Vegetarian Chicken Wraps

Ingredients:
- 1 package of Morning Star Buffalo Wings (I have tried the Morning Star Chicken Nuggets, but they don't have as much flavor as the Buffalo Wings. They're a little spicy and they actually taste like chicken.)
- 1-2 diced avocados
- 1-2 diced Roma tomatoes
- 2-3 cups of shredded or chopped lettuce (I think iceberg or romaine works best.)
- Ranch Dressing (depending on the amount of avocado, tomato, and cheese, you may not even need any dressing)

You may want to add:
- Shredded cheese
- Whole wheat tortillas (I toast mine on the stove-top)

Directions:
- Place the Morning Star Buffalo Wings in the microwave for approximately 3 minutes.
- Add lettuce, tomato, and avocado in large mixing bowl.
- Once the Buffalo Wings are cooked, use a fork and a knife to shred them up into small pieces and then add them to the lettuce mixture.
- Mix all the ingredients together and enjoy!
- Add salad to a toasted tortilla with a little bit of ranch dressing for a wrap, or leave as is!

If you're not a vegetarian, you could easily substitute the Morning Star Buffalo Wings for actual shredded chicken. If you have leftover roasted chicken, just tear it up into small pieces and saute it for a minute or two in a skillet to warm it up.

Cheryl's Chicken Soup

My mom is a pretty amazing cook, and not too long ago, she was kind enough to share her chicken soup recipe with me. It's simple, it's delicious, it creates enough soup to last me a week, and, did I mention it's delicious?

Ingredients:
- 2 to 4 chicken hind quarters bone-in (You can use any part of the chicken with bones, but I like dark meat and I like a lot of pieces of chicken in my soup, so I use 3-4 hind quarters of thighs and legs. Chicken can be frozen or defrosted.)
- 1 medium onion cut in half
- 8 whole cloves of garlic
- 2-3 carrots peeled and cut into large chunks
- 2-3 stalks of celery cut into large chunks
- fresh dill
- 4 bay leaves
- Seasonings: Bouillon powder, salt, pepper, and garlic salt taste

Directions:
- In a large soup pot, put in chicken. I have a large pasta pot with the strainer insert that I use to easily separate the chicken and veggies from the broth.

 - Add carrots and celery.

- Add onion, garlic, dill, and bay leaves.

- Add seasoning. You'll need to add a lot of salt and I think freshly ground pepper adds a lot of good flavor. But don't add too too much, you can always taste it when it's ready and add more salt later.
- Fill pot with water to cover all the ingredients.
- Place on stove over high heat and bring to a boil.
- Lower heat to medium/low and then leave on the stove for 2 hours.
- Now, here's where you can choose your own soup adventure:
                 - I don't like carrots or cooked celery, so I strain all ingredients out of the broth, then peel the chicken off of the bones and add that back into the soup. I throw away everything else.
                 - I will sometimes buy the "No Yolk" whole wheat egg noodles to add to the broth that cooks while I'm getting all the chicken off the bones for yummy Chicken Noodle Soup.
                 - Sometimes I use some of the broth in my rice cooker to make some rice, and then add a couple spoonfuls of rice to my bowl of soup.
                 - Try shredding zucchini and/or sweet potato in a food processor, and then adding that to the soup for a hearty vegetable soup. Just be sure to cook it for a little bit until the sweet potatoes are soft.
                 - This is also the recipe my mom uses to cook Matzah Balls in.....YUM!!
                 - Or....do all of the above! Keep the veggies, add the noodles, add some rice (noodles AND rice might be overkill), add the zucchini, sweet potato, and Matzah Balls, and enjoy some super delicious soup!

*TIP: If you leave the soup in the fridge overnight, you will notice a bunch of fat coagulated on the top. Use a ladle to skim it off.....it's pretty gross.

Meat, meet Pasta

It's easy, it hearty, it's healthy, and it reheats well....who could ask for anything more?!

Ingredients:
- 1 package of ground turkey (I was trying to keep it lean, ground chicken or beef works just fine too)
- 1 large can of diced tomatoes
- 1 small can of tomato sauce
- 3 red jalapenos (I like things spicy so I use 3. Also, I find red jalapenos to be a tad sweeter than the green ones, and I think they blend in with the color of the tomato to keep the dish pretty.)
- 1 package of whole wheat macaroni/elbow pasta
- hot sauce (depends on how spicy you like it, I use Tapatio.)
- Seasoning (to taste): salt, pepper, garlic salt, chili powder, chili flakes, cayenne pepper

Directions:
- In a medium sized sauce pot, bring water to a boil to cook the pasta in.
- In a large skillet over medium/high heat, drizzle a little bit of olive oil and add in ground turkey. Break it apart and move it around until it is mostly browned.
- Add seasoning to taste.
- Add jalapenos diced and cook down a little bit with the meat.
- Once meat is completely browned, add in entire can of diced tomato including juice and the small can of tomato sauce and hot sauce. Add more seasoning (tomatoes need a lot).
- Stir meat and sauce and cook uncovered on high to let some of the liquid evaporate. (Tip: you could put the heat a little lower and cook the meat in the tomato a little longer)
- Use a slotted spoon or a spider spoon thing to scoop out pasta and add right into meat sauce. Cook on medium/low for a few minutes until pasta has absorbed a lot of the extra liquid in the sauce.

 

Always Thyme for Chicken!

This is a chicken recipe that is super juicy, super yummy, and pretty easy. I wrote down the amount of ingredients I used (shown in the picture), but you can always add or subtract ingredients based on your taste and the number of people you need to feed.

Ingredients:
- 4 Chicken hind quarters (legs and thighs with bone and skin)
- 1 yellow onion (1/3 finely diced, 2/3 thinly sliced)
- 3 Roma tomatoes (cut into wedges)
- 1 red bell pepper (rough chopped into squares)
- 1 bulb of medium garlic (Yeah...the whole thing. Half of cloves crushed, other half chopped.)
- 1.5 tlbsp of thyme (fresh chopped)
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 tblsp BBQ sauce (I use Bulls-eye)
- 1 bag of small gold potatoes (cut into fourths)
- SEASONING (to taste): salt, pepper, garlic salt, chili powder

Directions:
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Add finely diced onion, crushed garlic, thyme, lemon juice, olive oil, BBQ sauce and seasoning to a bowl and mix it together. Add more lemon juice if more liquid is needed.
- Place chicken pieces in a roasting pan. Use a spoon to scoop onion/garlic mixture under chicken skin and all of the top and bottom of the chicken. Pour extra mixture on top of chicken.
- Spread out cut potatoes all around the chicken.
- On top of potatoes, surround the chicken with sliced onion, chopped garlic, tomato wedges, and red bell pepper.
- Drizzle olive oil over the top of everything and add salt and pepper.
- Place in oven for approximately 1 hour.

You can always drizzle some olive oil and a little bit of salt to asparagus and throw on top of the chicken about twenty minutes before taking the chicken out of the oven to have a delicious vegetable side dish. Serve the chicken with some potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and bell pepper for a complete meal.

What a Crock Tacos!!

This is a super easy recipe to make super delicious meat tacos. This recipe you can prepare at night in the crock-pot bowl, stick in the fridge overnight, pop in the crock-pot on low in the morning, and have a delicious hot meal as soon as you get home from work.

Ingredients:
-3 boneless chicken breasts (you can always put in more if you want, or you can use minute steak)
-1 medium can of enchilada sauce (or a small can of tomato sauce)
-3 to 4 bell peppers (I use a combination of red and green in slices as if you were making fajitas)
-sliced Anaheim chili peppers and jalapenos (as many or as few as you want)
-1 can of diced tomatoes
-1 sliced onion (....as if you were making fajitas)
-1 bottle of beer
-Seasonings: Salt, Pepper, Garlic Salt/Powder, Chili Powder, Cayenne Pepper to taste

You could also add:
-salsa
-cilantro
-lime juice

Directions:
-Place meat in the bottom of the crock-pot bowl.
-Add everything else on top....everything (the beer is the liquid and this dish doesn't require water).
-If you prepare this at night, put the top on the crock-pot and leave in the refrigerator overnight. This dish takes approximately 6-8 hours to cook.
-In the morning, take the crock-pot bowl out of the refrigerator, put it in the crock-pot cooker, and cook on low all day.
-When you get home, take out the meat and use two forks to shred it up and place back in the crock-pot.

How do you eat it?!?
-I will usually use some of the extra liquid from the tacos to cook up some rice in a rice cooker, and then I eat the taco mixture with rice, shredded lettuce, and avocado (if I have some) or salsa, wrapped in a tortilla.
-I will also sometimes just eat it on top of shredded lettuce like a salad.

Crock-Pot Tacos with rice, lettuce, and avocado. Yum!!