Favorite, Easy Recipes from On-Hand Items

Here are a few of the items that I have been keeping on-hand all the time. All of these items keep well for a very long time. From the following list, you can make several recipes, and I am including them below.

You will find that you eat out less and spend a lot less money on convenience items if you always have something around that you can just throw together for dinner. If this idea helps you out, or if you have more go-to recipe ideas, let me know in the comment section!

Ingredients:

Rotel

Chili beans

Kidney beans

Black beans x2

Chili powder

Cumin

Parsley

Basil

Apple cider vinegar (or red wine vinegar)

Frozen ground beef

Velveeta

Marinara

Pasta (any kind)

Oil

Rice

Garlic powder

Tomato sauce

Corn

Hot sauce

Vegetable broth

Salsa

Tortilla chips

Cheesecake mix

Milk

Butter

Cherry pie filling

Sugar

Recipes:

Easy Vegan Chili (or you can add ground beef)

4-Ingredient Lasagna

Spaghetti (spaghetti, marinara, ground beef)

Mexican Rice (oil, rice, salt, garlic powder, tomato sauce)

Black bean & salsa soup

Dump into a pot:

1 can corn (with water from can)

1 can black beans (with water)

16 oz. salsa

1 T. broth of choice

1 t. cumin

1 t. hot sauce

Heat on medium until warm and garnish with corn chips

I try to keep cheesecake mix on hand for unexpected company. It only takes 5 minutes to mix and an hour to chill.

If you keep a lot of veggies on hand, you can use them to throw together a salad, stir-fry, or lazy pizza (any kind of oven-baked bread or tortilla, topped with tomato sauce, cheese, ground beef, spices, and fresh veggies). You can also add them to rice, quinoa, or pasta for a quick nutritional boost.

 

Meal Planning Miracle

FreeImages.com/OBMonkey

Meal planning has always been difficult for me. Perhaps it’s because I don’t usually enjoy cooking, but every time I plan meals in advance, I’m never in the mood to cook that evening’s specific meal. So I try to make things simpler on myself. I have tried all of the following:

• Crockpot meals
• Muffin cup meals
• Once a month cooking
• Running out and buying things on the day I need them

All of these things failed me for some reason or another, and I was once again finding myself surrounded by empty cupboards and empty stomachs to match. However, I finally figured out an answer to my problem. I am posting this in an effort to help all of you who might be struggling with the same thing. Here’s what I did:

I took out all of my favorite go-to recipes, and supplemented them with a few other simple meals. I also asked my Facebook friends for their favorites. Then I went through all of them and made a list of the ingredients. I put dry goods in one category, frozen in another, and refrigerated in another, but I only added ingredients that I wanted to keep on hand all the time. For instance, I can keep any amount of dry goods in stock and almost every frozen item, as long as I don’t have pizzas or other space-consuming things in my freezer. Some of the dairy products, such as milk and eggs, I added to the master list, because I figured it would be good to always have those on hand. However, half-and-half didn’t make the cut because I don’t use it often enough, and I didn’t want it going bad in the fridge if I failed to use it quickly.

Most of the meals consisted solely of ingredients that I decided I could always keep stocked. As this was my goal, I didn’t pick out any complicated or obscure recipes for this project. I wrote the names of these meals down in a separate column of my grocery list, along with the designation that I could cook any of them at any given time, provided I always kept every ingredient from my master list on hand. These meals serve as my go-to menu, and it’s working out very well, even when we have company. (My husband likes it too, because he has more and better choices.)

The favorite recipes containing ingredients that were not on that list were written down in a separate place, along with the one or two extra ingredients I would need to make them. I ended up with about 40 meals I could make at the drop of a hat, and 10 or 15 more that required one or two extra ingredients. Now this is the hard part: initially purchasing everything on the master list and then remembering to write things down as soon as I use them so I can buy them again. Because I chose simple meals, and because I already had many of the dry goods on hand, I was able to make my initial purchase for about $100.

Good luck with your meal planning, and I hope this idea helps some of you!

Lazy Vegan Chili Recipe

A couple years ago, I posted a chili recipe that Jesse invented. Well, with much use (and laziness on my part), it has evolved over the years to become simpler and faster than ever, and here is the updated version:

3 cans of beans (for example, chili beans, red kidney beans, black beans)

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon parsley

1 teaspoon basil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

Do not drain the beans, but dump everything into a pot and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t burn. And that’s it! If you want more heat, you can add a jalapeño or some hot sauce to the mix. But, hey, that’s an extra step…

Jesse’s Easy Vegan Chili

Jesse has long been the chili master in our house. With our recent switch to an oil-free vegan diet, we weren’t sure how to keep up the tradition. Yesterday, Jesse just decided to “go for it,” and this is what he came up with. I must say, it was very tasty, and I ate WAY more than I should have in one day!

3 cans beans (we used red kidney beans, black beans, and pinto beans)

10 oz. can diced tomatoes with green chiles

6 oz. can tomato paste

½ caramelized red onion

3 T. chile powder

1 T. cumin

1 T. parsley

1 T. basil

½ c. apple cider vinegar

6 drops liquid smoke

Salt to taste

Enjoy!

Awesome Hummus Recipe!

Jesse and I recently watched Forks Over Knives (you can stream it on Netflix), and we decided to try the Esselstyn diet. …Well, now, that’s the wrong choice of words. Yoda would get on to me. We’re not going to try it; we’re going to do it. By the way, I mean diet in the following sense: “The kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.” Not: “Restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight.” I think the second definition is the one most people generally think of when they hear the word “diet.” (I used the Google search to find these definitions, but I didn’t see a page to give them credit. The definitions just showed up in the search screen. So my apologies to Mr. Webster, or whoever coined the definitions.)

Anyway, for those of you who would like to try some nice and easy vegan meals, I would recommend the Engine 2 cookbook. We’ve had it for 10 days, and we’ve already tried seven recipes. I think that’s a world record for me. (I usually get a cookbook and try one or two recipes.) I had two more picked out to try today, but we decided that we need to eat some of our leftovers before trying anything new. Honestly, I’m running out of storage containers!

So far, all of the recipes have been fantastic! (They have reheated well too, but since we got rid of our microwave, we’ve been reheating in a skillet, so take that into account.) Unless you count my ineptitude at chopping vegetables, nothing has been difficult or less-than-tasty. In fact, we have found ourselves asking the same question over and over again this last week-and-a-half: If it’s so easy and yummy to eat healthy, why in the world would we want to eat any other way? We did have to buy some of the ingredients at Whole Foods Market, but we’ve been buying the bulk of our food there anyway, so this wasn’t really a problem for us.

My advice: take $200 of your tax refund and invest in some shelf-stable health foods. Look at some recipes to get an idea of what you’ll want to purchase. It’s not that much more expensive to eat healthy, especially considering the facts that we rarely eat out any more, we buy zero convenience foods, and our stomachs are shrinking so we consume less than we used to. Even if it is a bit more expensive, money shouldn’t be an issue here anyway because it is cheaper BY FAR to maintain a healthy body than it is to have your symptoms treated by a doctor. (We just found this out the hard way last month, which is what prompted the paradigm shift in our thinking and lifestyle.)

Here’s my favorite recipe so far. (Actually, it’s between this one and the Raise-the-Roof Sweet-Potato Vegetable Lasagna, but that one has too many ingredients to type out!)

Healthy Homemade Hummus, The Engine 2 Diet, pg. 236

This is the most basic of the spreads. You can find a variation of this recipe in almost any grocery store, but 95 percent of them are made with either olive oil or tahini (sesame paste), which pushes up the fat content. Your best bet is to take three minutes and make a batch on Sunday that will last you for the week.

1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon Bragg Liquid Aminos or low-sodium tamari

3 tablespoons water or vegetable broth.

Blend all the ingredients into a thick past, using a small amount of water as necessary to achieve desired consistency.

The book also goes on to list several hummus variations, such as roasted red pepper.

I used dried, cooked beans instead of canned beans, vegetable broth instead of water, itty-bitty whole lemon pieces (rind and all – I just dropped the whole thing in my blender, and I’ve been using bits of it in different recipes all week. I just guessed at the amount to use – maybe 1.5 teapoons – and it turned out great!), and Bragg Liquid Aminos instead of tamari (both of which can be found near the soy sauce at your local health food store, such as Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods Market. You can also order them from Amazon. Make sure you get non-GMO soy products.) I also took out a piece of pita bread and tore it into chunks and popped it into my toaster oven at 350° for about four minutes. Actually, that’s what I’m munching on as I type this up – hummus and pita chips!

Enjoy!

Post from the Past: Easy Recipes for a Dinner Party

Last week while I was typing, my six-year-old son asked me for an index card. Over the next couple of minutes, he lay in the floor of my office, writing away. I helped him spell most of the words, but I wasn’t paying attention to the content as a whole. By the time he asked me for an envelope and a stamp, I realized he had written an invitation to some of our friends. We mailed the letter, and as a result, I lay awake last night wracking my brain to come up with some nice, yet easy, dinner choices for tonight’s company.

Since I will be busy all day, I’ve decided to make two things that will be super easy, but they are still on my husband’s list of favorite things to eat. The main course is a four-ingredient lasagna. I used to hate making lasagna because it was so time consuming, and frankly, I can’t stand the sight of ricotta cheese! However, the ingredients I use are:

6 lasagna noodles, cooked

Half a block of Velveeta cheese (or something comparable), cut into quarter inch slices

1 lb. ground beef, cooked and drained

1 can or jar of spaghetti sauce

After cooking the noodles and beef, I make two layers of noodles, cheese, beef, and spaghetti sauce, in that order. I always save the majority of the ingredients for the top half, since that’s the half that everyone sees.   If you don’t mind a runny river of cheesy goodness, you can serve it immediately after baking. If you’re like me, however, you will want it to look as good as it tastes – in which case, let it cool for 45 minutes or so before serving.

My main side is a four-ingredient mashed potato concoction, thanks to my sister-in-love (engaged to my brother), Mandy, for the recipe!

8-12 small potatoes (I always save the big ones for baking), cooked and mashed

Butter to taste

Milk to desired consistency

Lots of shredded cheese

After making mashed potatoes as usual and adding butter and milk, place them into a baking dish. Cover the top with shredded cheese and bake at 350 degrees until the cheese melts. I must admit that the first time I made this, I was trying to make regular mashed potatoes. I used too much milk, and figured that some time in the oven would dry the potatoes out a bit. Since Mandy had been bringing cheesy mashed potatoes to our house for special occasions, I thought I would give it a try! It’s now one of the easiest and yummiest side dishes in my repertoire!

A little bread here, another vegetable there, and dinner is done!

On a side note, my son has inspired me to try to bring some formality back into my friendships. How fun would it be to throw a dinner party and actually send out cordial invitations? Gone are the days when people ate at friends’ houses three or four nights a week, and entertained once or twice a week in their own homes. With all of the demands that we place on ourselves, we find it difficult to make time for visiting with our family and friends. If we would turn off the television once in a while, I wonder if we would get bored enough to remember the important people in our lives?

A challenge: call someone important to you and invite them for dinner!

Tasty Salmon on Rice

Lately (aka, this year), we’ve been trying to eat super healthy. It’s been relatively easy so far, since I’ve stopped buying pasta, simple carbohydrates, candy, etc. If it’s not in our pantry, we can’t very well eat it, now can we? Let’s hope my method works.

Here’s a little something I threw together. We just had the salmon concoction on Wednesday, but yesterday we tried it over rice. My husband approves! He likes it so much, I thought I would throw the recipe your way. Feel free to use any kind of beans or vegetables depending on taste and what you have on hand. Those were the only reasons I chose the things I did. You could also try adding nuts, if you like, but my husband is allergic to them.

Tasty Salmon on Rice:

1 lb. pkg. Brown rice

1 T. extra virgin olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 cup diced onions

1 cup diced tomatoes

1 cup cooked or canned chickpeas

1 – 14.75 oz. can of pink salmon (with bones)

Generous dose of Mrs. Dash’s fiesta lime seasoning.

I didn’t use salt or pepper, but feel free. It tasted salty enough for me – probably because of the canned salmon.

 

Rice takes almost an hour, so put it on early. Follow the directions on the packaging. (I cooked mine up the day before.)

Heat olive oil in a large skillet and add garlic.

Brown onions and tomatoes.

Throw in your chickpeas and salmon.

Stir.

Heat to desired temperature.

Remove from heat and add seasoning.

Serve over rice!

Calories per serving, as close as I can figure: 234

Serves 7

More easy dinner party recipes

Our favorite appetizer. (It’s my favorite for two reasons: 1. It’s yummy, 2. Jesse makes it, not me):

Spinach-Artichoke Dip

I kid you not, this stuff is just as good as the dip that Applebees makes.

Two 8 oz. packages of cream cheese

One 8 1/2 oz. can of artichoke hearts (cut into 1/4 inch pieces)

One 9 oz. package of frozen spinach (easier if thawed ahead of time)

1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon of garlic salt

1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons of oregano

1/2 cup of shredded mozzarella

Pre-thaw spinach, or thaw in a skillet or saucepan. Add cream cheese until it starts to get soft. (You could let the cream cheese sit on the counter for a while before you begin cooking; it’s gets softer and easier to work with). Add artichoke hearts, Parmesan, and spices. Stir until everything is melted together.

Place in serving dish and add mozzarella while still hot enough to melt the cheese (optional). For a nicer touch, you could throw it all into the oven until the mozzarella browns a little.

Our favorite chips to use with this dip are flour tortillas that we cut into triangles with a pizza cutter (we like thin, dry tortillas best for chips). Cook on 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes. We don’t add anything to them, and we like them just fine. Others may want to brush the chips with olive oil and add salt before cooking. I assume that corn tortillas would be good as well. Pita bread prepared the same way is also very good with this dip (we don’t do anything to the pita bread either, other than cut it up). However, pita bread needs to be eaten while warm, because after it cools, it gets very hard (so only make as much as you can consume in a few minutes).

Enjoy!

Easy Recipes for a Dinner Party

Last week while I was typing, my six-year-old son asked me for an index card. Over the next couple of minutes, he lay in the floor of my office, writing away. I helped him spell most of the words, but I wasn’t paying attention to the content as a whole. By the time he asked me for an envelope and a stamp, I realized he had written an invitation to some of our friends. We mailed the letter, and as a result, I lay awake last night wracking my brain to come up with some nice, yet easy, dinner choices for tonight’s company.

Since I will be busy all day, I’ve decided to make two things that will be super easy, but they are still on my husband’s list of favorite things to eat. The main course is a four-ingredient lasagna. I used to hate making lasagna because it was so time consuming, and frankly, I can’t stand the sight of ricotta cheese! However, the ingredients I use are:

6 lasagna noodles, cooked

Half a block of Velveeta cheese (or something comparable), cut into quarter inch slices

1 lb. ground beef, cooked and drained

1 can or jar of spaghetti sauce

After cooking the noodles and beef, I make two layers of noodles, cheese, beef, and spaghetti sauce, in that order. I always save the majority of the ingredients for the top half, since that’s the half that everyone sees.  🙂 If you don’t mind a runny river of cheesy goodness, you can serve it immediately after baking. If you’re like me, however, you will want it to look as good as it tastes – in which case, let it cool for 45 minutes or so before serving.

My main side is a four-ingredient mashed potato concoction. Thanks to my sister-in-law Mandy, for the recipe!

8-12 small potatoes (I always save the big ones for baking), cooked and mashed

Butter to taste

Milk to desired consistency

Lots of shredded cheese

After making mashed potatoes as usual and adding butter and milk, place them into a baking dish. Cover the top with shredded cheese and bake at 350 degrees until the cheese melts. I must admit that the first time I made this, I was trying to make regular mashed potatoes. I used too much milk, and figured that some time in the oven would dry the potatoes out a bit. Since Mandy had been bringing cheesy mashed potatoes to our house for special occasions, I thought I would give it a try! It’s now one of the easiest and yummiest side dishes in my repertoire!

A little bread here, another vegetable there, and dinner is done!

On a side note, my son has inspired me to try to bring some formality back into my friendships. How fun would it be to throw a dinner party and actually send out cordial invitations? Gone are the days when people ate at friends’ houses three or four nights a week, and entertained once or twice a week in their own homes. With all of the demands that we place on ourselves, we find it difficult to make time for visiting with our family and friends. If we would turn off the television once in a while, I wonder if we would get bored enough to remember the important people in our lives?

A challenge: call someone important to you and invite them for dinner!