recipe: my cold-killing 6-ingredient broccoli cheddar soup

I was traveling for work last week, and I have been feeling a scratch in my throat since long before then. But when I was at the grocery store on Saturday evening I was feeling positively yucky. Not sick, exactly, but yucky... and in this flu season, I'm not taking any risks.

Time for my cold-killing soup. I've made this soup so many times since Pat and I were both sick one day back in the fall. I add extra garlic when we're feeling extra gross – between that, the onion and the chicken stock, this soup kicks anything gross out of our systems before it takes hold and when we're already sick, clears our sinuses and makes us both feel infinitely better.

My preference is to serve this with warm bread fresh from the bread machine, but it's delicious on its own, too, and great for leftovers for days!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 bag of frozen broccoli florets, finely chopped

• 1 whole yellow onion, finely chopped

• 4 cups of chicken stock (I make my own with Penzey's soup base)

• 1 12 oz. can of evaporated milk

• 2-3 cloves of minced garlic

• 1 8 oz. bag of shredded sharp cheddar

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a stock pot, combine your chicken stock, diced onion, broccoli and minced garlic over medium heat. Usually, I add the chicken stock and turn the stove on, and then chop the broccoli and onion in my food processor and press the garlic (or use jarred garlic) while the stock heats some. This isn't necessary, though.

If you like salt and pepper, feel free to season to taste. I sprinkle some in, but usually negligible amounts. 

2. Allow to simmer for 15 or so minutes, with the lid on. 

3. Lower the heat and then stir in the evaporated milk and about 3/4 of the bag of cheddar. (I save a little for the end, to sprinkle on top of the soup!) 

4. Using a whisk, mix the cheese in until the soup starts to turn a little yellow. 

5. Cook at a lower heat for 15 minutes.

6. Serve with cheddar cheese sprinkled on top.

COST BREAKDOWN

Y'all know this is my favorite section.

• 1 bag of frozen broccoli florets, finely chopped - $2.50

• 1 whole yellow onion, finely chopped - $0.25

• 4 cups of chicken stock (I make my own with Penzey's soup base) - $2.19 for 32 oz.

• 1 12 oz. can of evaporated milk - $0.99

• 2-3 cloves of minced garlic - 1 head for $0.59

• 1 8 oz. bag of shredded sharp cheddar - $2.99 (less if you get it on sale at Harris Teeter)

All of the ingredients are $9.51, and this makes about 6 servings. That breaks it down to $1.59 per serving. Sold!

•••

What are your go to recipes or meals when you're feeling the funk settle in?

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I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for 12 and didn't lose my cool – here's how

This year, I had the (maybe crazy) idea to host a Friendsgiving at our house for our friends. We invited about 15 of our friends – and 10 were able to make it! – to join us for a Friendsgiving event at our apartment and I set to menu planning. Cooking has become a really fun hobby for me lately, and I always love any chance to hit the grocery store.



But I knew that this would be a next-level experience than my usual dinners or the appetizers I've made for football viewing parties. I started prepping more than a week in advance, and I want to share what I learned / what worked best for me to keep things organized and in good shape in case you, too, are hosting a Friendsgiving or even Thanksgiving in your home this year. It is not easy but I do think it can be low stress and totally worth it.

Shoutout, by the way, to my boyfriend Patrick's mom, Andrea! Her Thanksgiving dinners are seriously amazing (and always huge!) and I always wondered how she kept things so organized and made sure everything made it into the oven on time. But I used her technique – spreadsheets! – and totally get it now.

Make a meal plan ahead of time.

God help you, don't wing it. Don't.

I used Google Sheets to meal plan. I split up what I was making and then linked to the recipes I planned to use so I wasn't scrambling through Pinterest at the last minute. This way I could read off to Patrick what I was planning to make and he could let me know what he thought, and I was ready to tell our friends what I was making too so they knew what gaps to fill in with whatever they were bringing.

(Because, yes, this was a potluck Friendsgiving. I'm just a control freak.)

Make sacrifices. You don't need to make everything from scratch.

I made three sacrifices for Friendsgiving, and one of them really hurt my soul, but I am really thankful that I did what I did for all three.

1) I was not going to make a turkey from scratch or dare to mess with a full turkey. 

Instead, we ordered a turkey breast from Honey Baked Ham and picked it up on the day of Friendsgiving. It was stress free and delicious. And I was not ready to learn how to make a turkey. I also don't have enough oven space!

2) I had planned to make stuffing from scratch. But then I saw that Trader Joe's had a stuffing mix in the store.

Sold! I do not like stuffing so I wasn't going to have it on the table, but Patrick does like stuffing so I didn't want to leave it out. I used the box mix and wasn't thrilled with how it turned out, but it was eaten and satisfied anyone's craving for stuffing, but I didn't have to kill myself prepping all of the fresh herbs and produce to get it ready. I also didn't have to make breadcrumbs from scratch, which I almost did. No thank you.

3) I did not make any desserts and instead bought some cookies from Trader Joe's.

And then, because I didn't make any desserts, our friends filled in my gaps and brought pies! It all worked out and the pies were, of course, delicious. I love making pumpkin pie but hey – it was one less thing for me to do.

Make your grocery list in a spreadsheet.

I knew I was going to have to go to at least three grocery stores (I ended up at four – damn you, Fresh Market, for your lack of asiago cheddar!) This was one of the best event management things I picked up from Andrea, who does make this intense of a grocery list when she's making a huge meal like Thanksgiving – it is so useful.

This was especially useful if you know you're going to have to hit multiple stores to get what you need. I couldn't make a specific list for each store because you never know when Fresh Market isn't going to have the cheese you need, so I organized it by category – basically organized by how stores are laid out! – and went from there. 

We also did our regular grocery shopping, so the list was super helpful to not miss a thing, and I had plenty of room to add things when I thought about it. Which was constant. I looked like a total dweeb with my clipboard and markers in the grocery aisle but hey. It worked.

Print your recipes out.

*clapping emoji x 100*

This was helpful for about 20 reasons, but here are a few: 

1) I like to annotate things and cross things off as I complete them.
2) I doubled a lot of recipes and therefore needed to adjust the totals.
3) I was making multiple things at once, and it would've been impossible to be switching back and forth between things on my laptop.
4) I also just didn't have the counter space for a laptop.
5) My hands were always covered in something gross, so not phone or iPad friendly, either.
6) I recruited a few of our guests at the end to help with some things and was able to just hand them a sheet of paper and let them go. 

Make a schedule in Google Sheets and print that out, too.

Jokes were made about my schedule, but damn if I didn't get dinner on the table by 3:40 p.m., only 10 minutes past my scheduled time – and my first Thanksgiving dinner ever, too. I am nothing if not hyper organized. 

On the morning of, I added a few more things to my schedule – that I needed to boil macaroni for the mac and cheese at 2 p.m., that Theo needed to go out at 2:15 p.m., etc. The schedule was pretty much mandatory to make sure I was on track. 

Do all the prep you can the night before, or earlier if possible.

With my printed out recipes, I was able to identify all of the produce that I needed to wash and cut the night before. I also am a big fan of recipes that can be made ahead of time, so I made both appetizers – the salsa and the pepperoni pinwheels – the night before so they were ready to go at 2:30 p.m. I could not have served hot appetizers! It wouldn't have worked. So I guess that was a "sacrifice" too, but the salsa and the pinwheels are my go-tos.

All of the produce was washed and ready for me to start cooking on Sunday morning. I also made sure all of my ingredients were laid out – measured out, too, if I could – and that my toppings for the baked potatoes were chopped up and ready.

The recipes I used:

• Pepperoni and asiago pinwheels

• Italian salsa

• Cranberry pineapple punch

• Rosemary ricotta crescent rolls

• Macaroni and cheese bites (PSA: these did not turn out well for us. tasted great, did not retain their cup shape!)

• Hasselback potatoes

• Cajun corn

•••

Have you ever hosted Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving at your house? How did it go?

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recipe: ground chicken stuffed peppers

I post a lot about how I am always on the search for easy and affordable dinner recipes that don't require a thousand ingredients or call for anything that isn't likely to be used again. The spice shop where I get most of my spices from is 45 minutes away, too, so if I don't already have a spice that a recipe calls for, I tend to nix it from the running. And the ingredients can't go bad in the fridge too quickly, because we need our dinner plans to be flexible – this week, we planned to eat at home on Monday and Tuesday but things completely flipped on end and we ended up making dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that's a dull week compared to our usual.

Patrick's schedule is heavy on evening events – football practice, soccer games, you name it. So, I like to have a recipe that I can start at the end of my workday – which is around 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., depending on the day – and have it ready to eat by the time he gets home or not too long after – which is usually between 6:45 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.

And I also was feeling very nostalgic for stuffed peppers, which was a recipe my parents made when I was a little kid all the time. My stepdad, Jake, made stuffed green peppers in the crockpot, with a delicious, spicy, tomato-y sauce and a lot of rice. I was picky and annoying, though, so I didn't appreciate the green peppers then. Well, now I love bell peppers and I was ready for stuffed peppers again.

I found this ground turkey stuffed peppers recipe and decided to recreate it to work for me and Patrick.

Ingredients

• 6 large bell peppers (I did two yellow, two orange and two red because they're pretty that way)

• 1 bag of Trader Joe's frozen brown rice 

• 1 lb. of ground chicken

• 2 cloves garlic

• 1/2 half of a white onion

• 1 16 oz. can crushed tomatoes

• 1 teaspoon Penzey's Italian herb seasoning (or your preferred Italian seasoning)

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

1. Cut off the tops of the peppers and remove the seeds. You may need to trim the bottoms. (I overtrimmed, so mine were leaking in the pan, but I wanted them to sit nice and even on the pan!) In a large pan, heat water to a rolling boil and boil the peppers for 5 minutes. Remove from the water with tongs (be really careful!) and turn them upside down on a paper towel to dry. 

2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

3. While the oven is preheating and your peppers are boiling, mince the garlic and dice your onion. I used half of a white onion (the original recipe said a whole small onion) but when recipes say "small onion" I don't know what small is to them and I can't take cutting an entire onion, so I just used half of one and that was plenty.

4. Add the olive oil, garlic and onion to a large skillet and saute until tender. If, like me, you struggle with sauteeing and other basic cooking instructions, this means you should put your stove on medium heat and cook the onion and garlic until soft/see-through. 

5. Add the ground chicken to the skillet (be careful, you're going to make a mess) and cook until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165º or there is no more pink left.

6. Add the crushed tomatoes, rice, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper and 1/2 cup of the cheese. I stirred between each ingredient to minimize mess and still made a mess. If you think you have a large enough skillet, you don't.

7. Fill the peppers evenly with the mixture and place in a lightly greased baking dish of your choice. 

8. Bake uncovered for 25 to 30 minutes. Mine were fine with 25, but every oven is different. 

9. Remove and add the remaining cheese to the tops of the pepper (you are going to make a mess, again) and bake for an additional 5 minutes.

Cost breakdown

I usually do a cost breakdown of my recipes but, as usual, I forgot and threw away the receipt before I could write this post. But I'm going to try to recreate it as best as possible using Harris Teeter/Trader Joe's flyers and also just some guestimation.

• 6 large bell peppers = $3.99 for 3 = $7.98

• 1 bag of Trader Joe's frozen brown rice = $2.99 for three bags = $0.99 

• 1 lb. of ground chicken = $3.49

• 2 cloves garlic = $0.25

• 1/2 half of a white onion = $0.25

• 1 16 oz. can crushed tomatoes = $1.59 for 28 oz jar = $0.80

• 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese = $3.99 for one 12 oz. bag = $1.99

This comes out to $15.75, which is actually a lot by my usual standards for cooking – but 6 peppers = 6 meals. Pat did eat two peppers because I didn't make a side, but I ate one and was plenty full, and had enough for leftovers, too. 

Cost per serving = $2.63

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here's my typical weekly grocery list + meal plan

One of my favorite blog posts to read from other bloggers is what they have on their grocery list from week to week. I wanted to share what is almost always on our grocery list. (We don't buy all of these things every single week but this is what we keep on hand from week to week, this is what you will always find in our fridge/freezer/pantry.)

I posted last week about my favorite quick, easy and affordable recipes, so now I give you my not quick, but easy and affordable grocery list. (I like to spend a minimum of one hour in the grocery store to really enjoy myself!)

DELI
• 1/2 pound of sliced deli turkey
• 1/2 pound of sliced Colby jack cheese

PRODUCE
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1/2 lb. of fresh green beans
• 2 small zucchini

BAKERY
• 1 pack of Kings Hawaiian rolls
• 1 package of soft flour tortillas

CANNED GOODS + PANTRY ITEMS
• Enchilada sauce OR taco seasoning
• Muffin mix
• Pasta sauce
• 1 lb pasta
• Boxed Mexican rice

MEAT
• 1 bag of frozen chicken breasts
• 1-3 lb. lean ground beef (if it's on sale, I will buy extra and freeze it.)
• Frozen Butterball turkey burgers (I don't like burgers unless they're chicken or turkey, and Pat is very picky about red meat, so we go with turkey burgers most of the time.)
• 1 lb. Smithfield's breakfast sausage

DAIRY
• 1 gallon skim milk
• 5 individual containers of Chobani yogurt (for Pat)
• 3 individual containers of Yoplait Oui yogurt (for Paige)
• 1 gallon of cold brew coffee
• 1 package of shredded cheese for tacos
• 1 package of mozzarella cheese
• 1 dozen eggs
• 1 package of sour cream

FROZEN
• Frozen onion rings
• Frozen French fries

SNACKS
• Kind breakfast bars
• Lays Poppables
• Brownie Brittle
• Trail mix
• Pretzels

Because we don't buy all of this every single week, our groceries range between $50 and $75 each week, depending on how long it's been since we last shopped (lately, we've been going every two weeks instead of weekly, so the bill has been higher). Consider these our staples. Then, I will buy additional ingredients necessary for the recipes that we're making that week – but I rarely, if ever, buy anything that can't be used in more than one recipe.

•••

MONDAY
Breakfast - Muffins + yogurt
Lunch - Pasta salad
Dinner - Pesto chicken bake over pasta

TUESDAY
Breakfast - Cereal
Lunch - Pasta salad
Dinner - Enchiladas with rice and chips with queso

WEDNESDAY
Breakfast - Scrambled eggs + Yogurt
Lunch - Cheese quesadilla with salsa and sour cream
Dinner - Turkey burgers and baked zucchini fries

THURSDAY
Breakfast - Scrambled eggs + Yogurt
Lunch - Pasta salad
Dinner - Sausage ranch quiche

FRIDAY
Breakfast - Cereal
Lunch - Leftover quiche
Dinner - Baked chicken with roasted green beans

•••

What is always on your grocery list?

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my go-to quick, easy and affordable dinners

Happy Monday!

I have been having so much fun (unexpectedly) putting together weekly meal plans, planning out our grocery list and cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner in our house every day. We still go out to eat a decent amount, especially when we're on the road a lot on the weekends (like this week and last week, ZZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZ) but cooking at home is getting a lot easier/a lot less stressful now that I've been doing it when I can.

I'm going to post sometime soon about what you'll always find on our grocery list, but I wanted to share my go-to dinners, the things I always pull from when I'm meal planning for me and Patrick. What's most important is that the recipes are affordable, easy and decently fast – but I also refuse to make any recipe that requires more than a handful of ingredients. While we're just cooking for two, it makes no sense to buy a lot of produce or other perishable products, and you can almost never buy a small enough quantity to make it justifiable.

1. This pesto chicken bake might be the easiest and most delicious dinner I have in my back pocket. If you're lazy like me, bake the chicken from frozen and serve with your favorite pasta – easy and filling. And Patrick likes it!

2. I am madly in love with the Frontera enchilada sauce and cook Mexican food at least once a week with these sauces. The taco sauces are delicious, too. I serve with cheesy rice (which I do buy boxed from the store) and our taco/enchilada fixings.

3. This super-duper easy sausage ranch quiche is only $1.50 per serving and perfect for reheating if you have leftovers. 

4. Turkey burgers and onion rings, fries or parmesan zucchini rounds. A weird quirk of mine is that I absolutely hate actual burgers, but I love turkey burgers! We eat turkey burgers at least once a week and they are cheap and easy.

5. When I'm eating on my own, I use my handy dandy grill pan and make a cheese quesadilla, which I serve with salsa and sour cream.

•••

What are your go-to meals? Share your recipes!

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recipe: try this super easy (and delicious!) sausage ranch quiche

Happy Wednesday! Today, I'm trying out this recipe that I stumbled upon on Pinterest.

I did not create this recipe but always want to highlight really delicious, easy and affordable recipes for y'all. Remember also that I do not use ingredients in recipes that I wouldn't commonly use – so, for this recipe, I use milk instead of heavy cream (and the recipe said this was OK). I also hate salt and pepper so you won't find those in my recipe attempts, either.

Also, the best thing about this recipe: If you don't want ranch, leave it out. If you'd rather use ham and cheddar, do that. The basic structure is the same, but the fillings are up to you. You can fill it with spinach and mushrooms or any other vegetable – really, whatever you want.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (9-inch) frozen deep dish pie crust

• 8-oz sausage

• 1/2 cup Ranch dressing

• 1/2 cup shredded cheese

• 3 eggs

• 1 cup milk

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350º.

2. Cook and drain the sausage.

3. Mix the Ranch dressing with the cooked, drained sausage. Crumble the mixture on the bottom of the pie crust and top with shredded cheese.

4. Whisk 3 eggs and milk together in a mixing bowl. Pour on top of the sausage and cheese.

5. Bake in the oven for one hour, then let rest for 5 to 10 minutes.

Hey, how do I know when a quiche is done? Well, I Googled that for you. Quickly move your quiche from side to side without burning your hand on the pan; if the middle doesn't move or quiver, it's done. You can also insert a knife into the center of the quiche; if it comes out clean, it's done. And then you can check it with a meat thermometer; it should be hotter than 165º but under 185º. 

COST BREAKDOWN

I'll be honest, I threw away my receipt by accident, so I am guessing a little, with help from my Harris Teeter flyer. I didn't buy store brand anything but I am using store brand guestimates. Bear with me.

• 1 frozen deep dish pie crust – $2 (bought in a pack of two for $3.99)

• 8 oz. breakfast sausage - (I use Smithfield's because it's local and usually on sale, while Jimmy Dean is not.) – $2 (I bought a 16 oz. package, and I think it was around $4.)

• Ranch dressing –  $0.75

• Shredded cheese –  $0.75

• 3 eggs - $0.30

• 1 cup milk - $0.20

Servings (for us): 4

We each ate a fourth of the quiche for dinner, and then I ate it for lunch the next two days. It microwaved fabulously! If you serve it with a side, which we did not, you could probably double the serving count.

Cost per serving: $1.50

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recipe: the best pasta salad ever (and it will only take you 20 minutes!)

I have taken it upon myself to make lunch for Patrick to take to work and for me to eat at home every day, so we can save that precious eating out money for dinner dates that we're looking forward to, instead of hurried trips to Panera or McAlister's just because we have no edible food in the house. Because I'm always juggling so many things – my full-time job, selling Lularoe with my mom, this blog and my accompanying Instagram, just to name a few – I am really into the idea of meal-prepping on Sundays and having everything figured out for me for the rest of the week.

Because Patrick and I are superbly picky, a lot of meal prep recipes that are super popular on Pinterest and other apps take themselves out of the running. I also don't like things that have lots of ingredients, especially ingredients that I won't use often, or spices, because my spice collection is kind of sad and I'm working on building that up with quality spices, instead of buying cheap versions here and there when we can. And then, the big recipe killer – at this moment in time, I do not have a crockpot!

So, that leaves us hungry and eating sad lunches at our respective desks. Well. Until I found this amazing pasta salad recipe on Buzzfeed's Tasty app. (Which is amazing, by the way.)

I mixed the recipe up a little bit – here's my take to make an entire vat of pasta salad.

Note: I made a half-version of this recipe the first time and it was enough for four lunches. I doubled it to get a little bit more out of it, because Patrick loved it. 

ingredients

• 1 lb bowtie pasta (you could probably use shells, penne, etc. but I like farfalle for this. it's fun!)
• 2 red bell peppers, diced
• 2 cups of shredded mozarella cheese
• 1 cup of diced turkey, ham or chicken (your preference)
• 1/2 cup of Italian dressing

1. Boil your pasta. This what takes a while.

2. While your pasta is boiling, dice your red bell peppers and turkey/chicken/ham into small, bite-sized pieces. Since I've started keeping red bell peppers in the fridge for snacking, I go ahead and slice up all of the red bell peppers at this time. I dice two for the pasta salad and put the rest in the fridge in strips. Meal prepping!

Again, I really do just use lunch meat from the deli section. It's pretty affordable if you snag it on sale.

3. Strain your pasta and let your pasta cool. I dump the pasta into a mixing bowl and set it aside until it cools. This is when I run off to play with Theo or prepare another meal for the week ahead. Or maybe I just eat Red Vines and watch TV.

4. Mix the pasta, diced meat, peppers, mozzarella cheese and Italian dressing together. You'll need a fairly large mixing bowl if you're into vats of pasta salad like me.

There you have it! My guess is this will be enough for eight lunches, so four days for us. The recipe is easily divided, doubled, etc., and honestly, I dump in extra dressing or red bell peppers or mozzarella cheese whenever I feel like it. 

While I'm at it, I want to point out that this recipe is super affordable, too! (And I didn't use any store brand items, surprisingly enough, so you could make it for even less if you did!) Here's the cost breakdown:

1 lb pasta - $1.68

Red bell peppers - $2.50

1 8 oz bag of mozzarella cheese - $3.75

1/4 lb of turkey - $2.59

1/2 cup of Italian dressing (1/4 of a bottle of Olive Garden Italian dressing) - $0.75

Total = $11.27 

That breaks down to $1.41 per lunch!

•••

What is your go-to lunch recipe? Do you have another easy 5 ingredients or less lunch idea for us?

•••

If you liked this post, consider sharing it on Pinterest!

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