Tag: food

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Baked Salmon with Mango Salsa Dinner For Two

Hi, me again!
I know that during this time of the world being upside down, a lot of people are turning to new recipes and spending way more time in their kitchens. I have (somehow) done the opposite. I have been rotating a lot of the same recipes that we have always done because in this time of complete uncertainty, I can rely on my go-to recipes to create some kind of normalcy…? I know, it’s weird. This recipe is one that I have been making for Kevin and myself since we’ve been living together- 4 years?!- and it is definitely a favorite. We don’t make this meal as often as we’d like because our number one priority for meal planning is sticking to a budget and salmon filets can become more expensive than the typical proteins we build our meals around. BUT… we have recently begun shopping at Sam’s and we got a killlllller deal on a skinless salmon filet that we cut into 8 individual filets, making each filet only $3.25!!! I think this recipe may be revisited more often because of this (which is awesome!).

Servings
4
Like I said above, the salmon that we purchased created 8 individual filets. For this recipe, we only used 4 🙂

Cost
Total: $26.89
Per Serving: $6.72

Time
Prep: 15- 20 minutes
Cook: 15- 20 minutes
Total: 30- 40 minutes

Ingredients
4 Salmon Filets
1/2 of a Red Onion
2 Red Peppers
3 Mangos
2 Avocados

Seasonings
Salt
Pepper
1/3 cup of Cilantro
1.5 Lime
Olive Oil

Step 1: To start, you’ll dice all of the vegetables– red peppers and red onion. Because this is a salsa, you’ll want the ingredients to all be diced smaller. For this dish, I love to add 1/4-1/2 an avocado to the plate for a little extra color, flavor, and fat. I don’t necessarily add it to the salsa and usually dice the half length-wise.

Step 2: Dice the fruit. The mango may be the one ingredient that needs more instruction when dicing. When I first started using fresh mango in my recipes I definitely had to look up how to cut a mango on YouTube (lol)… and I recommend doing that if you need more of a visual than I can provide! Still a mango newbie here! You’ll want to start by making vertical slices around the seed. Line up the stem so you know where to avoid. Next, you’ll slice a grid pattern into each slice. If this is how you cut avocados, you’re in luck because it’s pretty similar. Be sure not to cut into the skin while you’re making your horizontal and vertical slices. Once you have made the grids into each piece, you can cut the chunks off by guiding the knife closely to the skin. I told you I am a newbie… so hopefully the pictures help clear up my amateur mango dicing skills! 😉

Step 3: Once all of your veggies are cut, you can dice up your cilantro and slice open your limes into 3 halves.

Step 4: Combine your red peppers, red onion, mango, cilantro, and limes into a bowl and mix.

Step 5: Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Step 6: Season the salmon. Unless I am making a very specific-themed salmon dish (Asian, Italian, etc.) I usually only season my salmon with salt and pepper. At this point I will also add 2 tablespoons in an oven-safe pan and turn the burner to medium-high heat to get the oil warmed up.

Step 7: Start cooking the rice. You all know (or maybe you don’t HA) I usually use par-boiled or pre-cooked rice. This just reduces time and allows me to not be stuck in the kitchen forever! If this is not your first choice, by all means prepare your preferred rice. At this time, I will usually get the water and rice measured out into the pot and start cooking it.

Step 8: Once your oiled pan is heated, you can add the salmon. Cook the salmon on the stove for 4 minutes. This will make it nice and crispy before going into the oven.

Step 9: Place the oven safe pan with the salmon and olive oil into the oven for 7-10 minutes. You want your salmon to cook between 110-140 degrees F. If the temperature reaches above 140 degrees F, your salmon is likely over cooked (which is honestly so easy to do).

Step 10: Once your salmon reaches the desired internal temperature, remove from the pan and let rest for a few minutes. I always plate this meal with the rice on the bottom, then salmon, with the mango salsa resting on top. If you decided to have avocado with this meal, you can either set on top of the salmon with the salsa or to the side– or honestly whatever you want to do (there are no rules!).

Step 11: I LOVE cilantro… so at this point I add more of that to the plate.

Step 12: Eat it up!!!

I love hearing if you’ve had this meal before, are planning to try it, or have made it and loved it! As I always say, I myself am the worst recipe follower… I just add seasonings and cook on intuition, writing these out is getting easier for me, but I am absolutely no expert! Thanks for following along for the recipes I can actually organize. 🙂 I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during this crazy time!

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Easy Stuffed Pepper Soup

Because soup season is right around the corner, I thought I would share one of my favorite soup recipes! This recipe is an absolute staple in our house and gets prepared for me and Kevin for two nights. It is a definite go-to for weeks when I have hockey games, concerts, or any other crazy event. This soup does take a bit longer than most of my recipes to prepare, but what’s nice is while this is simmering you can do other things in the kitchen or around the house!

Servings
5-7

Cost
Per Serving: $3.09-$2.21
Total: $15.47
(excludes seasonings)

Time
Prep: 20 Minutes
Cook: 60 Minutes
Total: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes

Ingredients
2 Green Bell Peppers
1 Yellow Bell Pepper
1 Large White Onion
28 oz. Can of Diced Tomatoes
1 lb. of Ground Beef
6 oz. Can of Tomato Paste
32 oz. of Beef Broth
Small Shell Macaroni
Garlic (or Garlic Powder)
Onion Powder
2 TBSP of Olive Oil
Italian Seasoning
Salt & Pepper

Step 1: To start, brown the ground beef in a large pot. For soups, I often use the Red Copper pot my mom got me for Christmas one year. Yes, the one that’s “as seen on TV.” HA. It’s a 4.5 quart, 10 inch pot so… really any pot that has those dimensions (or close to those dimensions) will work.

Step 2: While the ground beef is browning, this will give you time to dice the onion, yellow pepper, and green pepper. You can substitute yellow onion instead which is usually my preference, but the yellow onion selection was less than desirable. If you can’t find one onion that is large enough you can get two smaller ones- which is unfortunately the route I had to go this time. Dice the peppers into small cubes.

Step 3: After browning the beef in the pot, I use a slotted spoon to transfer the beef into a bowl- leaving the grease in the pot. This is what you’ll cook your onions and peppers in! At this time, add your onions and cook them at medium heat until they are translucent in color.

Step 4: Once the onions are the appropriate color, add the green peppers, yellow peppers, and the two tablespoons of olive oil. This is also when you will add your first round of seasoning. Add a generous amount of salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and Italian seasoning. Start out slow, you can always add more. You know me, not measuring anything and just following by taste 🙂 I’ll try to get better at that! Be sure to continuously stir the onions and pepper in this step.

Step 5: You should simmer the onion & pepper blend, still over medium heat, until the peppers are soft. This should take about 10 minutes.

Step 6: Once the vegetables are cooked, you will be adding the diced tomatoes- do not drain the can! Stir everything together for about 5 minutes.

Step 7: Add the beef back into the pot and stir.

Step 8: Now add 4 cups of beef broth, 3 tablespoons of tomato paste, and additional seasoning as needed. Stir. Cover with lid and let simmer for 20-30 minutes. Occasionally stirring.

Step 9: While the soup is simmering, cook 5-7 servings of the small shell macaroni.

Step 10: Once the soup has simmered for 30 minutes, add the cooked macaroni to the soup. Let sit for 5 minutes and then it will be ready to be served! If you like your soup to be thinner, you can always add water or more broth. I suggest adding in 1/2 cup increments.

Step 11: Enjoy!

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What We Learned Becoming Vegetarian for a Week…

I have quite a few friends who are either vegetarian or vegan and have always been intrigued by the notion of cutting out meat and animal products from my diet. I knew there were benefits from opting to not eat meat, but was unsure of the actual pros & cons of doing so and wondered how potentially difficult that may be. Considering I grew up and still currently live in meat and potato central, meat-based protein was/ is always the center of any dish. I somehow got Kevin to agree to going vegetarian for a week… well, a work week. Before diving into the meatless week, I did some research and found that these were the most prevalent reasons that becoming vegetarian could be beneficial:

Positively Impact the Environment

Animal Welfare

Combat Disease/ Improve Health

Avoid Toxins

Knowing all of these benefits, it made me even more interested to see how easy going meatless was in practice. I perused Pinterest for some lunch & dinner inspiration, in addition to the already vegetarian meals I have in rotation (these are few & far between, but I do have a couple!) and made my shopping list! In addition to discovering how easy becoming vegetarian would or wouldn’t be, I also wanted to see how much it would affect my grocery budget and how we would feel throughout the week. During the week, I have the same thing for breakfast every morning- two scrambled eggs, 1/2 an avocado, and a pinch of cheddar cheese- which is already a vegetarian meal so I didn’t need to brainstorm a meal for breakfast. Below is the menu I came up with for lunch and dinner, including ingredients:

Monday
Lunch: Lasagna Roll-Ups
Lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese, pasta sauce
Dinner: Creamy One-Pot Zucchini, Mushroom, and Pea Pasta
Spaghetti noodles, heavy cream, grated parmesan cheese, sweet peas, mushrooms, onion, zucchini

Tuesday
Lunch: Lasagna Roll-Ups
Lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese, pasta sauce
Dinner: Zucchini Taco Boats
Hollowed out zucchini stuffed with Spanish rice, tomatoes, corn, black beans, onion, and cheddar cheese

Wednesday
Lunch: BBQ Ranch Chopped Salad
Pre-packaged Dole Salad from Hy-Vee
Dinner: Buffalo Chick Pea Bowl
Chick peas, sweet potato, zucchini, buffalo sauce

Thursday
Lunch: Lasagna Roll-Ups
Lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese, pasta sauce
Dinner: Creamy One-Pot Zucchini, Mushroom, and Pea Pasta
Spaghetti noodles, heavy cream, grated parmesan cheese, sweet peas, mushrooms, onion, zucchini

Friday
Lunch: Lasagna Roll-Ups
Lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese, pasta sauce
Dinner: Cheese Ravioli Spinach Artichoke Lasagna
Layers of cheese ravioli with spinach, artichokes, cream cheese, sour cream, heavy cream, garlic, mozzarella in between

Now that you’ve got a blueprint of what we actually ate throughout the week, I am going to evaluate how becoming vegetarian for a week affected our budget, cooking, and how we felt.

Budget: Like I have said in previous blog posts, I try to keep our grocery bill to around $100 per week and was pleasantly surprised when our grocery total came to $86.90. That was an early check in the pro column 🙂

Taste & Ease of Cooking: Lasagna Roll-ups are a meal that I prepare for us on a regular week so this is one that we already knew we would like and was easy for me to batch prepare and “meal prep” for my lunches. (Kevin had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for his lunches!) Monday’s dinner is also something I have prepared before and we definitely enjoy. Because it’s a one-pot dinner, the ease of preparing & cooking this meal was pretty simple. The zucchini taco boats on Tuesday are something I have previously done, but typically I add taco seasoned ground beef. Because I cut out the ground beef, it took me 10 minutes less than it typically does- another plus in the pro column! I actually have a post where I dictate exactly how I prepare the buffalo & sweet potato bowls I made on Wednesday. You can view it here. This was an easy swap and took much less time than the chicken usually does. The last meal was a Kevin find… and looking at the ingredients, I think you can see why. LOL. He came across this meal on Facebook and told me this was his one request for the week… so of course I had to make it! This meal was very dairy heavy, so definitely not vegan-friendly, but it was super delicious! (Like, super delicious!)

How We Felt: I’m not going to lie, I think I would have to give up meat for 2-4 weeks to actually see how beneficial it would be and try to not use as much dairy in my recipes 🙂 Because quite a few meals were pretty heavy on the dairy ingredients, I did’t feel less bloated, however; I did feel much less sluggish!

Now, I don’t see us giving up meat any time soon… or ever… but I definitely think the benefits of incorporating more meatless meals outweighs any cons. It was much easier to do than I was anticipating and honestly, the hardest part I thought would be getting Kevin to agree- and that was surprisingly easy! This is my way of telling you that it is worth looking into and becoming more educated about why others choose to eat plant-based and why it might be beneficial for you to consider a “Meatless Monday”… or be super daring like us and try an entire week without eating any meat!

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The Best BBQ Chicken Tostadas

Hi, me again, trying to write out a recipe when you don’t follow recipes is rough 🙂 Bear with me once again while I get the hang of these food posts! I got the inspiration for this recipe from Pinterest, but have given it my own twist. This is a relatively easy dinner for the work week that Kevin requests very frequently. This recipe typically yields enough servings for 2-3 people. (When Kevin works 12 hour days outside, it’s definitely only for two people. HA.) All the ingredients together cost $12.74 (without BBQ sauce included because this is something I almost always have on hand).

Ingredients:

1 Small Red Onion
1 Red Bell Pepper
2 Large Chicken Breasts
3/4 Cup of BBQ Sauce
12 Street Taco Tortilla Shells
Monterey Jack Shredded Cheese

  1. Again, I am going to urge you to get all of your ingredients, chopped, shredded, or placed out and ready to go… “mise en place.” To begin, I place the two chicken breasts (if you have smaller chicken breasts, I suggest using 3) on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with Pam. I then season the chicken with salt and pepper and put them into the oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

2. While the chicken bakes in the oven, I will begin to chop the red onion and red pepper. You will want to cut the onion into long, thin strips. To do this, cut the onion in half from top to bottom (the bottom being where the “hairs” are). Now, cut the bottom parts off of each half and discard them. Cut the onion along the ridges to give even slices. (3rd picture below). The red pepper should also be chopped into thin slices. Slice each edge of the pepper and then slice each of those into thin strips.

3. Now that all of the vegetables have been chopped, the chicken is ready to come out of the oven and be shredded. If you have a hand held mixer, I would definitely use that in this step. Because I don’t have one of those, but I have a Kevin, he helps me shred the chicken with two forks. Judy likes to help too 🙂

4. Once the chicken has been shredded finely, you can add 3/4 cup of Barbecue Sauce. Any brand will do, my favorite brand is Sweet Baby Rays. If you desire a more “wet” or “dry” chicken- dress accordingly.

5. Next, place the 12 tortilla shells onto two greased cookie sheets- 6 will fit perfectly on each sheet. On each tortilla place about 1/4 cup of barbecue chicken.

6. After each tortilla shell has the chicken added, you can add the vegetables and cheese. I typically put 3-6 pieces of each veggie on top of each tortilla, but if you prefer more or less, top accordingly. For cheese, I like to use Monterey Jack cheese, but I’ve used plain Cheddar and Colby Jack as well. Just a pinch of cheese atop each tortilla is plenty.

7. Once you have added all of your toppings you can pop your tostadas into the oven at 375 degrees for about 18-20 minutes. You don’t want the shell to get too golden. The perfect tostada will have a slight crunch, but still be a bit chewy.

Voila! You have made yourself some delicious barbecue tostadas. It takes longer to prep this meal than to actually bake it, so if you are short on time, you might consider chopping all of your veggies and cooking your chicken a day or two prior. This will cut time down to less than 30 minutes. If you make this recipe, share it with me 🙂 I’d love to see your recreation of it!

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Healthy Buffalo Chicken, Sweet Potato, and Zucchini Bowls

Okay, so bare with me. This is my first cooking/ food related post and although I enjoy cooking and am honestly pretty good at it… I don’t usually follow recipes. So creating this post with a recipe for others to follow is not the easiest thing for me to do. I rely heavily on tasting my food and instinct- so hopefully this will end up making sense! Sounds promising… ha!

I plan every meal for my lunch and every dinner for my boyfriend and myself before each week starts. My goal is to have a variety of meals that are easy, healthy-ish (most of the time), and cost effective. This meal is one I ALWAYS come back to. It’s super easy and relatively healthy. I hate reading blogs that give you 10 pages before their recipe- so I promise not to do that 🙂

This recipe will typically yield enough for 3 lunches for myself. All the ingredients together- excluding olive oil & seasonings, because these are things I always have on hand- cost $12.10. I don’t know about you, but on the rare occasion I eat out during the work week, I can easily spend $12 on one meal. With this recipe, you’ll be making 3 meals for about $4. Because I know it will be asked, this meal is about 320 calories.

Ingredients:

1 Large Sweet Potato
1 Large Zucchini
1 Package of Ground Chicken
Your Favorite Buffalo Sauce
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder

  1. The first step in any recipe I will share with you will always be to get your “mise en place” in order… or for those that don’t live in the food and beverage field or binge The Food Network- get all of your ingredients prepared and ready to be cooked!
    In this step I dice up my sweet potatoes into bite-sized cubes: peeling the skin off, dicing the potato into 1/2 inch circles, cutting those circles into 3-4 strips, and cutting those 3-4 strips into 3-4 bite-sized pieces. You want to be sure your cuts are even as possible so everything cooks evenly.


While still in the first step, I will also cut the zucchini into bite-sized cubes as well. Start by cutting the zucchini into 1/4 inch circles and then cutting those circles into 4 pieces.

2. Next, I will spread the sweet potato on a baking sheet, coat with a bit of olive oil, and sprinkle salt, pepper, and garlic powder evenly over the cubes. Once they’re seasoned, I pop them in the oven at 375 degrees alone first because the sweet potatoes need a little extra time than the zucchini. The sweet potatoes will be in there for 50 minutes total. While the sweet potato begins roasting, I will remove the ground chicken from its packaging and get ready to cook it on the stove top.

3. Once the sweet potato has been in the oven for 20 minutes, I will remove the baking sheet and move the sweet potatoes to one side to make room for the zucchini. (You could just use another baking sheet, but…dishes.) I then spread the zucchini out and add the same seasoning combination. These will go into the oven for 30 minutes. After putting the baking sheet back into the oven, you can begin cooking the ground chicken on the stove top.

4. I coat a medium-sized cooking pan with Pam and begin sauteing the chicken similarly to ground beef. I use a wooden spatula to break the chicken into smaller pieces, cooking over medium heat. Cook until there are no longer pink pieces- about 10-15 minutes.

5. Once the ground chicken is completely cooked, I coat the chicken with buffalo sauce- I prefer Sweet Baby Ray’s Buffalo Sauce- it’s not too thick or thin & doesn’t pack too much heat. You’ll use about 1/4 cup of buffalo sauce, but you can coat according to your preference.

6. Once the zucchini and sweet potato have been in the oven for an additional 30 minutes and are beginning to brown you can remove and get ready to begin placing into your Tupperware. Place 1/3 of the sweet potato and zucchini that you made into each dish. For the chicken, I usually put about 1/4 of what I made into each. This will leave you with some leftover, but often I just add these to my eggs in the morning for a little extra protein and no wasted ingredients 🙂

There ya go! You just meal prepped 3 meals for lunch for the week and it took one hour! I usually meal prep another meal at the same time as this, so usually I get 5-6 meals done in an hour, but I’ll start with this for now. If you are vegan or vegetarian I have made this recipe with roasted chick peas instead of the ground chicken and it was just as amazing. I hope this becomes a staple lunch in your house as it has in mine!