Tried and True Recipes

My favorite thing to do is gather inspiration and learn new ways to incorporate my husband and I's favorite foods into our meals. One thing my husband "has" to have is meat or protien in his meals. I think every man is this way! :) When life gets busy as it usually is, then I tend to stick to cooking what's safe, like a marinated meat or chicken served with green beans, brown rice/sweet potato or spaghetti w/ meat sauce and a salad. I've been trying to venture out of my cooking comfort zone, if you will and try new recipes.  That is actually one of my new year goals. 

I'm always on the lookout for testing out new recipes. Some of my go-to places for inspiration are, Pinterest and blogs. I also love to record Food Network's Barefoot Contessa and the Pioneer Woman. They both can do no wrong in my book (and their shows are actually entertaining to watch). Every now and then I'll record a Paula Deen, Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee or Martha Stewart segment.

Here are some tried and true recipes i've made for us lately! 

Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas via Oh Sweet Basil.   I served this with Reduced Sodium black beans and brown rice. Oh, and we had yummy strawberry margarita's, too (it was National margarita day)!

I used the small corn tortilla's and the package only had 8 instead of 10 which is what the recipe calls for, so we had extra chicken leftover.  We both really enjoyed this recipe and recommend it! 

Bertolli Whole Wheat Tortellini w/ grilled chicken, mozzarella cheese & steamed asparagus and S&P to taste.

This is a recipe I like to make from time to time.  Just something I threw together one night.  It's fairly healthy and takes about 15 minutes to prepare.

Publix Apron Turkey Chili via Publix served with shredded cheddar and whole wheat scoop chips. I also made some Jiffy corn bread in my mini skillet.

This is a cold weather staple in our house. I found a recipe at Publix one day and tried it. It's one of the easiest recipes to make and I highly recommend it.  We use scoop chips to eat it (kinda like nachos?) and I typically serve cornbread with it, too.

Kalbi beef steak tips (from the Meat House in Winter Park), steamed green beans and Alexia Onion Rings (freezer section)

These steak tips were already marinated at the butchers, all I had to do was cook them on our stove top.  I steamed the green beans and made some onion rings in the oven.  By the way, these onion rings were a splurge.  We never buy onion rings or really order them at restaurants.  For some reason I decided to get them and I'm so glad we did!

Marinated grilled chicken  w/ mushrooms on top (used Allegro's marinade), steamed red bliss potatoes w/ corn on the cob!

The Allegro marinade we used for this chicken is a go-to marinade that we like to use on just about all of our meats and veggies! It's especially good on Asparagus for some reason!  You can find it at your grocery store with the other marinades (I believe it's gluten free and all natural as well). 

Balsamic chicken w/ veggies via A Grande Life

Daniel prepared this meal from a recipe I gave him.  He nailed it.  It was so good!  He said it was a little watery for his tatste, but that's just because all the veggies have some water in them and with the balsamic dressing it makes it a pretty moist dish.  You could serve it over rice, but we were trying to avoid eating a startch this night. 

We tend to eat a lot of chicken, but I like to switch it up and incporporate pork and lean cuts of beef, too.  On occassion I'll make a shrimp or fish dish, but that is rare.  I need to really try to incorporate more seafood into our meals but I'm just not a fan of anything too fishy! Shrimp and white fish are about as far as I'll go.  Daniel is pretty adventerous with seafood, though. 

Do you have any recipes you've tried recently that you can recommend?