of veggies? What a perk!

My favorite ways to use Stir-Fry Veggies are:

  • Stirred into cooked spaghetti noodles like this.
  • Stirred into Stick-of-Butter-Rice.

With gardens in full swing right now, it’s a smart idea to chop and freeze excess garden veggies anyway.

  • Carrots
  • Zucchini
  • Summer Squash
  • Asparagus
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Onions
  • Green Beans
  • Any of your favorites!

Use these veggies for a side dish!

Here’s another idea: Use these stir-fried veggies as a side dish with this 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken. Or with any meat that you might throw on the grill.

What are your favorite Stir-Fry Veggies? Have you put together Veggie Packets for your freezer like this?

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5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken

June 9, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Can you really make 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken in only 5 minutes? Try it and see! Maybe you can make it in only 4 minutes? :)

Meals like this are my very favorite:

  1. Throw chicken in a crockpot.
  2. Dump something on top of the chicken.
  3. Turn on the crockpot and come back at dinner time.

Add a simple vegetable, a salad, some fruit, and your meal is complete. It’s so easy and delicious and perfect for summertime right?

That’s why I’m going to share several days worth of 5-Minute recipes in the coming days! I’m always looking for quick meals in the summertime that don’t heat up the house. As much as I love to cook, I don’t enjoy it as much in the summer. So if we can have meals that both:

  • Take very little prep time and
  • Don’t heat up the house

We love it, right?!

Right.

So subscribe if you haven’t already so that you don’t miss any of these 5-Minute recipes!!! And now for our first one:

5-Minute Crock Pot ChickenYum

5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 4-6 servings
Ingredients
  • 4-6 boneless chicken thighs or breasts
  • 2 cups Italian dressing
  • ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
  1. Place chicken pieces in a crock pot.
  2. Pour Italian dressing over the chicken.
  3. Sprinkle cheese over the top.
  4. Cook on low for 8 hours.
3.5.3251

I try to keep Homemade Italian Salad Dressing on hand if I can, which works great in this recipe! But any Italian dressing will work. So open a bottle and pour it on!

More 5-Minute Recipes coming. Stand by!

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How to Make Quiche for a Crowd

March 10, 2021 by Laura 3 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Making quiche for a crowd is a great and easy meal option. I’ll show you all my tricks for making this as simple as possible!

Yum

On the particular day I chose to serve quiche to my family and a living room (I prefer to call it my loving room) full of college students, I took about half an hour to put together six quiches. Truly, that’s all the time it took!

Cut into eight pieces each, this makes 48 servings and in our case, fed about 13 people. (We had a couple of pies leftover.)

I loved how easy it was to make this meal, and all of our guests felt like I was serving them something extra special!

Now, if you don’t have your very own 2-year-old to help you crack all the eggs, I’m very sorry because this endeavor will be less of an adventure and much more predictable. Egg cracking is one of Keith’s greatest kitchen pleasures. Thankfully, only 1 out of 36 eggs landed on the floor on this particular day.


Along with a helpful two-year-old, I also utilized another fantastic resource: frozen pie crusts. From the store. Someday maybe I’ll make pie crust again. Though when making this many quiches at once {Laura pauses to look up if quiche is plural of quiche}, I may always enjoy the ready-made crusts that the store provides so that I can instead use my time to love people rather than floury countertops.

Here’s another trick I enjoyed: I put all the eggs into my Blendtec and let this appliance do the work (in 7 seconds, thank you very much) to whip all the eggs for me. This was extra helpful because once whipped, I could then easily pour the eggs from my blender into my prepared pie crusts. Oh! Because I’d already filled each crust with a variety of quiche ingredients. Then I added eggs and stirred it all around.

How did I fill my quiche? Quiches? (Turns out, either one works as a plural form of quiche. Ya learn something new every day, thank you Google.) I filled them with a variety of goodies to give our guests lots of options. Some were filled with veggies like broccoli, sweet peppers, and onions. Some had ham and cheese. Some just had cheese. All of them had salt, eggs, cheese, and cream.

But I loved that I could set the crusts all out like an assembly line and fill them quickly with whatever I intended to put in them. Then after the eggs were prepared, I poured it in and stirred it around, then boom. They were ready to bake!

How to Make Quiche for a Crowd

How to Make Quiche for a Crowd
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 8 per pie
Ingredients
  • Per Quiche, which makes 8 pieces:
  • 1 unbaked pie crust
  • 6 eggs
  • ⅓ cup heavy whipping cream
  • sea salt to taste
  • ¾ cup shredded cheese
  • 1½-2 cups other fillings like diced ham, cooked sausage, cooked bacon bits, broccoli, onion, sweet peppers, spinach leaves, etc)
Instructions
  1. Place fillings into each pie crust.
  2. Whip eggs, cream, and salt together in a bowl or blender.
  3. Pour egg mixture over the pie fillings and stir.
  4. Bake quiche in a 425 degree oven for 45-55 minutes or until a knife poked into the middle comes out clean.
3.5.3251

Quiche is great served with a salad and fresh fruit. :)

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How to Make Perfect Hot Chocolate

December 27, 2020 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Want to learn how to make Perfect Hot Chocolate? You’ll want to learn these “tricks” so you can enjoy a mug of this during holiday break with your family!

I am so thrilled to have a huge houseful right now! We’ve got five littles, four bigs, plus two amazing girlfriends. Our holiday time food shared together has been simple but fun. And since I’ve got more big people around to help with all the littles, I find my hands are a little freer to make special treats.

That’s where the Perfect Hot Chocolate comes in. Sure, Christmas is over. But the fun treats and the special drinks will keep on coming until school and work starts again!

Now, to make Perfect Hot Chocolate, I believe it takes three perfect recipes:

Not to worry, these are all easy and fast. (Do you even know me at all?)

  1. Hot Cocoa
  2. Whipped Cream
  3. Homemade Hot Fudge

The Hot Cocoa whisks together quickly on the stove. I whip cream in my Blendtec, which takes 25 beautiful seconds of effortless “work.” I often have Homemade Hot Fudge already in the fridge that we can warm up and drizzle into our hot cocoa. If not, I can make that quickly too.

The ingredients in all these recipes overlap with one another. Plus they are ingredients I always have on hand. Simple but special – that’s what I love about treating our family and guests to this Perfect Hot Chocolate!

Once you’ve got your three recipes made: 1) Fill a mug with hot cocoa. 2) Add a generous amount of whipped cream. 3) Drizzle hot fudge over the cream.

If it all oozes out over the sides of the mug, well, this can’t be helped and it is one of the best problems you’ll have because you’ll have to lick the sides of your mug to “clean it up.”

And there you have it! The Perfect Hot Chocolate. Let me know how you like it!

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Simple Green Beans in the Air Fryer

December 20, 2020 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

I love how simple and tasty it is to make green beans in the air fryer!

Do you have an Air Fryer? If no, you might consider putting it on your Christmas wish-list. Here’s how I’ve found it to save a lot of money. Not to mention it turns out some super fun foods, making us feel like we’re eating a treat meal from a restaurant!

So green beans in the Air Fryer? Well, these are super healthy and our kids gobble them up because they’re so delicious. They take about two minutes to prepare, so you can’t go wrong there.

Simple Green Beans in the Air FryerYum

Simple Green Beans in the Air Fryer
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
  • 12-ounces frozen fine green beans
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • ¼ teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
Instructions
  1. Pour green beans into a bowl (or cheat by cutting open the bag of green beans to use it as a disposable bowl!)
  2. Add olive oil, salt, and garlic powder.
  3. Toss with a spoon or tongs to coat the green beans.
  4. Cook in your Air Fryer at 400 degrees for 7-10 minutes, tossing them half-way through cook time to make sure they are cooking evenly.
3.5.3251

These have an awesome crunch. And did you see that simple hack I shared in the recipe? I simply open a bag of frozen green beans and use the bag as a bowl! Drizzle in the olive oil, sprinkle in the seasonings, shake the bag, and pour the coated green beans into the air fryer. No dishes!! NO DISHES!!!! That is my favorite part, besides of course, the fact that we can make this awesome vegetable in the air fryer. Nourishing and fun all in one!

P.S. I have this Air Fryer and we’ve been very happy with it!

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10 Favorite Back-to-School Crock Pot Dinner Ideas

August 9, 2020 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Need some Back-to-School Crock Pot Dinner ideas? Here are my favorites!

Yum

It’s time for me to get organized. Back to school at our house means much more than “get your pencils sharpened.” I usually consider this time of year “Back-to-Soccer” season and brace myself for the crazy that comes with it. Matt coaches our York College women’s team so usually in August I smile at him and say something like, “Whelp, see ya in November.”

Elias (who moved into the college dorm over the weekend; I’m not ready to talk about it, ha) will be playing on the YC men’s team. Malachi (15) will referee as many rec-league and club team games as he can. And Brayden (6) will play on a rec-league team. I try to pack everyone up and go to as many home YC games as I can, plus of course, I’ll be Brayden’s biggest cheerleader.

Awwww. There’s Malachi, back in his baby-soccer days. Now here we are again with our new set of Littles!

I’ve done this soccer-mom-wife life for so many years now that I know full well what it’ll be like. And as much as I know that it will be challenging as it always is (especially now that we’ve got so many little ones again!), may I just say this very loudly:

I AM SO THANKFUL SCHOOL IS STARTING and that WE GET TO HAVE A SOCCER SEASON!!!!

Last spring, we weren’t sure, you know? In early March, we sent all of our beloved college students home with barely a good-bye. We trudged through quarantine like so many of you did, wondering when or if life would ever be back to normal.

I’m not sure we can call everything “normal” yet, but praise God, students are moving back and soccer season is happening.

So as I celebrate this and also get ready for a very busy season, I’m putting these Crock Pot Dinner Ideas in my back pocket to make our mealtimes easier! These 10 ideas are the recipes I tend to fall back on first…

10 Favorite Back-to-School Crock Pot Dinner Ideas

  1. Crock Pot Chicken Soup with a Kick
  2. Hawaiian Crock Pot Chicken
  3. Overnight Saucy Crock Pot Chicken
  4. Overnight Melt-in-Your-Mouth Beef Roast
  5. Crock Pot Pizza Casserole
  6. Barbecue Beef Roast
  7. The Simplest White Chicken Chili
  8. Cheeseburger Noodle Crock Pot Dinner
  9. Hearty Bean Casserole (which can be made on the stovetop, but is perfect to make ahead and keep warm in a crock pot until dinnertime!)
  10. Crock Pot Fajitas

All of these recipes require almost no work or prep time. That’s why I like these best!

Oh, and if you like simple recipes like this, you will love our Simple Real Food Recipes Cookbook. These are my go-to recipes now!

What does your fall season look like this year?

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Potato and Bacon Foil Packs on the Grill

July 15, 2020 by Laura 1 Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Make yourself some Potato and Bacon Foil Packs for the grill! You will not be disappointed!

I may have to make this every week of the summer! The flavor is unbelievably good. And of course, these are really easy to make!

I like to prep them in the afternoon while the babies are napping. Then at dinnertime, we throw them on the grill. While they cook, we steam some veggies. And the meal is perfection!

First things first, make yourself a batch of this Ranch Dressing Mix. I like keeping a full jar of this mix in my pantry to use in recipes like this!

Second, consider making a batch of Bacon Bits like this. I love having these ready to grab and use in recipes!


If you’ve got those prepped ahead, you can make these Potato and Bacon Foil Packs super quickly!

Ready to put yours together?

Potato and Bacon Foil Packs on the GrillYum

Potato and Bacon Foil Packs on the Grill
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
  • Heavy-duty foil
  • 5 pounds baby red potatoes
  • ½ pound cut and cooked bacon
  • 4 Tablespoons ranch dressing mix (or 1 pouch)
  • 1 stick of butter, cut into 12 slabs
  • Shredded cheese and sour cream for serving (optional)
Instructions
  1. Wash potatoes and slice them into very thin slices.
  2. Place them in a large bowl.
  3. Stir in cooked bacon and ranch dressing mix.
  4. Prepare foild packets using a double layer of foil filled with potato mixture. (I try to make my foil packets thin so they will cook faster on the grill. So I make this recipe into 3 large, flat foil pouches.)
  5. Top potato mixture with slabs of butter.
  6. Close pouches securely for the grill.
  7. Cook pouches on the grill for 15-30 minutes, turning occasionally for even cooking.
  8. When you can easily poke a fork into the pouches, you'll know the potatoes are thoroughly cooked.
  9. Pull potato pouches off the grill and serve with cheese and sour cream!
3.5.3229

 

Need more recipes for the grill? Here’s a great list!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Simple Spicy Chicken Cheese Dip

April 26, 2020 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

I ate this Spicy Chicken Cheese Dip at a friend’s house recently and fell completely in love with its flavor!

Therefore, I came home and promptly made a big batch for my family the very next day. It’s ridiculously easy to make – especially if you have chicken already cooked and on hand to stir into this dip. (If not, simply cook 3 boneless chicken thighs or breasts in a pan on the stovetop for several minutes in a little water until it is no longer pink and shreds easily.)

Here’s where I confess to you that ever since we started taking in foster kids, I’ve started compromising more in the kitchen. But you already knew that. What you probably didn’t know is that I often now keep this canned chicken on hand in my pantry to use quickly in a pinch. I don’t even feel bad about it because God is bigger than free ranged chicken – and also chicken in a can.

So indeed, if you have canned chicken, drain a couple cans and throw it into this dip. Easy, delicious, and dinner is on the table super quickly!

Simple Chicken Cheese DipYum

Simple Spicy Chicken Cheese Dip
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
  • 16-ounces softened cream cheese
  • ½ cup hot sauce (your favorite)
  • 1 cup ranch dressing
  • 3 cups cooked, shredded chicken
  • 2 cups shredded cheese (we use Colby jack)
  • Tortilla chips
Instructions
  1. In a blender or with a hand mixer, mix together the cream cheese, hot sauce, and ranch dressing until smooth.
  2. Fold in shredded, cooked chicken.
  3. Spread mixture into a 9x13" baking dish.
  4. Sprinkle shredded cheese over the top.
  5. Bake in a 425 degree oven for 10-15 mintues or until cheese is melted and dip is bubbly.
  6. Serve with tortilla chips.
3.5.3229

If you want, you can throw this dip into a crock pot to take to potlucks or parties. Make as directed, and cook in a slow cooker on low for 2-3 hours.

Amazingly tasty!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want more Simple Real Food Recipes? We’ve got a beautiful cookbook full of them!

 

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