August 2022

It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally I have to break my rule about using processed ingredients in cooking. Cajun Mac and Cheese is one of the dishes that I definitely bend the rules for, and that is because of the magical ingredient known as Velveeta. I am a Wisconsinite, so it feels like a sin to say that I use processed cheese to make my homemade mac and cheese, but honestly, there’s a reason they advertise it as liquid gold. I have made so many homemade cheese sauces, and none of them produce the saucy, creamy deliciousness that Velveeta gives me. 

However, just because I use Velveeta cheese to create my mac and cheese, doesn’t mean that I can’t dress it up. Here’s a little secret, ANY mac and cheese can be made classier by putting add-ins into the bowl, and given my love for Cajun cuisine, of course I fancy this pasta up with a touch of Cajun cooking. If you are looking for an easy Mac and Cheese dish that tastes like it came out of a gourmet restaurant, look no further!

Ingredients

Mac and Cheese

8 oz Chicken Breast

½ tbsp Olive Oil

1 tsp Cajun Seasoning

4 oz Andouille Sausage

2 cups Elbow Macaroni

5 oz Velveeta Cheese

2 ½ tbsp Butter

⅓ – ½ cup Whole Milk

Crunchy Panko Topping

½ cup Panko Bread Crumbs

¼ tsp Cajun Seasoning

½ tbsp Butter

¼ cup Parmesan Cheese

Garnish

Salt

Sriracha Sauce

Directions

1. Before working on the actual pasta part of the dish, the meat needs to be prepped and cooked. Rub the chicken breast with the olive oil and Cajun seasoning. Place in a covered baking dish and bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees. While this is cooking, the rest of the dish can be prepped

2. Slice the andouille sausage into thin coins, about a fourth inch or less. Place in a frying pan and brown the sausage at medium high heat. After it crisps up – about 5 minutes of frying – place the sausages on a paper towel lined plate to degrease them.

Kitchen Tip 1: Andouille is a smoked sausage, so technically it is already cooked. Frying it provides a nice crisp to the edges of the coins though. DO NOT grease the frying pan before frying these. Andouille is greasy enough that it doesn’t need more grease added in. 

3. Next, it’s time to create the Crunchy Panko Topping. Wipe the andouille frying pan mostly clean, leaving a little grease residue for flavor, then melt in ½ tbsp of butter. Once it is melted, pour in the panko bread crumbs and ¼ tsp of Cajun seasoning. Stir this constantly until the bread crumbs turn toasty brown. 

Kitchen Tip 2: It is essential that you are using panko, not regular bread crumbs. Panko is larger and crunchier than traditional bread crumbs, creating a better textural element. If you must substitute something for panko, Townhouse Crackers work best. 

4. Once the panko has been toasted, pour it onto a plate, let it cool, then mix the parmesan cheese in with a fork. 

5. Boil a pot half full with water, and cook the pasta according to the box instructions. Strain the noodles in a colander. 

6. Measure out the proper amount of Velveeta cheese and cut it into tiny ½ squares. 

7. In the same pot the noodles were cooked in, add ⅓ cup of milk, the butter, and the Velveeta. Cook on warm until the butter is melted, then pour the pasta back into the pot and stir until the cheese is melted.

8. By this point the chicken should be fully cooked. Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces, and mix both the andouille and the chicken into the pasta. Heat until the andouille is rewarmed.

Kitchen Tip 3: At this point evaluate how saucy you like your mac and cheese. If you prefer a saucier dish, add in the rest of the milk, otherwise your dish is ready to serve. 

10. Scoop the appropriate amount of mac and cheese onto each plate, sprinkle the crunchy panko topping on top, then add salt to taste, and a drizzle of sriracha sauce.

Kitchen Tip 4: Be cautious with the sriracha sauce! This stuff is spicy. If you are not a spicy fan, you will probably want to skip that step. Even if you do like spicy food, make sure you are only drizzling a thin line onto the pasta, otherwise the flavor of the sriracha will overwhelm everything else. 

That’s all there is to it. This mac and cheese is easy to make, but looks so pretty, and tastes way fancier than it actually is. If you are a fan of gourmet mac and cheese or Cajun cuisine, you are going to love this recipe! Enjoy!

This recipe was born purely from a TikTok trend. My friend Becky had shown me a recipe she found on TikTok that included baby tomatoes, feta cheese, olive oil, Italian seasonings, and pasta. The first time I tried the dish both Cole and I agreed that it was good, but there was a lot that could be done to make it even better. With a lot of changes and additions of ingredients, this dish has become something that Cole and I have absolutely fallen in love with, and I anticipate making a lot more in the future, especially since it is so easy to make, and leaves a bunch of leftovers that can be reheated throughout the week. 

Directions

2 pints Grape Tomatoes

2 ½ tbsp Olive Oil (divided)

Dried Thyme

Dried Basil

Black Pepper

Salt

15 oz Skim Ricotta Cheese

2 tsp Minced Garlic

1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes

1 tsp Dried Onion Flakes

12 oz Tri Colored Rotini

15 oz Alfredo Sauce

8 oz Shredded Chicken Breast

1 ½ cup Broccoli Florets

½ cup Panko Bread Crumbs

2 tbsp Butter

½ tsp Garlic Powder

Directions

1. Lay out the tomatoes in an even layer across the bottom of a 3 quart baking dish. Make sure they are all touching the bottom. Do not stack them. Pour 2 tbsp of Olive Oil on top of them and sprinkle them with dried thyme, basil, black pepper, and salt. There should be just enough seasoning to be visible. Stir it all together making sure to resituate it in a way where all the tomatoes are once again in a layer across the bottom. 

2. Steam the broccoli florets until they are fork tender, about 5 minutes. Spread them on top of the tomatoes. Place the ricotta cheese in the middle of the pan, pour the remaining ½ tbsp of olive oil on top of it, and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. 

3. While the tomatoes are baking, shred the cooked chicken breast into bite sized pieces, and cook the pasta according to the box instructions. When the pasta is done cooking, strain it and mix it together with the alfredo sauce.

4. After the tomatoes are done cooking, stir the mixture together. Any tomatoes that do not break apart during stirring should be popped open by pressing them to the side of the pan with a large serving spoon. 

Kitchen Tip: Make sure to wear an apron when popping the tomatoes. They may splatter as they pop. 

5. Mix in the pasta, shredded chicken, minced garlic, and red pepper flakes. Bake this mixture for 8 more minutes.

6. Melt the butter and combine in a small bowl with the panko and garlic powder. Spread this mixture on top of the pasta. Bake for 3 more minutes to brown the panko. 

Kitchen Tip: If you like a little bit of spice you can sprinkle a small amount of red pepper flakes across the top too. 

This dish is amazingly hearty, filling, and makes for delicious leftovers the next day too If you are a pasta fanatic, you are absolutely going to love this recipe! 

Even though the focus of this blog is cooking without processed ingredients, there are occasional instances where a recipe simply needs cream of chicken soup to work. Hashbrown Casserole was one of my favorite foods as a child and it’s actually the first dish that I ever made all on my own.

I will be the first one to admit that there is nothing ultra healthy about this dish, but it is incredibly delicious. This is also a large group recipe, so if you are having company over, or need a casserole for a potluck, this is an excellent item to fall back on. 

Ingredients

1 ½ cups Sour Cream 

1 can Cream of Chicken Soup

2 ½ cups Sharp Shredded Cheddar

1 tsp Dried Onion Flakes

16 oz Shredded Chicken

32 oz Southern Style Hashbrown Potatoes

Black Pepper 

2 cups Corn Flakes

3 tbsp Butter

Directions

1. Take the hashbrown potatoes out of the freezer at least half an hour to an hour before putting together the casserole to allow them to partially thaw out. 

2. Mix the sour cream, cream of chicken soup, shredded cheddar, onion flakes, and chicken in a large bowl. 

3. Grease a 13×9 glass baking dish and pour the hashbrown potatoes in an even layer across the bottom. Sprinkle the potatoes with a generous amount of pepper.

4. Spread the chicken mixture in an even layer over the top of the potatoes. 

5. Pour the corn flakes into a bag and crumble them up into smaller pieces. Spread these pieces over the top of the casserole. 

6. Cut the butter into small clumps and drop them a couple of inches apart from each other over the top of the corn flakes.

7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake for 50-60 minutes. 

Kitchen Tip: If you thawed the potatoes out for an hour or more before making the casserole it should only need 50 minutes. If you thawed them for 30 minutes or less, it will take an hour to bake.

Even though I tend to eat healthier now, this dish will always be one of my favorites, and I will treat myself to it at least once per year. Being a Wisconsinite, cheesy casseroles will always hold a special place in my heart. If you are a dairy lover, you are going to love this recipe!

Even though my mom loves to cook, growing up we didn’t make a lot of breakfast food. My sister wasn’t a fan of any of the breakfast meats, and I didn’t develop a taste for eggs until I was 20. Eliminating both the meat and egg options for breakfast didn’t leave us many options left. Most of the time I would just toast up a couple of Eggo waffles before school. However, whenever my family would go somewhere for the weekend, we would stop at Big Apple Bagels first. Of course, being a chocolate lover, instead of getting a bagel, I would always get a Jumbo Double Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffin instead. 

Now that I’m older, I recognize the value of a healthy breakfast, and I actually love fried eggs now that I’ve given them a chance. That doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate a delicious muffin here or there though. Most of the time I stick to making pumpkin spice muffins or plain chocolate chip, but lately I’ve been craving double chocolate muffins with cheesecake filling. I had been practicing making cheesecakes for dessert the last couple of months, and I realized I could easily transform the cheesecake ingredients into a filling for my muffins. Making the regular chocolate chip muffins into double chocolate chip was also a simple fix, I simply added in cocoa powder and a little more milk to offset the extra powder that was now in it. 

After a couple of rounds of experimenting with this recipe, I am completely obsessed. These are so delicious! If I wasn’t trying to be health conscious, I would probably make them up all the time and eat two for breakfast every day. Instead, these will remain a special treat here and there, which will make me appreciate them a little more too.

Ingredients

Muffins

2 ½ cups flour

1 tbsp Baking Powder

⅓ cup Cocoa Powder

1 tsp Salt

1 ⅓ cup Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

½ cup (1 stick) Melted Butter

1 cup Sugar

1 ⅔ cup Whole Milk

2 Large Eggs

1 tbsp Vanilla

Cheesecake Filling

12 oz Cream Cheese

2 Egg Yolks

1 tsp Vanilla

6 tbsp Sugar

Directions

Like any baking recipe, the first step to making these muffins is to preheat your oven to 425 degrees, then you are going to start mixing your muffin batter together. When making the muffin batter, you are going to mix all of the dry ingredients except the sugar first. You are going to want a large mixing bowl for this. 

Pour the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt into the bowl. To switch things up a little, I like to divide my cocoa powder in half. I fill half of the ⅓ cup with regular cocoa powder, and then I fill it the rest of the way with dark chocolate cocoa powder. When eating chocolate, I almost always prefer dark chocolate options, and this sets these muffins apart from other double chocolate muffin recipes. 

After all the dry items are combined, add in chocolate chips to the bowl and whisk them in. 

Once all of your chocolate chips are added in, take out a new glass bowl (or microwave safe at least). You will want to make sure this bowl is large enough to both hold the rest of your ingredients and be able to whisk them together. Start out by melting the butter and cream it together with your sugar. Let this cool a little bit before adding in the rest of the ingredients. Once the butter/sugar mixture is at room temp, add in your milk, eggs, and vanilla and whisk it all together. 

When your liquids are well mixed together, you are going to add them into your dry ingredients. You will want to use a rubber spatula during this next step, and you will want to continuously scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl while folding the batter together. If you don’t scrape the sides and bottoms often enough you will still have dry ingredients left on the bottom of the bowl when you start scooping it into your muffin tins. After your batter is mixed together, set it aside and start working on your cheesecake filling

For the cheesecake filling you will want to use either a stand up or hand mixer. I like to take my cream cheese out of the fridge about an hour and a half before I make this recipe. This helps the cream cheese to soften and makes it easier to mix together. 

Start with the cream cheese and mix it until it looks smooth. It won’t get entirely smooth until the rest of the ingredients are added in, but you should be able to see a clear difference in the consistency after a little bit of mixing. 

After your cream cheese changes consistency, add in your egg yolks, vanilla, and sugar. When mixing these next items together, use a medium to high speed setting. This speed will allow the ingredients to get a very creamy texture.  You are going to need to pause every once in a while during this mixing process to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. If you don’t scrape the bowl, then some cream cheese will stick to it and create lumps later if they fall into your filling. Your filling is done when it is completely mixed together and looks yellowed and creamy. 

When both your batter and filling are finished, you need to prep your muffin pans. This recipe makes 24 muffins, so you will either need two muffin pans or have to bake it in batches. I like to use muffin tins to keep the pans easier to wash. I’ve never tried making them with just greasing the pans, but I’m guessing that would work too. 

Start to fill your pans by putting one scoop of muffin batter in the base of each cup. This first scoop should be ¼ of an inch to ½ thick once it is in the cup. I lean towards the side of a 1/2 inch to keep a more solid base. 

After you have a base in each tin, add in one spoon of cheesecake filling on top of it. Warning: If you put too much cheesecake filling in, these muffins will overflow a little bit. Most silverware sets have both small spoons and large spoons in them. I use the large spoons when making these muffins. I have found that one large spoonful of cheesecake filling is perfect, but one heaping spoonful will lead to a bit of a muffin explosion.

Finally, top off your cheesecake filling with another scoop of batter in each tin. Smooth the batter over the top so you can’t see the cheesecake filling anymore. Most muffin recipes will tell you only to fill each cup ⅔ of the way full, but I fill these all the way to the rim. Filling it all the way full creates a nice muffin top, and since there isn’t any baking soda in this recipe it doesn’t rise too much that this is an issue. 

Now your muffins are ready to go in the oven! You are only going to bake your muffins at 425 degrees for the first 5 minutes of the bake time. After the first 5 minutes it is essential that you turn your oven down to 350 degrees. Bake your muffins for another 16 minutes, and they will be finished.

Important Storage Information

Because these muffins have a cheesecake filling they have to be stored in the refrigerator. When you want to eat one, just peel off the muffin tin and heat it up in the microwave for 20 seconds. This will warm it up and allow the filling to get the gooey delicious texture that melts in your mouth. You can also freeze these muffins and thaw them out for future use since this recipe makes up quite a lot.

I hope these muffins provide you with many delicious breakfasts in the future! Enjoy!

This week’s featured recipe was created completely by accident. My husband was having a guy’s night, and as part of the usual routine I was going to make snacks. My goal that evening was to make a homemade nacho cheese dip. Unfortunately as I went about creating my dip, I quickly realized the consistency was too thin for dipping chips, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it to thicken up. While this was a complete failure of an attempt to make nacho cheese dip, the sauce tasted delicious. I wrote down my method, knowing I had made a cheese sauce that would taste incredible over potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, and other foods of choice. 

This cheese sauce has now become my go-to on loaded baked potato night, a dish that we have at least once per month. The cumin and cayenne in the sauce bring a slight zing that balances perfectly with potatoes, broccoli, and chicken. It has reached the point where baked potato night doesn’t seem the same without the addition of my spiced cheddar cheese sauce. If you are a cheese lover, and can’t resist a loaded potato, I highly recommend adding this sauce to your list of necessary toppings. 

Ingredients

2 oz Shredded Monterey Jack Cheese (Shredded from a block)

2 oz Shredded Cheddar Cheese (Shredded from a block)

¾ cups Whole Milk

½ tbsp Butter

½ tbsp Flour

⅛ tsp Cayenne Pepper

⅛ tsp Cumin

⅛ tsp Salt

Directions

Kitchen Tip 1: Before beginning the sauce the cheeses need to be shredded. It is essential to grate the cheese from block form when making this recipe. Pre-shredded cheeses come with preservatives in the bag that can cause clumps and change the melting points. Using pre-shredded cheese can ruin this sauce before it has even been started, so do yourself a favor and shred your own cheese from blocks instead. 

1. When all the ingredients for the sauce have been prepped, start by making a roux. This is done by melting down the butter and adding in the flour. Stir this combination consistently for thirty seconds to a minute. It is possible that the mixture will turn a slightly brown hue during this process. That is completely normal. 

2. After the roux has been created, add in the milk. Lightly stir until the milk comes to a low boil. 

Kitchen Tip 2: It is very important at this point in the recipe to use a rubber spatula and scrape the bottom and sides of the pan often to make sure the roux is not sticking to the bottom of the pot. If you notice that the roux seems to be sticking together in clumps instead of combining with the milk, feel free to whisk it for a little bit. Be careful if you have a metal whisk though, as whisking vigorously with a metal tool can ruin the bottoms of your pots. 

3. When the milk is simmering, add in the cheeses, but DO NOT add them in all at once. Sprinkle in about a third of the cheese; then stir until they are combined. Continue to do this until the cheese is completely gone. 

Kitchen Tip 3: Cheddar cheese occasionally struggles to melt, especially when it is added in too quickly. By combining it with the Monterey jack ahead of time, and then dumping it into the pot in three separate increments this helps the sauce to retain a smooth texture. If you notice a grainy texture to the sauce it means you combined the ingredients too quickly or that your milk wasn’t quite hot enough to begin with. The sauce will still taste good if this happens, but the texture will remain slightly off. 

4. Once the cheese has been melted into the milk, add in the spices. Cumin occasionally clumps up during this process, so a whisk might be needed instead of a spatula to ensure that everything is properly combined together.

5. Continue to stir the sauce for 5 more minutes to allow the flavors to combine and the sauce to thicken; then serve warm over a dish of your choice. 

Kitchen Tip 4: If you are not serving this sauce immediately make sure to keep it warm until you are ready to eat. This sauce does not reheat well, so it would be best to serve it immediately after it is finished. 

If you are as addicted to cheese as I am, I am positive that you will love this sauce! It makes any vegetable tastier to eat. Enjoy!

Who doesn’t love lasagna? If you were to ask me to make a list of my top favorite Italian foods, lasagna would be right towards the top. I have tried many different recipes over the years, but being from Wisconsin, one of the chief complaints about these lasagnas was that none of them were cheesy enough. Since this was a recurring trend, I decided it was finally time for me to tackle a lasagna recipe of my own. I sat down and compared all of the various dishes I had tried, and I took ingredients from each that I enjoyed most, and changed others to fit my own personal preferences. The end result was an ultra cheesy dish that screams Wisconsin. 

Making a lasagna can seem like a daunting task, because there are so many different components in the dish. Full disclosure here, I used to get SO stressed when making lasagnas because I didn’t know which part of the dish I should tackle first. However, after many rounds of trial and error, I figured out a progression of preparation that makes for the smoothest lasagna creation. By following this step-by-step process, creating a delicious cheesy lasagna can be easily done!

Ingredients

½ cup Diced Green Pepper

½ cup Diced Yellow Onion

1 tsp Minced Garlic

½ tbsp Butter

1 lb Ground Italian Sausage

10 oz Marinara Sauce

¼ cup Parmesan Cheese (optional depending on the type of marinara sauce used)

9 Lasagna Noodles

2 tbsp Olive Oil

20 oz Part Skim Ricotta Cheese

2 cups Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Directions

Kitchen Tip 1: Lasagna takes a lot of dishes during the prep process. As the kitchen proceeds to get messier and messier it can be overwhelming. This is why I find it best to tackle each separate element of the dish one segment at a time instead of multitasking, and trying to complete many items at the same time. The faster the process is rushed, the more chaotic the kitchen will become. 

1. Before any other step can be tackled, the vegetables have to be diced up. Deseed the green pepper, and peel off the outer layer of the onion; then chop them down to quarter inch pieces. Pile the pieces up on a plate or cutting board, and then add the minced garlic to the stack. 

2. Melt the butter down in a large frying pan. Make sure the pan has ample room for not just the veggies, but also the meat and sauce. 

3. Once the butter is melted, sauté the onion, pepper, and garlic until they start to become tender. Then add in the ground Italian sausage. Use a spatula to separate the Italian Sausage into small pieces as it is browning. Italian sausage can be reluctant to break down, but just keep working it until it is.

Kitchen Tip 2: The veggies can be prone to cooking faster than the sausage. If you are worried that they are going to become too crispy, move them to the edges of the pan before adding the meat in. You can always mix everything together after the meat is done cooking.

4. After the meat has been browned, strain the grease out, and then pour it back into the frying pan. Set it aside while working with the marinara sauce.

5. This next step is optional depending on the type of marinara sauce you are using. My personal recipe for marinara sauce already has parmesan cheese melted into it, so I skip this step. Some sauces that are bought in stores also are already cheesy versions, allowing this step to be skipped. However, if the marinara sauce you bought does not already have cheese as an ingredient, then you should heat up the sauce and melt in the parmesan cheese directly into it. 

6. Once the sauce is prepped, mix 1 cup of it directly into the meat and veggies. Set both the frying pan and the extra sauce off to the side.

7. Next, boil a large kettle filled with water, and add the olive oil directly into the water. After the water and oil have come to a roiling boil, add in the noodles and cook according to the box instructions.

8. Now it is finally time to start constructing the dish together! Grease a 13×9 pan and layer 3 of the noodles down across the bottom. (This is easiest to do while the noodles are still warm, if they cool too much they can end up sticking together and ripping.)

9. Spread half of the meat mix over the top of the noodles; then spread half of the ricotta cheese on top of the meat. 

10. Lay 3 more noodles on top, and repeat the process of spreading the second half of the meat mixture and ricotta cheese.

11. Add the final 3 noodles on top of that layer; then spread the remaining sauce on top. Finally, sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on top of everything. 

12. Cover the dish with tin foil, and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. 

13. Once the lasagna is cooked, it is very important to let it sit a full ten minutes before cutting it. It can be very tempting to eat right away, but letting the dish sit allows the layers to set together and makes serving the pieces out of the pan much easier. 

Even though it can be really overwhelming to look at a lasagna recipe, the process can be simplified by taking it one step at a time. This is a great dish to make for a crowd, or a small busy family that needs leftovers throughout the week, and the best part of lasagna is that it’s one of those dishes that actually tastes better the longer it sits, so sometimes the leftovers taste even better than the first day you have it! Enjoy!

This recipe is something that most people probably haven’t heard of, but it’s a dish that my family had ALL the time growing up. Made Rights are a  super fast dinner to whip up, which was quite the necessity in my family when my sister always had band concerts to rush off to, and I had swim practices or musical rehearsals to attend. Now, as a kid I always assumed my family was the only one that ever ate this meal. No one else seemed to have heard of Made Rights, and when I would ask my mom about their name, she would say “because they’re made just right.” Turns out there is a little more to it than that. 

Before writing up this post, I did a little more research. Apparently there is a chain of restaurants in Iowa called Maid-Rite that specializes in loose meat sandwiches. Needless to say, I was quite shocked. I honestly thought that this was something my parents had simply whipped up one day. I’ve never even been to a Maid-Rite Restaurant, and I have no idea if this recipe tastes anything like The Original Maid-Rite. What I do know is that this dish is so easy to make, it’s budget friendly, and it’s probably one of the fastest meals you could cook and still be full. If your family is always busy, this is definitely a recipe to try! 

Ingredients

1lb Ground Round

2 tbsp Butter

1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

½ – ¾ tsp Hot Sauce (I use Crystal’s Hot)

¼ tsp Salt

¼ tsp Pepper

⅛ tsp Ground Mustard

Toast

Shredded Pepper Jack Cheese

Directions

1. In a hot skillet brown the ground round until it is cooked, then strain off the extra grease. 

2. Melt the butter, and whisk in the Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and ground mustard. 

Kitchen Tip: Start by adding in only ½ tsp of hot sauce. Wait to add in more until the meat has simmered for 5 minutes. If you like things with a little more spice, add in more after doing a taste test. 

3. Pour the meat back into the skillet and add in the seasoned butter mixture. Cover the skillet, and simmer on low while preparing the rest of the meal. 

4. Toast the bread and shred the cheese. 

5. After the meat has simmered for at least ten minutes, scoop one spoonful of meat onto each piece of toast, and top with the shredded pepper jack cheese. Note, this is an open faced sandwich, so you should only need one piece of toast. However, if you would prefer to make it a full sandwich, you can definitely top it with another piece of toast. 

Kitchen Tip: For a little extra flavor, you can butter your toast before adding the meat on top. Personally, I like to skip that step to keep the dish a little healthier and leaner. 

While this dish may not be anywhere close to extravagant, it’s a simple family dinner or lunch to throw together when your schedule gets overwhelmingly busy. I also like the fact that it’s an open face sandwich. This allows me to fill up while cutting some carbs out of my diet. Next time your calendar fills up, pull out a loaf of bread, a pound of ground round, a block of cheese, and you are set to go! My personal favorite bread to serve this on is thin slices of French bread. Feel free to check out my recipe for homemade French bread here! 

Since I am off work in the summer, one of my favorite indulgences during those three months is sleeping in until 9:30 every day and making myself brunch instead of lunch. Even though there are so many delicious brunch foods, I try to keep it on the healthier side. More specifically, I try to incorporate avocados as much as possible. I guess, even though my birth year puts me on the very edge of being a millennial, this is one of the ways where my generational stereotype shines through, because I LOVE avocado toast. 

In addition, recently I have begun experimenting with goat cheese more and more, and I decided to try and see how I could use it in my morning brunch. This led to the creation of my Avocado Breakfast Sandwich. My favorite way to make this sandwich is with an over easy egg. Find the tips for making a perfect over easy egg here. If over easy eggs aren’t your style, feel free to leave the egg in the skillet about a minute longer to fully cook the yolk. I’m sure this sandwich would be delicious either way!

Ingredients

½ Bagel

2 tbsp Avocado Mashed

Juice Squeezed from ½ of a Lime

¼ tsp Black Pepper

½ tsp Butter

1 Fried Egg

2 Grape Tomatoes

½ tbsp Crumbled Goat Cheese

Old El Paso Creamy Salsa Verde

4-6 leaves Fresh Cilantro

Directions

1. Toast the bagel so it is semi crispy.

2. Cut up an avocado. Spoon ½ of the avocado into a bowl. Cut a lime into fourths, and squeeze two of the wedges so the juice flows on top of the avocado. (Pick out the seeds if any fall out.) Add in the black pepper, and use a fork to mash the avocado, mixing all the ingredients together.

Cutting the avocado into a grid pattern before scooping it out helps it to be mashed more easily.

3. Heat a skillet up over medium high heat. Melt the butter and fry the egg. For a perfect over easy egg, follow the attached link for instructions.

4. Spread 2 tbsp of the mashed avocado mixture over the top of the toasted bagel. Top with the fried egg.

Kitchen Tip: Most likely there will be extra avocado mixture after scooping out what you need. If you want to save this, the best way to do that is to press cling wrap directly onto the top of the avocado, making sure to press it down until it touches the mixture. This will allow as little oxygen as possible to hit the mix, and will help it to become less brown while being stored. The top layer will most likely still become a tinge of brown, but everything below it will stay bright green. This same method can be applied to the second half of the avocado that wasn’t mashed. Push cling wrap directly over it, making sure to press the wrapping directly into the green sections to avoid oxygen exposure, then store this in the fridge. 

5. Slice the grape tomatoes into fourths for perfect bite sized pieces and spread them over the top of the egg. Place the crumbled goat cheese on top as well. 

6. Lightly drizzle the bagel with Old El Paso Creamy Salsa Verde, and garish with the cilantro leaves.

Overall, this is a super easy brunch to make. I love it because it’s quite filling, low calorie, and full of nutritious ingredients. I typically use a multigrain bagel to add even more nutritional value. Be warned though: If you make this will an over easy egg, you will need a fork and knife to eat this. I may call it a sandwich, but it is way too messy of a dish to heat with your hands!

I know I already posted a salmon recipe recently, but what can I say? Now that I’ve tried this meat, I’m using it all the time. Recently, I got to thinking about pasta, and I figured that people put chicken and shrimp in Alfredo all the time, so why not use salmon? I baked the fish with some seasonings that I thought would pair well with the pasta sauce, and then served it on the side. Initially I planned on leaving the fillet on the side, and just taking a bite of it with pasta occasionally, but I liked that so much that I ended up shredding the fillets and mixing them entirely into the pasta for the leftovers. I liked it fully incorporated into the pasta better than on the side, but it was delicious both ways.

*This dish serves two people*

Ingredients

4oz Salmon Fillets

Garlic Powder

Salt

Pepper

Dried Dill

1 tbsp Lemon Juice

2 tbsp Butter

1 tsp Dried Onion Flakes

1 ¾ cups Tri-Colored Rotini

8 oz Alfredo Sauce

Parmesan Cheese

Directions

1. Melt the butter and mix with lemon juice. Pour onto a tin-foil lined pan and sprinkle the onion flakes directly on top of the butter.

2. If the salmon still has scales on it, use a sharp knife to remove that layer. 

Kitchen Tip: I’ve found that it’s a little easier to remove the scales when the meat is still partially frozen. This stops the fillets from being quite as slippery and allows the knife to get a closer cut, saving more of the actual meat.

3. Sprinkle both sides of the salmon with salt, pepper, and dried dill. Do not go overboard, but put on just enough to taste. 

4. Set the salmon on top of the butter mixture and cook at 375 degrees for 16-19 minutes. This will vary depending on whether or not a convection oven is being used. After cooking, poke the meat with a fork to see if it is shredable. If it is, then it is done. 

5. While the fish is cooking, boil the tri-colored rotini according to the instructions on the box and mix with Alfredo sauce. 

6. Once both elements are fully cooked either serve together on a plate, or shred the salmon directly into the pasta before serving. Garnish pasta with parmesan cheese before eating.

This dish is the perfect combination between refreshing and filling. Normally when I eat pasta, I feel overly stuffed for hours, but between the use of salmon and tri-colored rotini, this turns lightens everything up to be satisfying instead of overly indulgent. If you love seafood pasta dishes, I highly recommend giving this one a shot! 

I will be the first to admit that I have a sweet tooth, especially when it comes to breakfast foods. I have always been partial to donuts, muffins, and sugary baked breakfast foods. While banana bread is typically made, one of my favorite breakfast treats is pumpkin bread. 

I’m one of those people that loves everything about autumn: boots, sweaters, the smell of falling leaves, a roaring fire, but most of all, pumpkin spice. Sugar Swirled Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread is one of my favorite ways to welcome in fall, and it is an especially great treat to make for a festive Halloween breakfast. 

The best part about this recipe, is that it makes up a GIANT batch. While it can be easily cut in half, I prefer to make the full amount, because entire loaves can be easily frozen and taken out at other times, such as the other upcoming holidays. This makes for a great quick breakfast when the house is full of family on Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. When wrapped in a double layer of first parchment paper, and then freezer paper, these loaves can last for up to six months in the freezer, but I doubt they will stay that long without being eaten! 

Ingredients

5 cups All Purpose Flour

3 tbsp and 1 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (divided)

4 tsp Baking Soda

2 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Salt

2 cups Melted Butter

3 cups and 1 tbsp Sugar (divided)

3 ½ tsp Vanilla

1 cup Sour Cream

29 oz Canned Pumpkin

4 Eggs

4 Egg Yolks

2 cups Semi Sweet Morsels

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, then whisk the flour, 3 tbsp pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in the largest bowl in your kitchen. This bowl must be at least 6 quarts to fit the full recipe. 

Kitchen Tip 1: While pumpkin pie spice can be found at the grocery store, it is typically spendy. I recommend finding recipes for making your own instead. Pumpkin pie spice is made up of ingredients that are more commonly found at the store, and are possibly already in your spice cabinet. These ingredients are: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, all spice, and cloves. These spices are all a lot cheaper to buy in bulk than the small containers of pre-made pumpkin spice, allowing large amounts of pumpkin spice to be more affordably purchased. 

2. Melt the butter in your largest microwave safe bowl, make sure that it is at least 2 quarts, or it won’t be large enough to mix all the ingredients together. Then cream 3 cups of the sugar into the butter using a wire whisk. 

3. After the sugar is creamed in, mix in the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, and sour cream; then fold in the pumpkin.

4. Combine the wet ingredients into the dry mixing bowl in 3 phases, making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula when stirring.

Kitchen Tip 2: This mixing process is the hardest part since the mixture is so thick, and it is a large batch. Make sure to keep working at it, and make sure the bottom of the bowl is clear of flour before moving on to the next step.

5. Once the ingredients are combined, stir in the chocolate morsels.

6. Grease either 3 normal sized loaf pans, or 5 small loaf pans, and pour batter into each until they are ½ to ⅔ full.

7. In a small bowl, combine the remaining tbsp of sugar and tsp of pumpkin spice. Divide the sugar mixture evenly over the top of the loaves.

8. Swirl the sugar mixture into the loaves by tracing an S-shaped pattern into each. Make the S-shaped swirl twice side to side, and then complete the same S-shaped swirl twice up and down. It should look like the picture below when finished.

9. Bake the loaves for 45 to 55 min or until a toothpick can be stuck in and come out clean.

Kitchen Tip 3: Be aware that this bread is very moist because of the sour cream. It can be deceiving sometimes, but DO NOT leave it in the oven too long, or the bottom will burn.  If you choose to do this recipe in a regular sized loaf pan, it may not be fully cooked after 55 minutes, especially since this recipe was created in a convection oven. If you do not have a fan-powered oven, you may need to cook it longer. To avoid burning the bottom of the bread, turn the oven down to 325 degrees after the initial 55 minutes before adding more cooking time on.

10. Leave the bread in the pans on a cooling rack for at least half an hour before taking them out, otherwise they might fall apart.

This bread is so moist, sweet, and delicious. It is one of our absolute favorite autumn specials, and it is nice to always store a couple of loaves in the freezer. You never know when you might have company show up unexpectedly, and this is an easy way to please a hungry crowd. Whether you eat a slice for breakfast or savor a slice as a nighttime snack, this is sure to be a treat and not a trick! Enjoy!