Stuffed ‘shrooms are one of my favorite appetizers for parties, since they’re easy, portable, and tend to be a crowd-pleaser. I’m actually not a huge mushroom fan myself, but I’ll eat anything with cheese and bacon. 😉 I got this one from Bon Appetite, and just added a bit more bacon and feta, and a bit less spinach (I thought 10 ounces would overwhelm everything else). I think adding some roasted red peppers would be awesome both for color and taste, though, and would do that next time.
easy
Sausage and Vegetable Roast
Possibly it’s a stretch to call this a recipe, but we loved this – just a tossed-together thing that would be good to clean out the fridge. Would work with most vegetables, but I think the sweet potato and sausage base made it. Hot Italian might be really delish.
Slow Cooker Hungarian Chicken
Now that I’m juggling two horses after work on top of normal life and crazed studying, I’m suddenly becoming BFFs with our slow cooker. It’s so far allowing us to keep making healthy dinners even if neither one of us is home until after 7pm (and tired, who wants to cook after that?). This was a Cooking Light recipe that we liked, though it needed extra on all the seasoning – especially the salt and garlic. The only real change I made to the original (besides a heavier seasoning hand) was to use boneless, skinless chicken breast instead of bone-in…that’s just what we had. We’re mostly doing the low carb thing, so we did not server over pasta and it was just fine with a vegetable side. The below is with my changes to up the seasoning.
Caribbean Reef Chicken
We were really happy with this tasty, easy baked chicken dish, which came from a recipe database called RecipeSource. I did halve the sugar in the recipe from 1/2 cup to a 1/4 cup, so the rub was more watery than intended. But lost no flavor and it stayed on the chicken without trouble. The sweet rub on the chicken paired really well with some spicy garlic roasted green beans as a side. It also made a lot – I used four split chicken breasts, but you could really use any chicken you liked – a whole cut up chicken would be great for leftovers.
Lettuce Wrap Turkey Tacos
This was a great, low carb idea I got from Skinnytaste. I have home-mixed taco seasoning, and that was perfect to spice up the a ground turkey a bit. We really loved this, and since neither of us is a huge fan of taco shells, we actually preferred the lettuce! Pretty quick and easy for a weeknight meal, too. Top with any of your favorites – a little reduced fat cheese and sour cream helped temper the heat a bit. I serve this with Mexican-style black beans.
Onion Dip
As much as I love onion dip, I’ve never tried to make it before. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was – caramelize some onions and blend. This was delicious – I could have eaten the whole batch myself. This was from an Ina Garten recipe, and my only alteration was to add a pinch of smoked paprika, which I think was a good addition. Another of our Memorial Day picnic recipes.
Baked Pesto and Mozzarella Chicken
This was a quick and tasty meal that tasted a lot more caloric than it was. 🙂 I used Skinnytaste’s method of making basil pesto, leaving out the pine nuts and cutting out a lot of the oil. It was very good; you’d hardly notice it. I also used part-skim mozzarella, which also worked well. This made enough for leftovers, and it reheated for a nice lunch. We had this with asparagus tossed with a leftover pepper I had lying around. Definitely a make-again, but worth waiting until summer when the tomatoes and basil are very fresh.
Picadillo
I really enjoy Cuban food, but this was not something I have tried before. When I saw it on Skinnytaste, I thought perhaps it was worth a try, as it was pretty healthy when made with very lean ground beef (in this case I used 96%, but 93% would fine). I checked out some other recipes and will modify a few things next time because we like a lot of flavor, but this was quite good! Definitely a keeper recipe, and the great thing is that it can be made in the slow cooker! Directions for both below. We served this over brown rice with steamed broccoli on the side.
Italian Pasta Salad
This is a great pasta salad to have as a meal or as a side at a picnic. Lots of flavor and easy to adjust to tastes. I got this one from Chowhound, and we made this one for our Memorial Day picnic.
Om nom nom! 