How to meal plan for real moms and real life. Meal planning is a sanity saver. It saves me from asking myself, "Crap, what's for dinner?" at 2 in the afternoon. It saves us money at the grocery store. It saves me from having a pantry full of dusty canned goods. It makes you feel like your life is a little more put together, even if it isn't. It helps you avoid pizza three ...
Weeknight Dinners
Venison Stew recipe
Living in Wisconsin venison is something that we grow up with, so we were thrilled this year when AJ got two deer on opening day. This was also the first year that Aliceana went on the journey out to the woods, the biggest take away is that she has a hard time staying quiet for that long, and she's not great at whispering. Anyway, venison is an incredibly lean meat, and we love ...
Slowcooker Ham and Cheese Pasta, the best ever comfort food.
This recipe is one that has been a family favorite for, well for as long as I can remember. It’s one of the very few things my mom could cook, this and the best ever Rice Krispie treats. I’m pretty sure anyone that can boil pasta can make this one, and that’s the beauty of it. Well that and the fact that it’s probably the best comfort food in the history of ever. It’s perfect ...
Better Than Take Out Sesame Chicken
Chinese take out is a weakness for our entire family, it’s the best. It gets so pricey though, we spend a small fortune every time we order take out. It could be because we can’t resist ordering extra egg rolls, then there’s the days you want crab rangoon, and the major splurge days when you need fried donuts. We’re foodies and it’s costly. I normally avoid making Asian style ...
Yellow Curry Chicken Tenders
Chicken tenders are great, they're kid friendly and great for picky eaters. Honestly I pair Trader Joe's frozen chicken tenders with mac and cheese and have it on the meal plan about every other week, because having a kid is the perfect excuse to eat like a kid. Sometimes it's nice to have grown up food though, which is why I came up with this ridiculously simple recipe for ...
Tex-Mex Enchiladas
The other day I shared my recipe for Tex-Mex Stuffed Bell Peppers, well today I'm using that same delicious filling (Italian sausage, chunky salsa, corn, and white rice) to make these Tex-Mex Enchiladas. This was my first ever attempt at making enchiladas, in fact this was my first time eating enchiladas. ...
Four Ingredient Mac and Cheese
When I'm just making dinner for Aliceana and myself, I like to keep it extremely simple. We don't need anything extravagant and by dinner time we're both exhausted. It's time to turn on a short cartoon and whip up something quick. One of my new favorites to make on our girls nights is this easy four ingredient mac and cheese. Everyone loves mac and cheese, and it's even better ...
Four Ingredient Slow Cooker Chicken Wings
I love hosting people for game days, is there anything more fun than gathering together and eating tons of finger foods? Even when it's just the 3 of us at home we like to create quite the spread; chips and taco dip, something from the grill, cheese, crackers and sausage. We go all out. Sometimes it's nice to give the grill a break and cook something simple inside. That's ...
Super Simple Shrimp Tacos
Simple meals are definitely winning here lately. In fact, when I came up with this recipe, we were about...2 minutes away from Trader Joe's and I remembered that we didn't have a meal plan. I was stumped, but I thought, uh...shrimp tacos sounds like a fun option to make at home. So one of our favorite quick to put together meals was born. Super simple shrimp tacos that everyone ...
Carne Asada Fries recipe with Trader Joe’s ingredients
Recently Aliceana declared Tuesday's at our house Taco Tuesday's. The thing is, that as a family of 3 making tacos with all of the fixings just seems annoying. Tacos is a meal that you make for a crowd, so we've been making up different meals that have taco elements. We came up with a recipe for carne asada fries using ingredients from Trader Joe's and we've been eating it ...
Breakfast Fried Rice
Our daughter loves rice, it is one of her favorite things and she likes to eat it plain, just a bowl of rice, a spoon, and she is a happy girl. She also loves fried rice and rice in basically any form so we asked her one morning what she wanted for breakfast and she said rice. Brittany and I laughed a little bit and then she looked at me with the "I have an idea look" and said ...