These have been a family favorite for as long as I can remember.  Only, I don’t remember my Grandmom ever making them.  Maybe that’s because my grandparents never lived near us while they were hosting us, and Granddad

Yes, I’m the crazy person that made taco soup in the summer!  I based this creation on my aunt’s taco soup recipe but made a few minor changes, and to be fair, I have no idea where she got the recipe from, so I am not trying to claim this as a family recipe.

This Turkey Pasta Bake recipe originated from the Pasta Bake I did back in November in this post.

First I decided I wanted to add spinach into the dish. It’s only been the last few years since I realized that I liked spinach and I’ve never cooked fresh spinach. So after a little research I decided to boil it for about 2 minutes in the water I was going to cook my pasta in, since I put a little salt in the water. It was a little bit of a challenge trying to get all of the cooked spinach out of the water but I managed to do pretty well.

It is not often that my local grocery store has the Italian seasoned ground turkey meat from Jennie-O, so when they do I always like to grab a pack and cook with it.  In fact, that is what inspired this recipe.

Once the spinach was cooked, I threw the pasta into the boiling water.  Then I got the turkey started in a skillet.  I did not cook minced garlic first because I assumed the turkey meat had garlic as one seasoning and I had purchased garlic pasta sauce.

Once the meat was browned I poured in the pasta sauce.  I know the original recipe calls for tomato puree, but I can never find that at my grocery store and just decided to go with pasta sauce because it is easy to find.  I also threw in a bay leaf and sprinkled some basil, salt, pepper and sugar into the meat mixture.  I mixed it all up and let it cook in the skillet for about 20 minutes.

My mom has been making this recipe for as long as I can remember.  In fact she has a “special meal,” each of us kids get on our birthdays and this is what she fixes for me.  According to mom this recipe originated when she and her dad were having a cook off of some sort one night.  Basically Tijuana Tort is Mexican Lasagna.

I don’t know that this recipe could ever be deemed “healthy,” but in an effort to make it more healthy, here is my recipe and my alterations.

1 onion chopped

1 bell pepper (I added to get more veggies)

I chop these up and put them in a skillet pretty low just to soften while I get the meat browning.

1 lb ground beef browned, but I sub in a package of Jennie-O Mexican style ground turkey.

I drained the turkey then added the onion and bell pepper to the meat skillet.

Next mix in:

2 tsps chili powder

16 ounces tomato sauce

I also added in one can of Rotel just to spice up the Tijuana Tort a bit.  You let it simmer for 15 minutes, if you’re like me and never remember what that means, I just let it slightly bubble for 15 minutes until it looks like this:

I have been wanting to make this recipe for quite sometime.  You know I’ve only ever had Chicken Spaghetti once in my life and that was in college . We went to my roommate Kelly’s cousin’s house and her mom made it. I remember it being delicious!  So, as I was perusing the Pioneer Woman’s website I came across not one but TWO Chicken Spaghetti recipes.  I passed on the one with mushrooms and olives because…I’m not really a fan of either of those and went with this recipe.

Since this recipe involves cooking a whole chicken and then picking the meat off the bones, I decided I should make this over the weekend…until I read that it freezes beautifully at the end of her post.   Loved this!!

The recipes calls for a whole fryer, and since I’d been thinking about making this, I already had one in the freezer…go me! I followed the Pioneer Woman’s recipe to a T and have decided next time I am going to do things a little differently.  First of all…the pimentos, I’m not really a fan but they didn’t really do anything for me in this recipe.  Also, I like my food more on the spicy side so when she said 1/8 – 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper, I went with the 1/4 teaspoon and I barely tasted it.  So, the things I would change up next time would be, ditch the pimento, the green bell pepper and crushed red pepper and replaced them with a can of Rotel, drained.  I think that would make it spicier and cut down on the chopping time, so win-win! 

In an attempt to make it somewhat healthier, I opted for whole wheat spaghetti instead of regular spaghetti noodles.

Don’t get me wrong, aside from my complaint that this dish had little to no spice, I thought it was delicious and got rave reviews from my taste testers.  Thanks Beth & Brent!

Before putting it in the oven to cook, I decided to put one serving in a dish and freeze it and see what happened.  I always forget how slowly things defrost.  It’s amazing the freeze in no time but take hours to thaw!  Once it had defrosted, I topped it with cheese and cooked it.  It turned out just as great as if it hadn’t been ever been frozen.  So this would be a great prepare ahead meal that could be kept in the freezer.

I have also taken this to lunch and reheated it and it is still delicious!  Following the recipe this would easily make 6 servings, maybe even 7.  Do have a Chicken Spaghetti recipe?  If so post it below, I want to see!

This may not be a crockpot recipe but it is still a delicious meal.  I got this recipe from my cousin Chase who got this from his mom, my Aunt Cindy.  I’d been wanting to make this for awhile but this dang Texas Winter just hasn’t been that cold!  So I just decided to pick a night a make it.

I must warn you, there is quite a bit of chopping involved in this recipe, but it’s worth it.  My biggest issue with chili is normally that over abundance of kidney beans, yuck!

First chop the peppers, I used 3, but you could do up to 4.  Tonight I used 2 green and 1 red.  Normally you’d use two onions but the one I had was huge so I just did one.  To save time you can use frozen, diced onions, you’d want to use about 2 cups.  I cut up two stalks of green onion (scallions), approximately 1/4 cup.  Then mence up 8 cloves of garlic.  

Drizzle 2 teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil in a skillet and toss in the veggies.  Cook them for about 5 minutes until soft then add the ground turkey.  I used regular Jennie-O turkey but I’d recommend the Extra Lean version so that you don’t have to worry about draining the grease.  Break the pieces apart as they cook and and once it isn’t pink any more add the beans.  I used 2 cans of black beans, rinsed and drained.

Next I drained two cans of mild rotel and added them to my skillet, if you want it extra spicy you could always add a jalapeno.   Then I added the spices: 2 tablespoons of chili powder, 4 teaspoons of cumin (though I used only 3, because I’m not the biggest fan of cumin) and 2 teaspoons of dried oregano.  Mix it all together and let it cook.  Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender. 

Serve with cheese, sour cream and top with a few scallions.

I haven’t had a chance to try freezing this yet, but it reheats wonderfully and makes an easy left over dinner or lunch to take to work.

I am a little obsessed with making soup at home.  But really hadn’t ventured far beyond the two recipes I’ve tried to so far.  Thanks to Pinterest finding more recipes has been easy to do!  I even created an “i heart soup” board.  Go check it out!

It was on Pinterest that I stumbled upon this recipe from The Pioneer Woman.  I was instantly intrigued and also a little freaked out…I was going to have to pull apart a chicken to get as much meat off the bones as possible!

The first time I made this soup was the weekend of the White Rock Marathon that my sister was running, so the house was a little busy.  Plus I decided to put up my Christmas Tree that weekend with the help of my five year old nephew.

There are quite a few steps to this soup because there is quite a bit of chopping: a couple peppers, an onion and a jalapeno…chop chop chop! Once the soup was finished I couldn’t wait to taste it and it was amazing!

A few days later I learned that our Christmas Eve dinner was going to be sandwiches and soups for dinner so I immediately volunteered to cook this soup.  What I learned from making it the first time was it makes A LOT of soup!  But then I also learned that is freezes good, so that’s a definite plus.  Remember I like that whole “pre-cooked” meal that all I have to do is defrost!

I’ve been on it for awhile…but only recently started playing with it; and now I can’t stop! The more I look at it the more I want to cook. So that’s just what I did this past weekend. Let me just tell you…it was SO fun and now I won’t have to cook dinner for over 3 weeks!

After a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and cook dinner let alone even spend time thinking about what to have.

I decided if I was going to take the time to cook, then I was going to make things I could freeze and have later.  So, I set out on a mission to pick a few recipes that used chicken and some of the same spices to get the most bang for my buck!  Then I headed to the grocery store and spent a whopping $95 to get all of this:

The strangest item I bought, because it was new to me and not something I ever thought I’d buy was ground chicken…so I was totally nervous about that recipe.  Also, I should note, these were all new recipes and not things I’d tried.  But based on everything I saw these recipes would freeze really well and that’s what I was going for!  If you are looking for a guide about how long foods can stay in the freezer, I think this is a great index!

First recipe was chicken noodle soup. I picked this recipe because I thought her suggestion of freezing servings in large muffin tins was BRILLIANT!  (inspiration blog no longer exists.) However I totally botched the chicken and made this way too bland…no fault of the poster; it was my own mistake.  Which means this soup may just be the last thing to leave my freezer.  I know this because I made sure the soup was ready in time for dinner on Saturday night.  Even though I had some for dinner I was still able to freeze 6 servings.