Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Simple Italian Beef and Broccoli Skillet

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I’m working my way out of a job. Don’t feel sorry for me. This is grand.

beef-and-broccoli-skillet

Here’s what’s going down:

I used to spend so much time every day putting together big meals. I’d make big meat and potatoes meals, with veggies and some sort of homemade bread like cornbread. At the end of every meal, my sink would be piled with dirty dishes that would take quite a bit of effort to wash up. By the time that meal detail was behind us, it would be time to turn around and start over.

dirty_kitchen_1

Three times every day.

Now, you know me. You know how much I love to cook and bake. But all the effort and all the dirty dishes was taking away the joy.

Can I tell you something? Unless it’s Thanksgiving, it should NOT take longer to cook and clean than it takes to actually enjoy eating the meal you’ve lovingly prepared. No way, thank you very much. It’s deflating to spend an hour (or more) cooking a meal, then to watch my family devour it in fifteen minutes, then have to get up and scrub down a crusty kitchen.

There is more to life than cooking and eating (says the girl who loves food).

That’s why Simple Meals was born (this rockin’ service you need to check into). That’s why Simple Recipes keep popping up here on my blog. I’ve been on a mission to find and experiment with recipes that are incredibly simple to make and clean up after. They are nourishing and delicious, but painless to plan for and prepare. (Then I’ve gone even farther to put everything together in a super simple meal planning option so you don’t even have to think about what to cook. You’ll love this!)

This Simple Italian Beef Skillet recipe I’m sharing today is the definition of simple. Make the entire meal in one skillet. (Actually, I did make rice in a separate pot to fill my men and help this dish go farther. I ate mine without rice though. I was in it for the meat and veggies.)

This recipe takes four ingredients. It takes five minutes of prep. You put it all in a skillet and let it cook itself while you do any number of other things you need or want to do.

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Simple Italian Beef and Broccoli Skillet
 
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Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
  • 1-2 pounds beef stew meat
  • 3 Tablespoons dry Italian seasoning mix*
  • 1 medium head fresh broccoli
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
  1. Stir ingredients together in a skillet.
  2. Cover and let meat cook on low heat for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
  3. Serve with rice if you like.

simple-italian-beef-and-broccoli-skillet

*Click here for our Italian Dressing Mix recipe.

Can I give another plug for this amazing Cast Iron Skillet? What would I do without mine? Want another easy skillet recipe? You’ll love Simple Skillet Taco Pasta.

Want some more Simple Recipes? Here are others I’ve shared recently:

Let’s hear it for less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying family!!!

If you haven’t already, you really need to join our amazing Simple Meals program. Get all the details here!

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Simple Creamy Chicken Stew in the Crock Pot

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If you want something that meets all the criteria for nourishing comfort food, this Simple Creamy Chicken Stew is what you’re looking for.

I love that the ingredients for this recipe can be quickly put in the crock pot in the morning. Of course, since we are home most of the day, the delicious smell of this cooking stew almost kill us. (Life is so hard.)

chicken-stew

Probably one of my favorite aspects of this stew is the creaminess. The ranch dressing mix gives it wonderful flavor, and of course, the potatoes and carrots make this meal filling and nourishing. I love this stew! Whenever there are leftovers (rare, but hey, it does happen sometimes), I am so happy. Warming this up on the day after I’ve made it makes for such a happy lunch.

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4.0 from 2 reviews
Simple Creamy Chicken Stew in the Crock Pot
 
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Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
  • 1 pound boneless chicken breasts or thighs
  • 4-5 small potatoes (I prefer red or gold)
  • 1 pound carrots
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • ½ cup sour cream
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 3 Tablespoons dry ranch dressing mix*
  • Sea salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. Cut chicken, potatoes, and carrots into bite-sized pieces and stir together in a crock pot.
  2. Salt and pepper to taste.
  3. In a bowl combine cream, sour cream, chicken broth, and ranch dressing mix.
  4. Pour mixture over the chicken and veggies.
  5. Cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 5-7 hours.
*I highly recommend this Homemade Ranch Dressing Mix.
simple-creamy-chicken-stew-in-the-crock-pot

You’ve been trying all the new Simple Recipes, right?

It’s here! Check out our amazing Simple Meals program!

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What To Do With Milk You Need to Use Up

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Many people cringe when they think about the amount of milk our family must go through each week with our family of 3 teenage sons (plus a pre-teen). A gallon a day? Two? How in the world do I keep enough milk in the house for all my boys? I’ll tell you.

We go through exactly one gallon each week.

Disappointed? Sorry. That’s really all we go through.

milk (1)

I took this picture back when we used to get two gallons of milk each week. Pretty isn’t it?

What’s up with our tiny milk consumption in a household of enormous appetites? Well I really don’t want to get into a milk debate here because I have not landed anywhere concrete on the “we should be drinking plenty of milk no actually we shouldn’t” scale. I have researched and I have asked professionals and I am conflicted. Some say drink lots and some say don’t drink it at all. We land somewhere in the middle and we do our best to drink milk from good sources.

peach milkshakes 1

If you ever want to waste milk, simply put too much in your high power blender, then turn it on.
It will explode all over you and all over your kitchen and you will be cleaning it up for days.
This is not a recommended way to use up excess milk.

Here are the two biggest (but not very exciting) reasons we don’t drink much milk at our house:

1. Our natural doctor advised that our boys/men don’t really need much milk.
2. Our boys don’t love drinking milk.

That’s it.

While some kids love drinking milk and chug down several glasses full each day, our boys never have really cared that much about it. I take that to mean that their bodies really don’t need it. If you’ve seen any of them lately, you know that lack of milk consumption has done nothing to keep them from growing long legs. Good grief, their pants.

We get raw, organic milk from a local farmer and we drink it moderately. Actually, we mostly just cook with it.

So that’s our milk situation. What’s yours? Go through lots? Hardly go through any at all? Raw, coconut, regular, unleaded? (ew)

What To Do With Milk You Need to Use Up

Let’s just say you got a good deal on milk and bought several gallons. Or you got your regular allotted milk from your local farmer and you can’t drink it up fast enough. We typically finish off our milk just fine in one week (again, I mostly just cook with it). But every once in a while if we are out of town or the boys are at camp – we end up with extra milk we need to use up quickly.

What to do with Milk You Need to Use Up

Here are some ideas of what to do (not that you couldn’t just have a cookies and milk party for the neighborhood):

Freeze It

Milk freezes just fine, although we’ve found that it works best to first skim the cream off our farm fresh milk.

Culture It

I always keep Homemade Buttermilk on hand for baking and so I can quickly make Ranch Salad Dressing. It’s also super easy to make Kefir or Yogurt. If you culture your milk, it will keep longer in the fridge.

buttermilk

Make Shakes

We’ll go through a half gallon of milk pretty easily if I make it chocolate. :)

milkshakes

Cook or Bake With It

These recipes use quite a bit of milk (especially for my family since I usually double or triple or quadruple a recipe).

garlicchickenpastasm

Those are my go-to options when we need to use up milk. How about you? What do you do or make when you need to use up milk?

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Make Your Own “Jiffy” Cornbread Mix (the Healthier Way)

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You get to learn to make cornbread mix! Your day is now complete.

Homemade Cornbread Mix

It’s borderline ridiculous how little time I have to spend on meal prep now. #life with teenagers #workingfromhome Or maybe it’s how little time I want to spend on meal prep. This, from a girl who loves to cook.

The thing is – I love food and I love feeding people. But I also love efficiency and simplicity. I’ve learned to make a hearty main dish, then throw out the simplest fruit and veggie side dishes possible. It’s all nourishing and filling and it takes very little work. I love this so much.

So when it comes to “bread as a side dish,” I very rarely have time or spend time or choose to make it a priority. After all, there are many more nourishing side dishes to choose from (tossed salad anyone?).

Sometimes though, we all just need a good cornbread muffin. Like with chili or soup or well, with chili or soup. To me, that’s when cornbread muffins are the best. I haven’t made cornbread in over a year – not because it’s hard to make – but because it’s just one more thing to do and I don’t have time for one more thing. (I’m almost pitiful. Almost.)

Last week, two things happened:

  1. I ran across this recipe for homemade Jiffy mix.
  2. We shared a meal with some friends in which delicious soup and cornbread was served.

I decided that if I had cornbread mix on hand, it would save me a few minutes of meal prep and simplify my life. Instead of talking myself out of mixing up a batch of cornbread because of the extreme difficulty of getting out and measuring flour and baking powder (the struggle is real) I could just dump the pre-measured ingredients into a bowl and stir in the liquids.

I adapted the recipe (included whole grains and cut out some sugar), multiplied the recipe to make it more efficient, stirred ingredients into a big bowl, and had six jars of muffin mix in less than 10 minutes.

Cornbread Mix

Funny how this simple task of making a mix ahead of time is so helpful. It doesn’t take much, you know?

Cornbread Mix in Jars

Will you save money making this cornbread mix yourself? I don’t know. How much is a box of Jiffy these days? They used to be 33¢ but I haven’t looked at them in several years. I didn’t do the math on this mix (because if I don’t have time to make cornbread I probably don’t have time to break down the cost of cornmeal). But I’m almost sure it only takes a few cents to make this – and I used 100% whole grain flour and organic cornmeal.

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Homemade "Jiffy" Cornbread Mix (the Healthier Way)
 
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Serves: 6 mixes
Ingredients
  • 4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 3 cups cornmeal
  • ¼ cup sucanat or sugar
  • ¼ cup baking powder
  • 1 Tablespoon sea salt
Instructions
  1. Mix ingredients well in a large bowl.
  2. Scoop about 1⅓ cups of mix into six pint-sized jars.
  3. Store in the freezer until ready to use.
  4. To make cornbread: Empty contents of jar into a bowl. Add 1 egg, ½ cup milk, and 2 Tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil. Spread batter into an 8x8 inch baking pan or scoop into 6-7 prepared muffin cups. Bake in a 400° oven for 15-20 minutes.

Homemade Cornbread Mix in Jars

Easy as that, you have cornbread.

Are you like me? Do you find that mixing up bread to go with a meal is just a little too much effort (pitiful)? What do you like to serve with cornbread?

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Real Food Green Bean Casserole (a Make-Ahead Dish)

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gb_casserole_2

If I had to choose a favorite holiday dish, it would have to be Green Bean Casserole. It’s not something I remember eating when I was growing up. I discovered it sometime after Matt and I got married. So yum.

The recipe I learned to make? It was the one with canned cream of mushroom and french fried onions. Man, I loved that stuff.

Once I learned more about cooking with real food ingredients, I knew that the canned cream of mushroom soup and French fried onions didn’t make the cut. But this casserollllllle! How to make a real food version?

gb_casserole

I learned long ago how to make cream soups. French fried onions had me stumped though – mostly because of the time I felt it would take to create them. Then all my plans to keep my real food kitchen simple would be out the window.

Finally I figured out how I could make this casserole without mushroom soup or French fried onions. It goes without saying, then, that this casserole is very easy to make. Just wait until you see how easy!

Green Bean Casserole

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Real Food Green Bean Casserole (a Make-Ahead Dish)
 
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Serves: 6-8 servings
Ingredients
  • 3 cups fresh or frozen green beans
  • 2 Tablespoons minced onion
  • 3 Tablespoons butter (if needed)
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch or whole wheat flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • Sea salt
  • 2 cups grated cheddar cheese
Instructions
  1. Steam green beans until tender. Set aside.
  2. In a large saucepan, saute onion and butter together until the minced onion is lightly toasted.
  3. Turn heat down to low.
  4. Stir in cornstarch, then add milk.
  5. Turn heat up to thicken cream sauce, stirring constantly until sauce is thick and bubbly.
  6. Stir in cooked green beans, salting liberally.
  7. Pour the mixture into a 9x13 inch casserole dish.
  8. Top with grated cheese.
  9. Cover and bake in a 350° oven for 30 minutes.
  10. Uncover and bake for 10 minutes more.
  11. Serve.

To Freeze Green Bean Casserole:

Make the casserole as directed in the recipe above. All it to cool completely. Cover and freeze for up to three months.

To bake and serve, thaw casserole in the refrigerator and bake as directed. OR, cover the frozen dish with foil. Place it in a cold oven*. Turn the oven on to 250° and bake for 2 hours. Turn the oven up to 350° to continue baking to heat through.

*Be sure your oven is cold when you put in the frozen dish! Otherwise, the pan will crack because of the extreme temperature change.

Real Food Green Bean Casserole ~ a Make-Ahead Dish!

There is a One-Dish Meal version of this casserole in my Oh, For Real Cookbook called Hearty Green Bean Casserole. It includes hamburger and it is awesome.

Note that if you use corn starch instead of wheat flour to make the sauce for this recipe, it will be completely gluten free.

I think this will soon become one of your favorite holiday dishes! Then, of course, you will find yourself making it many times all year round. No need to wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas for this one!

Here are the quick links to all the recipes we covered in this series:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

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Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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Easy Make-Ahead Stuffing Muffins

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Of all the dishes that must be included in a holiday meal, stuffing is the one I always try to avoid making if possible. If I’m hosting the meal, when people ask what they can bring, I almost always ask them to bring the stuffing so I don’t have to make it. (Nice, huh?)

Why had stuffing always been such a hard one for me? I just hadn’t found a stuffing recipe I love. I look at stuffing recipes and get completely overwhelmed. After all, there are usually no fewer than 28 steps to take to go from bread to stuffing.

Until now.

stuffing2

Oh look. We made toasted bread.
It wasn’t even hard.

Homemade Stuffing Made Easy

Once I finally wrapped my brain around all the instructions in all the recipes I looked at, I realized that I didn’t need to perform 28 steps. I could simplify everything and cut it down to four:

1. Cube and toast bread.
2. Brown sausage with onion and sage.
3. Stir everything together with a few other ingredients.
4. Bake.

What? That’s it? Yes.

Some may prefer their stuffing with additional spices. Many like celery. But this turned out plenty flavorful for us with very few ingredients. Plus, not one of the six of us likes celery. So I skipped it.

This recipe can be made ahead of time. You can make this stuffing spread into a dish or as scooped into muffin tins. I may actually make this more than twice a year for holiday meals. After all, when I was was testing driving this recipe to make it as easy as possible, my family dug in and kept going back for more. Even if I did burn the first batch.

stuffing muffins4

Indeed, my pictures feature over-baked Stuffing Muffins. It’s because I was baking them while having unfortunate cat drama. It was day 2 of baby kitties and Wiggams wasn’t sure she was cut out for the mama business. (WHAT?!) I told her she didn’t have a choice, that sometimes we all have hard days, and that she needed to get over it at go try to keep her last baby alive (yes, we’re down to only one). She ignored me. So I was trying to keep the last kitten alive by holding it to warm it up and by giving it milk from a dropper. This is when my muffins burned. I am not cut out to be the mother of a kitten.

Other bloggers would have started over in an effort to take better pictures. Me? I just took pictures of my burned muffins. There just are not enough hours in the day, okay? I get overwhelmed easily. It was either burned pictures or no pictures. At least we saved the kitten.

Easy Stuffing Muffins

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5.0 from 1 reviews
Easy Make-Ahead Stuffing Muffins
 
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Serves: 18 muffins
Ingredients
  • 6-8 slices of whole wheat bread
  • 1 pound ground sausage
  • 2 Tablespoons butter or oil
  • ½ cup yellow onion, chopped or 3 Tablespoons dried minced onion
  • 1 teaspoon ground sage
  • ¾ cup chicken broth
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ cup Parmesan cheese (optional)
  • 2 eggs
Instructions
  1. Cut bread into ½ inch cubes.
  2. Lay cubes on a cookie sheet and bake in a 300° oven for 10 minutes to toast.
  3. In the meantime, brown sausage with onion and sage.
  4. In a large bowl, stir toasted bread cubes, cooked sausage mixture, and the remaining ingredients together.
  5. Scoop mixture into 18 muffin tins or spread it into a 9x13 inch baking dish.
  6. Bake in a 400° oven for 25-40 minutes or until golden brown.

Recipe links you might find helpful:

To Freeze Stuffing Muffins

Allow muffins to cool completely. Place them in a freezer bag and seal, air tight. Freeze for up to one month.

To reheat: Thaw and warm muffins in a 250° oven in a covered dish for 10-15 minutes.

Easy Stuffing Muffins

You should know that saying Stuffing Muffins most often comes out of my mouth as Muffing Stuffers or Stuffern Muffings. It can’t be helped.

And now for some adorable cat pictures. I mean, if I’m going to show you burned muffins, I should at least show you the reasons they burned:

With assistance from our neighbor, some much needed help from a friend, and now some persistent work with Wiggams, I think we’ll be able to keep one little kitten alive. Wiggams seems to be getting the mama thing figured out, finally. If this isn’t the sweetest…

lionel2

Look at this little one’s face. See why we named it Lionel? (I mean, besides the fact that we named it after Lionel Messi. He just looks like a Lionel.) Look at his little lion cub face. We are in love.

lionel1
And that is why my muffins burned. 

Holiday Make-Ahead Tip:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

If you are in charge of stuffing for this year’s holiday festivities, I suggest you make these Stuffing Muffins at least two weeks in advance. Freeze them until the night before your meal. Thaw in the fridge. Rewarm just before serving. These are great drenched in turkey gravy (recipe coming up during this series).

Here are the quick links to all the recipes we covered in this series:

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Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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

9 Foods I Like to Make-Ahead to Help Make Meals Simple For “Back to School”

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Preparing for Back to School

It’s like I’m nesting or something – which I am not thankyouverymuch. I just get this way at the end of a summer break as we head into full school days, regular music lessons, and a busy soccer season. I like to be prepared, and I also somehow have a mind-set that I’ll never again have time to go to the store so I’d best purchase 52 boxes of kleenex to ensure that leaving the house for any variety of nose issues will not be necessary for a very long time.

This makes no sense, except that it is how my brain works so I just go with it. I’m a stocker-upper, and a prepper-aheader, and I want to ease us in to our full schedule with as much grace (read: frozen food and kleenex boxes) as possible.

This mind-set will go away completely after precisely 3.5 days of school, at which time we will all settle into a routine and I will realize that life outside the home hasn’t stopped. Plus I will learn that fresh plums are on sale and determine that we should buy some. We will also be out of eggs.

9 Foods I Like to Make Ahead to Help Make Meals Simple for Back to School

In the meantime, here are 9 of my favorite foods (random though they may be) to have prepared ahead of time to make life easier overall. Want to borrow my list? I highly recommend it. Also, here is a toilet paper coupon because if you’re like me even a little bit, you realize that stocking up on tp is even more important than stocking up on kleenex.

Homemade Peanut Butter

I make several jars at a time, otherwise we would run out within just a few days. If I’m dirtying up my food processor, I might as well make it worth it, right?

peanut butter

Whole Wheat Quick Mix

I use this mix to make Quick Mix Biscuits, Quick Mix Fruit Pizza, Quick Mix Honey Cinnamon Muffins, Quick Mix Pancakes, and Quick Mix Very Vanilla Cookies. (These recipes and more in my Oh, For Real cookbook.)

Homemade Granola

I love having this on hand because it is so versatile and convenient. We can sprinkle in dried fruit, chocolate chips, fresh fruit, or plop in some applesauce – whatever sounds good.

dark_chocolate_almond_granola

Pictured is the Dark Chocolate Granola variety.

Freezer Muffins

Do this. It’s an amazing trick. You will love the convenience of fresh-from-the-oven muffins without any work.

Chicken Broth and Beef Broth

Having broth on hand means I can make soup very quickly on a busy day. And ooooohhhhh the health benefits. :)

chicken week 5

Cooked Bacon

I like cutting several pounds of bacon into bit-sized pieces and cooking in a big pot. Why? Then I have cooked bacon on hand for Bacon Cheesy Egg mornings, and to use in recipes like Bacon Cheese Muffins, Bacon, Egg, and Avocado Salad, BLT Chopped Salad, or BLT Wraps. Also, my hair won’t smell like bacon every single day we eat bacon – only the day I cook several pounds of it. See what a great strategy that is?

blt salad

Instant Oatmeal

Or you can make Frozen Oatmeal Cups. Or you can make both.

instant_oatmeal_jars

Ranch Dressing Mix

If I have a jar of this mix on hand, I can quickly make Ranch Salad Dressing, a Ranch Cheese Ball, Ranch Potato Wedges or Cheddar Ranch Burgers.

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Italian Dressing Mix

Not only do I use this mix to make Italian Salad Dressing, I use it for these easy recipes: Italian Cream Cheese Chicken, Italian Roast Wraps, and Italian Stew. It also makes a great marinade for grilled meats.

I haven’t completed this list yet, but here’s what I did over the weekend:

I got out my food processor and made several batches of Homemade Peanut Butter.

school food prep1

I turned out 4.5 jars of Super Creamy Peanut Butter variety, but left one jar for me which is just straight Peanut Butter with nothing added. I labeled it “Mom’s” but I’m very nice and willing to share. I just wanted to avoid accidentally dipping into the wrong one since I prefer the straight peanut variety.

school food prep2

 

Also pictured is the Oatmeal Breakfast Bars I had made for Sunday morning.

I cooked four pounds of bacon, then froze it into six bags. If we’re making salads, we might need two bags for our whole family. But if we’re making Bacon Cheesy Eggs we can get away with one bag, less than a pound. (Yay for stretching meat.)

school food prep4

Everything is getting back to normal at our house now that all the boys are home from camp – as in we are blowing through food faster than I can keep up. Thankfully we have cooked bacon and peanut butter on hand so we won’t starve. (Because we were all so worried about that after seeing my freezers.)

In all the years past, our family has begun our school year the first week of August. This year we’re pushing it back two weeks for these reasons:

  • The three older boys were at Guys Camp the first part of this week.
  • The boys need to recover from church camp (lack of sleep).
  • Matt and the boys are redoing someone’s roof – a project that couldn’t be started while they were away.
  • Asa is moving into the college dorm in a week and a half and will be on a college schedule. (How do I feel about this? I’m excited for him and I also cry. Just like one would expect.)
  • Justus is taking a college class, which makes it even more necessary to stick with the college schedule.
  • None of us are quite ready yet and that’s just the truth. But hey, at least the peanut butter is ready. And the kleenex.

As soon as the books are ready, I’ll try to post about what we’re doing for school this year.

What are your favorite foods to make and have on hand for convenience? When does school start for your family?

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35 Minutes ~ 6 Winner Winner Chicken Dinners

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Hows that for a dumb title? Well, you too will feel like saying silly things and maybe even doing the chicken dance after you spend such a short amount of time creating so many delicious meals for your family. Plus, I just had a great cup of coffee so my typing fingers are under the influence of caffeine.

Last week – using ugly meat pictures – I showed you how I used my Eat Right Away: Beef Edition packet to make 6 Beef Meals in only 45 minutes. I promised you that I would do the same with the Chicken Edition. So here I am. But this time – I’m excited to report that it only took 35 minutes of work time to crank out 6 meals. We have big eaters at our house, so the only way I was able to turn 8 pounds of meat into only 6 meals for us is that I’ll be adding several fruit/veggie sides along with potatoes, tortillas, rice, or pasta to stretch that chicken. If your family is smaller than mine – you could do the same amount of work and end up with more than 6 meals!

Eat Right Away Chicken Edition 22

I’m really, really excited about this. One of my biggest goals here is to emphasize that it really doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming to feed your family healthy, real food meals. Here is the run-down of my 35 minute date with 8 pounds of chicken.

On Friday, I picked up my Bountiful Basket meat order (the first one to come to our town!). I got 24 pounds of nitrite-free bacon and 24 pounds of nicely raised boneless/skinless chicken. I put 8 pounds of chicken in the fridge to thaw.

erwchicken1

On Saturday, I got to work making four out of five of the recipes included in the Chicken Edition packet. (I didn’t make the Teriyaki Chicken and Veggie Kabobs because while I had plenty of chicken, the other ingredients needed were not on sale. No need to pay full price – I’ll make a triple batch of those another time!)

These are the recipes I worked on:

  • Easy Apricot Chicken
  • Sloppy Salsa Chicken
  • Mexi-Chicken Pasta
  • Chicken Tostadas

First I put 2 pounds of chicken into a pot with the Apricot Chicken ingredients, put a lid on the pot, and started it cooking on low. It was an exhausting five minutes. Thank you for your compassion.

erwchicken2

Next, I used kitchen shears (the best way to cut chicken, if you ask me) to cut 4 pounds of chicken into pieces for the Mexi-Chicken Pasta and Chicken Tostadas. Want to know what’s great? You use the same ingredients to cook the chicken for both of those recipes so this is super efficient!

erwchicken3

There it is. Seasoned and ready to cook. Prep took about 15 minutes. Onto the stove it went.

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I put the remaining 2 pounds of chicken into a third pot along with the Sloppy Salsa Chicken ingredients. Two minutes later, it was cooking on the stove. Are you grasping how easy this is? I burn complicated recipes in my fireplace. I like simple foods.

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While all three pots of chicken cooked, I ate lunch with my family. (Tuna casserole, green beans, and raspberries – thanks for asking.) I stirred the chicken from time to time while our older boys shared about their week at camp. (They’d just gotten home a couple hours before lunch.)

After lunch, the Mexi-Chicken Pasta and Chicken Tostada meat was finished – so I set it aside to cool.

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The Apricot Chicken was finished to I used a fork and knife to kind of shred it. I say kind of because it’s not completely shredded. I got to a point where I was like, eh good enough.

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Same thing on the Sloppy Salsa Chicken. I shredded it until it was at the “good enough” stage. It’ll pull apart more when we rewarm and serve.

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(I told you these chicken pictures were ugly. Good thing this stuff tastes so good.)

At this point, I let all three pots sit out to cool. Later, I filled five freezer bags: 2 with Sloppy Salsa Chicken, 2 with Apricot Chicken, and 1 with chicken for Mexi-Chicken Pasta. The remaining chicken was left in the pan to quickly rewarm after church Sunday for Tostadas. Lunch within five minutes of getting home from church? Yes please!

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Those five bags of food joined the 6 beef meals from last week.

I’m going with your suggestions on which packets to work on next – focusing on meatless and slow cooker recipes. It is too much fun and oh so helpful to learn these new recipes.

Learn more about the Eat Right Away Packets here. Or just grab them here:

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I love how easy it is now to pull out these prepared foods to serve to my family. Tuesday we put baked potatoes in the crock pot, set out a bag of frozen Apricot Chicken, then went to the swimming pool. We got home, warmed up the meat, cooked some green beans, cut up a cantaloupe, and had our meal. Crazy easy. Plus, all my men raved about how good the Apricot Chicken was. Bonus!

Have you tried any of the recipes in these packets yet? How’s it been going for you? Hope they are a blessing to you as they have been for us!

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I Just Spent 45 Minutes in the Kitchen and Made 6 Meals! Boom!

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I decided to give you an idea of how our Eat Right Away Packets work, so I thawed 6 pounds of hamburger and took some really bad pictures of raw meat. My life is glamorous.

Eat Right Away Beef Edition 50
Knowing that your life is probably glamorous also – meaning you might have interruptions in the form of nursing babies, important phone calls, teenagers needing a ride, siblings who need to learn that nice words go a long way, or any other variety of real life stuff – we all know that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and an hour can turn into are you kidding me. So don’t set a timer on this. My 45 minutes of work began at 12:00 noon and didn’t end until 1:30 pm because someone stopped by to pick something up a few minutes after I started, my husband and 10 year old had some questions, and somewhere in there I realized I needed lunch because what was I thinking starting this project on an empty stomach?

In other words, I did 45 minutes of kitchen work, but those minutes were broken up a bit by life and lunch.

The beauty of the Eat Right Away Packets is that they help you be efficient with your time, they help you make the most of your effort in the kitchen, and they help you turn out some pretty awesome meals with very little effort. But there’s no right or wrong way to go about putting these meals together. Case in point:

Here are the five beef recipes in the Eat Right Away: Beef Edition Packet ~

  • Cheesy Salsa Burgers
  • One Dish Cheesy Beef and Potatoes
  • Bacon-Wrapped Individual Meatloaves
  • Easy Hamburger Soup 
  • Baked Ziti 

But seeing as we’re not into soup this summer, and knowing I was low on time – I decided to skip the Easy Hamburger Soup and the One Dish Cheesy Beef and Potatoes. I went with the crazy easy Cheesy Salsa Burgers, the almost as crazy easy Bacon-Wrapped Individual Meatloaves, and the no-brainer Baked Ziti.

I doubled the Baked Ziti. Why not, right? So when all was said and done, I had spent 45 minutes of work time to make 6 meals. Sweet!

NOTE: If your family is smaller than mine or eats less – these Eat Right Away Packets are going to turn out way more than 5 meals for you. How’s that for a bonus return on your time investment?!

So here’s an ugly picture run-down of my Eat Right Away: Beef Edition meal prep…

I threw 2 pounds of meat into a pot to begin cooking (for the double batch of Baked Ziti).

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While it began cooking, I mushed up another two pounds of meat in a bowl, then stirred in the ingredients for Cheesy Salsa Burgers. Here and there, I stirred the meat cooking on the stove.

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Side Note: My dad and his wife got me this amazing meat squisher
(spoken like a true professional) for Christmas. I super love it.

Before shaping the patties, I put a pot of water on to boil. (Had I not taken the time to snap a picture, you all would surely be left in the dark as to what this step looks like. You are very, very welcome.)

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I shaped 18 Cheesy Salsa Burger patties – in a variety of sizes. See how great this is? You can make different sizes to accommodate different sized appetites. That, and you can just be a total non-perfectionist who really doesn’t care if all her patties are uniform in size. This may not work for you Type A’s. Shape your patties according to your personality type. We can all still be friends.

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Somewhere in there, my water hit boiling point. I poured in the pasta and continued shaping patties.

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The meat was finished cooking on the stove, so I added sauce ingredients.

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If you look at my Baked Ziti recipe in the beef packet, you’ll see that I didn’t follow my own instructions correctly. I blame it on the fact that I hadn’t eaten lunch.

And it was at this point that I stopped my work and ate some tuna salad and cole slaw.

Revived by food, I stirred in other Ziti sauce ingredients, then began to build the casseroles.

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Having this done, I went to work on the Bacon-Wrapped Individual Meatloaves. Two pounds of meat in a bowl, other ingredients dumped in (because life is too short to get out measuring spoons).

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Meatloaves were shaped and wrapped in bacon. Husband walked in and said some really nice things about my bacon. ;)

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I put the pans of Meatloaves and Salsa Patties into the freezer. Then, I loaded the dishwasher and hit “start.” While the meat froze and the dishes washed themselves, I took Malachi to meet some friends at the swimming pool because life is hard.

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So much glorious vitamin D later, I came home and put the frozen meat items into freezer bags. I labeled them and put them back in the freezer for a quick meal another day. YAY!!

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That night, I threw some of the Cheesy Salsa Burgers on the grill for our dinner (meal #1). In the freezer I have another meal of burgers (meal #2), two meals worth of bacon meat-loaves (meals #3 and #4) and two zitis (meals #5 and #6).

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You guys – this is not hard!! If you don’t love cooking, I believe you will really love this way of prepping ahead to make your kitchen life easier. These recipes are super simple, and once the work of preparing these foods is done (and cleaned up after, woot!) – all you have to do at meal time is pull something out of the freezer and cook it. You don’t even have to think at that point. (I’m not ashamed to say that the not thinking is my favorite part of this.)

I’ve got many pounds of chicken coming in a Bountiful Basket order Friday, so this weekend I’ll be pulling out my Chicken Edition and taking more bad pictures to show you how that one works.

Get all the details on these Eat Right Away Packets here. Ready to add them to your kitchen collection? Download them right away and get started!

Eat Right Away: Beef Edition
$2.00

Add to Cart

Eat Right Away: Chicken Edition
$2.00

Add to Cart

 

 

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The Easiest Cheesecake With The Lowest Amount of Sugar

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I push and I push when it comes to eating fruits and veggies. (We call these “freggies,” by the way. I’m determined to get this word into the dictionary. Freggies. Freggies.  Freggies.  Keep saying. Keep writing it. Pass it on. Freggies is a word because we all say so.)

So I highly encourage us to all eat an enormous amount of freggies each day. Our bodies need them and love them. I also encourage us to cut way back on the sugar. Our bodies need us to. Therefore this recipe, and all my recent healthier treat recipes are:

1) Your reward for eating so many freggies.
2) Your opportunity to enjoy a dessert that won’t give you sugar overload.

See, we can have our cake and eat it too. We just need to use wisdom. Sweets are a treat, not a food group.

I encourage you to read:  Breaking Free of Sugar Addiction ~ Should We Be Eating Stevia? for more of my thoughts on this subject. Then, I would like you to file this newest recipe away for the next time you need to make an easy treat to share. It is very low in sugar, but you’ll still be enjoying a rich, delicious treat!

When I posted the recipe for this Chocolate Cheesecake Dessert, several asked, “How can I make this without chocolate?” Ah…very simple. Just leave out the cocoa. And while you’re at it, if you’d like a pumpkin variety of this dessert, you’ll find it here:  Low Sugar Pumpkin Cheesecake

Easiest Cheesecake Recipe

Easy Cheesecake DessertYum

Shortbread Crust:

3 cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground hard white wheat for this)
1/2 cup sucanat (or brown sugar if you prefer)
1 1/2 cups melted butter

Stir flour and sucanat together in a bowl. Add melted butter, combining well. Press mixture into a 9×13 inch baking pan. Bake in a 350° oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Cheesecake Filling:

2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Liquid stevia to taste (I use 30-40 drops)
2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
Baked and cooled Shortbread Crust

Cream together softened cream cheese, vanilla, and stevia. Set aside. Whip cream until soft peaks form. Fold in cream cheese mixture until smooth. (I actually throw all ingredients together in my BlendTec and let it do all the work of whipping and blending at the same time.)  Spread mixture over cooled Shortbread Crust. Cover and chill for about two hours until set. Makes about 18 servings.

So freggies first, low sugar cheesecake second. It’s a win-win.

Which of the cheesecake recipes will be your favorite? The plain, the pumpkin, or the chocolate?

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