Meals in 30 Minutes - Chicken Salad Bar

We've already had some really hot weather (100 degrees or close to it) and on those nights I really don't feel like cooking. Sometimes I barely feel like eating! On one such night recently we had a chicken salad bar for dinner. The two bowls near the bottom of this picture contain feta cheese and dried cherries.


This was also super fast because I already had diced, cooked, and seasoned chicken in the freezer that I just pulled out and defrosted in the microwave (I season with Italian seasoning while browning).


I looked through the veggie drawer and cut up what I could find, clockwise from top: tomatoes, carrots, red and green peppers, and strawberries in the middle. We required our children to choose at least two items from the veggie platter. I also had some cantaloupe on another plate.


Son C was very artful with his arranging!


Healthy, fast, delicious, and no cooking required!

Easy Crock Pot Chicken

This is one of my favorites on busy days. Put chicken tenders or chicken breasts into crockpot (I put them in frozen), pour favorite salad dressing on top, and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.


Just before dinner steam some veggies, make some rice or a salad, and voila! Dinner's ready!

We change up the salad dressing to make different flavors, but Newman's Own Sesame Ginger is one of our favorites.

Homemade Trail Mix

This is a fun snack to make because you can put lots of different ingredients together and have several varieties of this! Below are the ingredients that I use most often:


Walnuts
Raisins
Dried banana slices (bought from our food co-op)
Dried papaya chunks (bought from our food co-op)
Chopped dates
Chocolate chips

Just put a small handful of each ingredient into a snack cup, and voila!

Bonita's Meatloaf

This is the meatloaf my mom made as I was growing up, and I carried the recipe with me into marriage. It is very moist and flavorful, and hands down the best meatloaf I have ever tasted! Incidentally, this is the same recipe I use for making hamburger patties, and just form them into hamburgers rather than putting in a casserole pan for meatloaf.

Pictured below are all the ingredients needed to make Bonita's Meatloaf. However, as with many great recipes, I don't know exact amounts. So if you like to be exact with your measurements, you're going to have a hard time with this one!

Hamburger (pictured is 2 lbs)
1 egg
dry oats (for oatmeal, but not the little packages of one serving instant oatmeal)
milk
1 pkg dry onion soup mix
ketchup


Mix hamburger, dry onion soup mix, and egg in bowl. Add a small amount of milk, several squirts of ketchup, and start with about a 1/2 cup oats. Mix with hands. Mixture should be very moist. If it's too dry, add more milk and ketchup. If it's too moist, add a bit more oats.



Bake at 350 for one hour. Check for doneness and bake longer if it's not thoroughly cooked. When I use 2 pounds of meat or more I usually have to bake for a bit longer than one hour.


A favorite of the whole family! Thanks Bonita/mom!

Easy Pork Chops

The presentation in the above photo isn't very remarkable, but the taste makes up for it!! These are super easy and super delicious.

Line casserole pan with enough foil that you can fold over the top and have the pork chops covered. Sprinkle the bottom of foil with half a package of dry onion soup mix (I use Mrs. Grass's usually). Lay bone-in pork chops on top of the dry onion soup mix and sprinkle other half of package on top. Do not add liquid. Fold the foil over to cover top, and cook at 350 for about 90 minutes, longer if chops were partially frozen or you're cooking two pans of them.

These smell soooo good as they are cooking, and they taste great! They make their own juice as they cook, and are very tender (if they're not, you need to cook them longer!)

A favorite of my family for years!

Meatballs in Sweet-and-Sour Sauce

For our family Super Bowl party I made meatballs in the crockpot and tried this new cranberry sweet-and-sour sauce. It was really easy and tasted great! I found the recipe on the Country Living website.


This time I did it the easy way and bought a bag of frozen pre-made meatballs, but I have made them from scratch too.

Meatballs

2 slices bread, shredded
1 pound ground beef, raw
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
2 T oil - for saucepan

Mix all ingredients and form into 1 and a 1/2 inch meatballs. Heat oil in skillet and brown meatballs, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain any oil and add sauce (recipe below). Cover and reduce heat to medium low. Simmer for 15-20 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through.

Sweet-and-Sour Sauce

2 cans whole berry cranberry sauce
2 T cider vinegar (I didn't have this so left it out)
3 T brown sugar
2 T soy sauce

Mix sauce ingredients and pour over meatballs, either in skillet (as above), or in crockpot. If using crockpot and cooking meatballs from frozen, cook on high 4-5 hours or on low 8-9 hours.

Verdict: easy and yummy! The whole family enjoyed them and I will definitely make again!

Pulled Pork

Here is a pork dinner we had recently. Super easy and super delicious! I wanted leftovers, so I put 2 pork roasts (I think they were shoulder roasts, and each about 3 pounds) in my 6 qt crockpot, poured our favorite barbeque sauce on top (I didn't measure ~ it was probably about 2 - 3 cups) and cooked on low all day, about 8 hours.


They were just falling apart at this point, so with two forks I (actually the children did it for me!) pulled the pork apart until it was in long shreds. Serve on wholewheat hamburger buns with some fruit and chips. Delicious!