Category Archives: Dinner

My Favorite Meal of the Week – Crock Pot Chili

Posted in Dinner, Gluten Free, Healthy, Soup, Winter by

So here’s the deal. I am really trying to be better about cooking new things for dinner, but sometimes you have to just fall back on your easy standbys when things are busy. One of my favorites is chili. And when it’s made in the crock pot, it’s even better! So here’s one of the best and easiest crock pot chili recipes.


I used this recipe. My only recommended changes are:

  • Use frozen chicken, otherwise it’s a little too mushy at the end. Also,  wait to shred the chicken until you’re ready to serve. And I shred mine in my mixer with the paddle attachment (much easier than forks).

The best part about this recipe is it lasts well. So I tend to make a big batch on Sundays and then enjoy it all week!

My Favorite Meal of the Week – Spinach Tomato Orzo Soup

Posted in Dinner, Healthy, Soup, Vegetarian, Winter by

This is another great healthy and easy weeknight dinner. I made it on a Sunday night and then had leftovers to take to work for lunch. It’s also a great dinner for this time of year when we’re all fighting to stay healthy. One bowl of this soup has so many servings of vegetables in it!
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My Favorite Meal of the Week- Browned Butter Gnocchi

Posted in Dinner, Pasta, Vegetarian by

I’m all about easy dinners to make. As many of my friends know, I used to make the same couple things for dinner every week (they involved a lot of spinach, hummus, and tortilla chips). But this summer when I moved into my new apartment with Dave, I set a goal of trying new things every week. And so far, I think I’ve done a pretty decent job. So here’s a recipe of one of the new things I just tried that was easy, fast, delicious, and healthy.

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My Favorite Meal of the Week – Stuffed Peppers

Posted in Appetizers, Dinner, Gluten Free, Healthy by
This week I decided to finally try one of those dishes you always see pictures of, and think wow that’s so pretty, it must be really complicated.

Turns out, it’s not. I made stuffed peppers. And as long as you don’t mind a little mess, they were easy, pretty fast, and totally delicious (even the next day).

My Favorite Meal of the Week – Pretzels and Fall Chopped Salad

Posted in Gluten Free, Healthy, Holiday, Salads, Vegetarian by

This week, I did very little cooking. Between recovering from Thanksgiving and getting the house all prepared for the holidays (see below), I had no energy left to toil in the kitchen. But after finishing all of our holiday decorations this afternoon, I decided to get a little creative for dinner, and it turned out to be one of the best meals of the week.

I’ve been meaning to make my own homemade pretzels (I have a soft spot for the horribly unhealthy ones you can find in malls and airports), and after sitting on the floor for three hours making my own cranberry popcorn garlands today, pretzels sounded like an amazing dinner. And while yes, part of me wanted to just devour the pretzels by themselves (see the next post for recipe), I added in a fall chopped salad (really just so my mom wouldn’t disown me upon reading that I’d only had pretzels for dinner).

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My Favorite Meal of the Week – Thanksgiving Style

Posted in Dinner, Entertaining, Holiday, Winter by

Preparing to host our first Thanksgiving kept us very busy this week. But now that it’s over – we survived and have a fridge full of leftovers – it was so worth it!

Although, there was one moment when I wondered if we’d be able to get everything done. I spent all week getting the food, figuring out timing for how to get everything done on Thursday, cleaning, and setting up. None of that prepared me to have our sink stop draining, our disposal stop working, and our dishwasher start flooding at 11:30pm on Wednesday. After an hour of trying to fix it, we went to bed thinking we’d be doing all of our dishes in the shower on Thanksgiving. Luckily, Dave managed to fix it Thursday morning about five minutes before his parents showed up (side note, pour baking soda and vinegar, and then boiling hot water down the drain to clear the clog).

But all in all, we had a pretty seamless day on Thanksgiving.  I had wanted to do several posts with all of the different things I made (and lots of pictures) but I sort of underestimated how much I’d have to do on Thanksgiving. So I had to skip taking pictures of every step. But I do want to give you the links/recipes for all of my dishes, and some pictures of the final products!

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My Favorite Meal of The Week – Honey Chicken

Posted in Crock Pot, Dinner, Healthy by

Something you should know about me: I love my crock pot. But every year, I forget about it until it starts to get cold and windy outside. Then I remember how awesome it is and start using it all the time. One of my new favorite recipes is this honey chicken recipe I found on Pinterest. The original can be found here.

I served it for my parents when they visited, and it was a big hit. I’ve now made it several other times, and each time I love it. It’s cooking in my kitchen right now, and the smell is amazing! The best part is that it is ridiculously easy and healthy. To start you just throw everything in the crock pot. See below.

Then you let it sit for a few hours, and at the end you get to eat this:

My Favorite Meal of The Week – BBQ Chicken Cornbread Pie

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Last weekend, I decided to give into Dave’s Sunday football plans by making something for dinner that seemed like the perfect football food. I had been meaning to try a dish from one of my favorite food blogs – Table for Two – and decided to do the BBQ Chicken Cornbread Pie, which seemed like the perfect option for football Sunday.  And oh my god, I am so glad I did. It was relatively easy, and so delicious! Dave and I had to stop ourselves from eating the entire dish. You can find the recipe here and I definitely recommend checking out the rest of the blog.

The first two pictures below are before placing it in the broiler, and the last picture is right before I ate way too much!

My only notes on the original recipe are:

  • I’d probably do less brown sugar. The dish was delicious, but it was almost too sweet for me, so if you wanted to make it healthier, you could easily cut down the sugar.
  • I cooked the chicken myself. I just did it in a pan on the stove with some oil, and then shredded the chicken in my stand mixer like the recipe recommended.
  • I didn’t need to put the pie in the broiler for the full three minutes. At two minutes the top was already starting to brown, so I’d recommend watching it.
  • Lastly, I bought Trader Joe’s cornbread mix, instead of the corn muffin mix as recommended in the recipe. Mainly I was just too lazy to go to a second store, but it worked. I only used half of the mix because the mix I bought was twice the size. My box mix also said to include oil (instead of butter like in this recipe), so I stuck with oil and it worked out.

My Favorite Meal of The Week – Home Made Pizza

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As many of you know, I live in Washington DC, and was thus part of the country that got to frantically prepare for Hurricane Sandy last weekend. Luckily, we ended up only getting strong winds and rain, but not before I stocked up on water and food.  To get prepared for the storm, we got up early last weekend and went to Trader Joe’s. Upon walking in the store, I was immediately overwhelmed because the line was even longer than usual and things were clearly selling out. While Dave got in line, I ended up running around and grabbing whatever food I could find that seemed like good “storm food.” This ended up involving the fixings for homemade pizza (I decided to assume that I’d at least have power long enough to bake the pizza).

Trader Joe’s has a couple different pizza crust options, but I think the one with basil and garlic is the best!  We also got pesto, bacon, pepperoni, peppers, spinach, zucchini, and onions to throw on top. Because we had no clue when our power would go out (or that we would actually not ever lose it), we made two large pizzas as soon as we got home so that we could have lots of leftovers to eat cold if we found ourselves sitting in the dark.

Homemade pizza on a day when it is gross out is so delicious. Especially when it only takes about 20 minutes to prepare, and 10-20 minutes to cook.

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My Favorite Meal of The Week – Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

Posted in Dinner, Fall, Lunch, Vegetarian by

I was introduced to a farm out in Maryland a few years back where you can pick your own fruit and vegetables, and ever since then I have been making the trip up there regularly. In the spring and summer, it’s to pick boxes and boxes of my own berries and peaches. In the fall, it’s to stock up on apples, pumpkins, gourds, and other amazing fall vegetables.

We made our annual October trip up there recently and spent way too much money on apples. Now that I have all of these apples, I have been trying to get creative with how to use them.  On a recent perfect fall Saturday, I decided to use them in one of my all time favorite, all-American meals—tomato soup with grilled cheese.  It was perfect on a day when it was just a bit chilly outside, but not so cold that you had to be stuck inside.  I used the creamy tomato soup from Trader Joe’s and then for the grilled cheese, I did white cheddar with sliced fuji apple on whole wheat bread.  Oh my god.  So simple, so easy, and yet so delicious. Dave opted for bacon instead of apple, which also made for a delicious sandwich.