Top 10 Recipes Lately

Recently I have had a few people ask questions about my meal planning. 

I have gotten it down to quite a science, you see, and so i will be posting a short series on what i do each week to plan at least three meals for dinners and a lunches for the week as well! 

Oh, and did i mention i cook and prep it all on one afternoon! Sometimes it only takes me 90 minutes with cleaning time included! 

In the mean time, i thought i would share some of my favorite recipes! 

So, here are my current Top Ten Recipes In Rotation:

Source: thecountrycook.net via Simone on Pinterest

Pasta E Fagioli in the Crock Pot

Source: skinnytaste.com via Simone on Pinterest

Crock Pot Minestrone

Source: skinnytaste.com via Simone on Pinterest

Crock Pot Three Bean Chilli

Source: katrina-runs.com via Simone on Pinterest

Sweet Peppers that are bubbling away in my crock pot right now!!! 

Source: wholeliving.com via Simone on Pinterest

Taco Salad with a fresh flare: Fresh mangoes! 

*When mangoes are out of season, dried mangoes worked just great! Just be careful about portions as the dried ones can have a bunch of sugar! 

Source: theyummylife.com via Simone on Pinterest

Slow Cooker Apple Cinnamon Steel Cut Oatmeal! MMmmm! 

Source: the-girl-who-ate-everything.com via Simone on Pinterest

Cowboy Caviar = Easy side dish or AWESOME dip with a bag of chips! Yum! the best part is this recipe can be caried anyway you prefer! there is really no way to mess it up! 

Source: espressoandcream.com via Simone on Pinterest

Autumn Chopped Salad with cranberries, pears, pecans, feta, and a little bacon! This was lunch last week and it was totally refrshing even on a hot SoCal Fall day! :)

Source: the-girl-who-ate-everything.com via Simone on Pinterest

I know these are just hard-boiled eggs, but the preparation is definitely EVERYTHING in this case! Love this easy solution to what can be easily messed up! 

Source: sixsistersstuff.com via Simone on Pinterest

This stuff is great as a dessert or a sweet apetizer or even can be used instead of a fruit salad! Gotta love Fruit Salsa! So sweet and yummy! 

Alright, for the record  i have tried each and every recipe in this bunch! I love them all! They all get my mouth watering! Might make Pasta E Fagioli next week! My mouth is watering already! 

Which one would you make next? 

PS. Please let me know if you have any specific questions about my meal planning and cook day! I would love to give detailed information as to what i do each week! It's difficult to be detailed when you do a cook day each week, it all becomes habit! Leave a comment below with your questions! 

Taco Beans and Rice

YAWN....So slepy tonight! Its been a long day... i've been up since 4:30 this morning and i can totally swear i hear my bed calling! Can't wait! But i also do not want to neglect my blog! I guess the name of this little corner of the blogging world sums up my last few days. 

Tonight, I thought i would review what I have planned for meals for this week and then I thought i would share my lovely Saturday "girl's day" with a good friend! 

First, the meals we are going to eat... Our lunches will be from the lovely Girl Who Ate Everything. This week we are trying out her Fruit and Nut Salad in which I am using my candied walnuts (left over from my Christmas giveaway treat) and without the apples (mostly because I forgot to chop them up and include them into the baggies!) It will definitely be tasty either way! Maybe later on in the week i will decide to get rid of a few apples to put on the side! 

For our dinners, I will share a recipe that i have changed and altered based on my preference. My preference in this case would be: PROTEIN! It is originally a vegetarian recipe, but i add ground turkey. Without further ado...

Taco Beans and Rice

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What you will need:

1 1/2 lb ground turkey

3 large bell peppers (I like red, yellow, and orange) 

1 bag of chopped onions (approx. 2 cups)

1-2 15 oz. cans of kidney beans, rinsed

1 packet taco seasonings

2 cups brown or white rice, frozen or cooked by you!

Shredded cheddar cheese

Restaurant Style Salsa - as much as desired (mild, medium or hot - you choose)

Optional: 1/2 cup fresh tomatoes, Cilantro, tortilla chips, sour cream

Here's what to do: 

1. Brown the ground turkey in a dutch oven, making sure to break it into small pieces. While this is browning, chop the bell peppers. Once the turkey is beginning to brown up a little more and most of the pink is gone, put in all chopped onion and bell peppers. Let the turkey and veggies cook for about 5-7 minutes. 

2. Once the veggies have softened a bit you can add the kidney beans and the taco seasoning and let simmer  for another 10 minutes. 

3. Serve over rice and top with cheese and salsa. 

Optional: Skip the rice and scoop up with tortilla chips instead. You can also top with sour cream! 

Enjoy! 

Here's what it looks like:

Hubby said this was a particularly good batch. I think it was cause I happened to add a little bit of taco seasoning cause I had an opened package and an unopened package that I put in this time. He likes the spice! 

Ok... BIG YAWN!!! Off to shower and find my bed! 

PS. I did a little blogger planning yesterday! Excited about what's to come! Even got a pretty good idea of what I might do for a link up party! Gonna let it fester a bit to see which idea I like best! (Plus I gotta figure out how to do it!)

On the Menu

Hey there! Hope everyone who has the day off is truly enjoying their day off in remembrance of a GREAT man! I wonder what our lives would be like without Martin Luther King Jr. 


Any who, I have spent the morning grocery shopping and getting the oil changed on my car. The shopping was in preparation for the meal planning I have done for the week. What's on the menu this week? For lunch we will be having the Candied Pecan, Apple, and Gorgonzola Salad from The Girl Who Ate Everything. I love that blog and have found some great treats and healthy options because of her great blog! For our dinners I have altered a recipe that I found on Skinnytaste. (I felt I wanted some more veggies and also, a few more spices!!!) Here's my version of a crock pot veggie turkey chili.


Crock Pot 3 Bean Turkey Chili Ala Simone
Servings: 12 

• 1.3 lb (20 oz) fat free ground turkey breast
• 1 bag of onion, chopped
• 3 bell peppers, seeded and chopped, any color will do (i used red, yellow, and orange)
• 1 (28 oz) can diced tomatoes
• 1 (16 oz) can tomato sauce
• 1 (4.5 oz) can chopped chilies, drained
• 1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, undrained
• 1 (15.5 oz) can black beans, undrained
• 1 (15.5 oz) can kidney beans, undrained
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Topping:

• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro for topping
• shredded cheddar to top 

Brown turkey, onion, and chopped bell peppers in a medium skillet over medium high heat until cooked through.
Drain any fat remaining and transfer to crock pot. Add the beans, chilies, chickpeas, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, cumin, cayenne, and chili powder mixing well.
Cook on high 6-8 hours.
Garnish with onions, cilantro and cheese and enjoy!



This recipe is currently bubbling away in my crockie! I will take a shot of a bowl later tonight when i serve it up for dinner! Yum! So last week I promised a screen shot of my grocery list to go along with my meal planning. Here they are: 

Here's the app that I use on my iPhone to take my grocery list with me. This prevents me from forgetting my list at home and also prevents me from forgetting items. 

So as you can see, I have items on there ready to buy for my chili and as I added each item to my cart, all I had to do was touch the item and it disappears from the list. I do this every week and I think people look at me like I am texting and shopping, but it really does work for me. This app can be found for Android and Blackberry phones! What would we do without our smart phones? I hope my hint might work for you! 

Meal Planning Part 2

Today is COOK Day! Like i said yesterday, I cook on Mondays. So after a long day of work i usually want this to take the least amount of time possible. I truly try to make it take no longer than 2-3 hours including clean up time. If it takes longer i get really cranky after a long day of work and then crash after. 

I thought that today as I cooked I would document how I do this and package all my food (and my husbands too!). So on the menu this week is Bean & Sausage Soup for our dinners (Tuesday thru Thursday) and a green salad with whatever I felt like buying from the store this week four lunches Tuesday thru Friday. 

Tonight i began with the soup and this recipe was easy! It was made even easier by buying a few items that save on prep time. I buy mirepoix to save on chopping time. If you don't know what this is - it is chopped onion, chopped celery, and chopped carrot all in one container. This is not always sold prepared, but it is used to create a vegetable base to many soups. In addition to the mirepoix, I use my food processor to help slice, chop, or even blend things quickly. Tonight I do not know what I would have done without the food processor! 

Anyway, once the soup had gotten going, I  finished adding what was needed and skipped the spinach because I will be adding that on a daily basis. Soggy spinach doesn't excite me so, I figured it will be fresher if I add it each time I heat up a bowl. I then moved on to some Sassy Water which was a snap with the food processor. It literally only took me 5 minutes to make and the longest part of the process was filling up the HUGE pitcher with water.

Our salad for the week will have red onion, red, yellow, and orange bell peppers, with celery, grilled chicken, and some white cheddar cheese that is cubed. The greens consist of Romaine and spinach! We usually package our salad dressing the morning before we leave for work. The key to all of this is keeping the ingredients with the most moisture separate from the lettuce or anything else that should not sit in moisture until it is eaten. 


After the sassy water, I moved on to salads and started by filling 8 containers (2/day for 4 days per week) with romaine and spinach.


Then I packaged baggies with the chicken and the veggies. I made 8 baggies so we can easily take them each morning. 

The cheese came last and this time I used snack size baggies and packaged the cheese separately to prevent soggy cheese. Again, soggy = not yummy! 

In the end, I put the soup into one large container and stuck it into the fridge after I served my husband a bowl with fresh spinach! The soup got good reviews, so I hope you night try it some time! 

Hope you enjoyed reading! 

Meal Planning

So many people ask me about all my cooking and what I make each week...

So here is a step-by -step example of what I do on a weekly basis to plan our lunches and meals each week. I do this to save on time during the week. It seems like I would spend way too much time in the kitchen every day and this means I only spend approx. 2-3 hours in the kitchen to cook everything 1x per week. I cook every Monday afternoon for a couple hours. 

Step 1: I begin with a notepad, note on my iPhone or iPad, or even just take mental notes. Here's my notepad that i purchased from Target.

Step 2: Pick a couple recipe books, apps, or even fun finds on Pinterest. At this point you need to know what you would like to eat. Lunches need to consider how packaging will work and also, dinners should consider how the storage will work out. For my husband and I we have salads for lunch and dinners usually consist of a soup or even some sort of warm dish for the evening. From these sources I create a list of what i would like for lunch and dinner that would be easy to individually pack or pack in large quantities. 

Here's an example of these written lists. Notice that I have short hand ways of figuring out where each recipe comes from. 

Step 3: So, from this I sit down and make a grocery list using my grocery app on my iPhone and will then check my pantry and fridge for what I already have. I will post a screen shot of this next time i actually have a list... I just went shopping yesterday and there is currently nothing I need to buy, hence, no list.

So that is how I shop for the week. 

PLEASE NOTE: My husband and I eat the same meal for lunch all week and the same dinner for three nights in a row. We rarely get sick of the food we eat because i change the recipes each week. Keep in mind too that occasionally portions need to be adjusted to make the recipe last for the entire week. Additionally, if a recipe is vegetarian, I often add some form of meat. 

Hope that this may help someone. I know many people are turned off by eating the same meal everyday, however this saves money and time and truly doesn't get old. Happy planning!!!