Category: Recipes

Chicken and Dumplings

- Meaghan Penrod

People love to say that things are “old family recipes”…but in this case, that’s actually true. My grandma grew up on a farm in North Carolina where she learned how to cook traditional Southern food.  One of the recipes that kind of became her signature dish was her chicken and dumplings.  She made it for my mom during her childhood and when my mom got older, she had grandma teach her how to make it.  Once my mom had her own family, she would make it for us for special occasions.  Both my dad and I requested it for every single birthday! It was and still is our absolute favorite meal!

My grandma taught me, my mom, my sisters, and my cousin how to make it.  Thankfully, she also kept her hand-written recipe card for it in the house as well.  After she passed away, my grandpa dug out the recipe and made it for himself when he was missing her 🙂 He said it wasn’t as good as when she made it, but it was “pretty darn close.”  This dish has always been near and dear to my whole family because it was such a beloved part of our childhood…but now that my grandma has passed away, it’s become even more comforting and special 🙂

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Cast Iron Skillet Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

- Meaghan Penrod

So last week when I went to the store, they had whole chickens buy one get TWO free! I decided not to wonder “why on earth are they tryin’ to get rid of these birds so fast…?” and instead thought “what a fantastic deal! I’ll take three!” Save that money, ya know.

So usually when I do this, I make the whole chicken in the crock-pot.  It’s easy and I can just do it in the morning and come home to a tender, fully cooked chicken! However, on the day that I actually wanted to make the chicken, morning Meaghan did not remember to do the crock-pot part at all…mornings are hard.  But I got home relatively early that day, so I decided to just try my hand at roasting it in the oven!  I figured my cast iron would work perfectly for this…which then made me realize that I could probably also just cook potatoes in there too…YAS.

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Easy Pasta and Meatballs

- Meaghan Penrod

The other day I was trying to figure out what kind of food I was in the mood for…I took out a pound of ground turkey that morning with no real plan in mind.  Quite honestly, I wasn’t excited about anything I could think of to make with it.  Then it hit me that pasta and meatballs was EXACTLY what I wanted.  The only problem was I was feeling much too lazy to go through all my usual steps in making meatballs.  Typically I make them and brown them on all sides in a pan and then cook them the rest of the way in the sauce. That just seemed like way too much work.  So I figured, why couldn’t I just make them in a muffin tin? They probably would’t get as brown and crispy on the outside…but that was a risk my lazy self was willing to take!

I preheated my oven to 350 degrees and then I mixed my pound of ground turkey with oatmeal, an egg,frozen pre-chopped onions (great hack! keep these in your freezer and add to dishes when you don’t feel like cutting up a whole onion),  Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and italian seasonings.  Then I rolled them into balls and plopped them into a muffin tin, sprayed with coconut oil.

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Spicy (kind of) Roasted Potatoes with Sriracha Sour Cream Dipping Sauce

- Meaghan Penrod

So this past week, my grocery store had pork shoulders buy one get TWO FREE.  Yasss. So on Monday I put a shoulder in my slow cooker with a few spices and when I came home it was ready to go and just fell apart *sigh*.  I mixed in some BBQ sauce and it was all set. So then I was on to my side dishes.  I felt like this meal was really just asking for some crispy roasted potato wedges 🙂

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Quick Oatmeal Desk Breakfast

- Meaghan Penrod

So as I was browsing the gluten free aisle at Big Y the other week, I decided to look at the instant oatmeal section.  I tend to steer away from the pre-packaged single serving oatmeals because usually they have SO MUCH sugar.  I’d rather just make my own and add in some natural sweetness.  But, plot twist, Ancient Harvest has an Ancient Grain instant oatmeal with 0 sugar in it! So great and convenient.  Plus it’s a little different than regular old oatmeal.  Love.

 

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Turkey Meatloaf Cupcakes

- Meaghan Penrod

So back when I was a kid…maybe 10 (?), I got a Rachael Ray children’s cookbook and started to make some recipes out of it.  My absolute favorite one I ever made were these mini meatloaves (meatloaves is a bizarre word…is that even right?) that you made in a cupcake tin and topped with BBQ sauce. They were SO good.  I’m not sure what caused it, but the other day I got a serious craving for these.  Maybe it was the cold weather? Meatloaf is really a warm, comforting dish for me.  Feels like childhood.

I don’t usually buy ground beef unless I need it for something specific.  I tend to just buy ground turkey.  So I decided to try making them with that instead.  I didn’t actually remember the recipe, but I figured…what’s the worst that can happen?

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Chicken, Broccoli, and Mushroom Pesto

- Meaghan Penrod

So I have this thing for pesto…it’s a huge thing actually.  The flavor is just so satisfying to me! I ended up making a sandwich for lunch yesterday and it was kind of a kitchen sink project.  I had some veggie burger patties in the freezer, some lettuce, some avocado…and then I realized I needed some kind of sauce to put on it so it’d have a little flavor and not be too dry.  Typically when I have this problem I just use hummus, but I spotted a jar of pesto in my fridge and thought YES.  So after I ate that for lunch, of course my brain was like yeah…we’re gonna need infinitely more pesto ASAP.  Hence this dinner was born!

I’ve made this dish several different ways depending on what I have in my fridge that I can throw into it.  There have been times where I really wanted to make this but the only veggie I had on hand was frozen green beans and I used those…it was still good! If there’s a will, there’s a way…and there’s always a will for pesto.

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