Welcome back to my kitchen! We have yet to experience a slow season this year…and if you are feeling it too, here are some meal ideas that are great for prepping ahead or throwing together last minute! Scratch cooking can be achieved, even on busy nights, with a little prep and having a few fast meal ideas in your back pocket!
What are your go to meals when time is short?
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Meal idea videos are actually among my favorite videos so today I’m sharing three meal ideas with you that we utilized during a busy week that you can throw together fairly quickly and from scratch as Always I feel like a common theme in the videos that that I have watched recently has been how the season is for slowing down and for making these elaborate meals in your kitchen everything sour dough not just your regular Artisan loaves or your sandwich bread but all
The extra special breads as well and pouring over seed cataloges and crocheting and all of those things sound absolutely fabulous to me I am d dreaming about them however that doesn’t seem to be how our year is going to be going this time so you will see the
Opposite theme in my videos because we are in a very busy season of life and this is just not the year where we’re going to be slowing down too much now don’t get me wrong I’m taking time to rest and relax and we still are enjoying some cozy evenings but the common theme
Is not not slowing down so with that being said we still have to eat on these busy days and I have been thrown a bit of a curveball because I’m used to being home a lot more than we have been and just utilizing the different enjoyable meals
And being in the kitchen for quite a while and I love being in my kitchen I love taking time to make special things and that’s where where I kind of allow my creativity to flourish but I am needing some practicality right now so I have been coming up with meals that
I can prep ahead a lot of times or at least part of them which is really what I should be doing all along because it is absolutely so helpful and I am much fresher in the morning or the day before thinking about what I’ll be making the
Next evening than I am at 4:30 when everything needs to be already cooking so I am going to be out again today and so I figured chili would be a great thing to throw together uh but with chili I tend to only get dry beans I don’t always have some canned beans
Around um we don’t use them a ton and so I don’t always have them in stock I do always have diced tomatoes usually in stock that’s the one canned item that I feel like has saved me in a pinch a bunch of different times and we certainly didn’t get any kind of amount
Of tomatoes to can myself this year so definitely relying on Aldi this year which is just fine so I do have those but I did have to soak our beans um the night before and I added a little vinegar to those some apple cider vinegar just to kind of break on that
Phasd get that started and make it a little easier on our tummies so I did remember to do that and this morning I was just prepping everything to get going uh I wanted to have it just cooking in the pot all day but I always want to sauté my veggies
Beforehand just definitely adds a lot more flavor and I needed that pressure cooker for the beans that morning to cook so I had to get that started in the the cast iron which was fine because I was able to Salty everything up like I said and just add more flavor so I don’t
Have a specific recipe for chili I pretty much never make it the same way I’m kind of utilizing what I have a lot of time I’ll add in a sweet potato or I’ll have like a different type of bean that I add in I never have kidney beans
So we don’t really do it a very traditional way but a lot of times I will have dried black beans but I kept this one pretty simple um of course we love our chili powder and everything has to have smoked paprika it’s my favorite just a hint of the Chipotle and cumin
Because these are just my favorite spices guys this is where my flavors just come alive in a solid plain form because every kind of seasoning I just put in is just like what I would live on if I could but my kids won’t allow that
And I would love to add wor AER sauce to this but we did have any so coconut aminos is like a close second for me it has some of the same depth of flavor that wor theark does so just threw all that in there got it going for the day
And just let it sit on low until we got home that Evening now you can see we actually just got in from Costco so my helpful family is unloading everything while I’m trying to do a video so all I had to do when I got home CH was hot and ready is just kind of prep our little toppings I like using
Sour cream or Greek yogurt a lot of times I just use Greek yogurt now cuz we always have plain Greek yogurt I use that to make other yogurt as my um starter because I don’t have like a yogurt Starner so I get that pretty regular ly and we will use that as sour
Cream and I literally cannot taste the difference and then just some cheddar on there and the sour cream I’m sorry the Greek yogurt actually calms it down just a little bit for my kids and always with the tortilla chips with Chili as I’ve mentioned in the past I am trying to incorporate more Seafood in our diet and I’ve been a little bit at a loss of what to do because I’ve not had the best track record with seafood and I love shrimp at restaurants but can’t
Seem to just mimic that same flavoring I don’t know it just it gets too fishy and I don’t think it’s a quality thing we try to get fairly decent Quality Seafood so we’re not getting a bunch of foreign things in there that we don’t want um but I have not been successful until
This time with shrimp and the key was marinating the shrimp I don’t know why I really hadn’t done that before because I’ve marinated every other kind of meat and it’s always been delicious but for some reason I hadn’t so I was thinking about different marinates I could do and
Decided on a honey garlic ginger I had all those ingredients and it just sounded special I wanted kind of a Asian flare we don’t really do a lot of Asian and it just sounded good so I had some fresh ginger I had fresh garlic
We had onion on hand and I just threw in some carrot sticks kind of for uh a veggie option and because they just looked pretty because that was kind of something I thought of with these bowls feel like if you’re going to do some kind of bowl of any type it needs to
Have some pretty colors it’s just half the fun so I went ahead and just grated these different things up and it grated the garlic and then sliced the ginger over there and I am going to sauté my veggies ahead of time as you can see it’s about 2:30 in the afternoon so just
Getting this done ahead of time because we had a busy evening that night I believe this night we were going somewhere for a little while we were going to be kind of getting in right at dinner time oh which seems to happen a lot so I figured hey I’ll have my rice
Sitting there ready to cook cuz rice just doesn’t take that long in the instant pot so I knew we can make that fresh and I threw that in the instant pot so it’s was ready to go and then um figured I’d sauté my vegetables have my shrimp marinating and it just wouldn’t
Take any time to throw together and it certainly did work out these I brought to a little bit of a um alente I guess I don’t know if you can say that when it’s not pasta but the veggies still had a little bit of a crisp to them so I could
Heat them back up when we got home and it worked out perfectly they still had a little bit of texture but they had softened a tad with warming them up and then yeah I just added some ground ginger some salt pepper um some honey of course our fresh
Garlic and garlic powder I just want to really make sure we had that in there although flavor and some coconut aminos just blending it up here just kind of mixing it up to just kind of get all of that coated and then just popped it in the
Fridge and it sat there until we were ready to Go So I have now heated up those veggies again and they’re ready to go I’m going to heat up my shrimp I have to do this in the same pan my other cast iron was dirty and I didn’t take the time to wash it so I am throwing these in the pan I
Just want to get that sauce to thicken as you probably know shrimp cooks very quickly and I normally overcook it so I’m going to try not to do that this time our rice is ready I love to use coconut milk in the rice it just makes
It so creamy and flavorful um I can’t remember who I learned that from but I did learn it from someone and it’s been a GameChanger so I do keep some coconut milk just for that purpose and especially with something kind of Asian themed like this it was a extra special
Little flavor to add in so that sauce is just about perfect I’m just kind of scraping the bottom just making sure everything’s coated well and we’re ready to assemble our bowls so here’s our rice here you see how nice and fluffy it is I just love the instant pot for its rice
Abilities I don’t have a rice cooker and I never have and I just always failed miserably at making rice on the stove for some reason I think just you have to have a little bit of patience and I never did so ever since I found the
Instant pot rice has only ever been in it and I don’t make it any other way and so I had some snap peas some sugar snap peas in the fridge and I thought that would make the best little flavor and crunch and color for our bowls so I just
Put the rice in the bottom and then everything else on top and sprinkled our little green bits of loveliness there and I actually used this sauce called I think it’s made by the Tabasco company but it’s like a sweet and spicy um or sweet and sour so I’m sure there is a
Better option out there a more natural option but the ingredients weren’t like the absolute worst and it kind of made the bowls taste even more wonderful so if you have a more natural option please leave that in the comments so we know for next time I’ve been doing my best to
Keep this sourdough going lately so I had had some in the fridge from I believe 2 days prior I had just been setting it in the fridge till we were ready for it I feel like that’s the best kept secret of sourdough is that you don’t actually have to worry about
It so much as some people would have you believe it tastes wonderfully edible and can even have a decent bit of spring even when you’ve just left it in the fridge and neglected it heavily because I just can’t mess with picky dough and so this has worked great for us and I’m
Just building that tension getting ready for the banit tin cuz I figure we will make this a little bit later on because we are going to be having it with uh chicken and rice tonight so just getting that started so that it’s ready to be hot and steamy when we slice it I
Love fresh bread I know you’re not supposed to cut it when it is still hot like that but we always break that rule because if you can’t eat it when it’s hot with butter all over it then like why are you even going to bother so we
Throw caution to the wind and totally cut into it right after it came out of the oven and no crets and then this day I didn’t actually prep too much ahead of time we got busy and I knew that I had to get something started so this is like
A little after nap time and I’m just getting things cleaned up we had had a little bit of a messy kitchen so just getting that done I feel like if I try to cook in a dirty kitchen not a dirty kitchen just a messy kitchen I just
Can’t work as efficiently and it just slows down my process so I had to get things clean and in order and then I am going to throw together a meal because I don’t have much time before I need to go but in the back of my mind I knew that
You know my rice is not going to take a long time I had some chicken left over we had two different chickens that we had baked and used part of them and then I kind of forgot about that when I make when I made another one so we ended up
Having two chickens that were partially eaten and so it was perfect for this type of meal where you can just kind of throw any type of protein in there and it works out fine so I always have my Faithful Little Trio here um my carrots onion and celery they just are the
Heroes of the kitchen these days because I just always have them around actually threw in mushrooms this time too because I try to keep mushrooms in our diet as well so I am just rinsing them off getting them ready I am going to be using my handy dandy Chopper of course
Because I don’t have any time to enjoy chopping because I actually do enjoy chopping it’s very therapeutic for me but was not going to happen today and I also like making things small when I need to get things cooking quickly so that’s another little trick if you’re chopping your veggies without something
Like this or chopping them like normal bite size um it’s fine but it is going to take a little longer to Tender up uh so I needed it to be done quickly so I am doing it on the smallest setting so I can get teeny tiny little bites spite
Siiz pieces and uh just have it ready for the pot and they will soften up very quickly so you’ll see I do have an on in there off to the side I was going to include that and then I cut into it and it was completely rotten on the inside
Have no idea how that happened normally I have like seen little parts of it on the outside um starting to go rotten before it’s like just terrible on the inside uh and I don’t keep my onions very long it just goes to show how long things are in
The grocery store before we actually bring them home so I cannot wait to have a big garden with lots of veggies it’s a lot of work but it’s certainly very rewarding so these veggies have not taken long to soften and I’m going to start picking my little chicken apart I
Actually only ended up needing the one chicken I still had chicken after this which is awesome because that’s a whole another meal for us there is it’s amazing how much chicken you can get off of of a um whole chicken like this when you’re when you’re really searching for
It so and I had some little companions my dog over there my little girl and my little boy so that was that was enjoyable his brother was gone um with his dad that day so they were off having a little fun time and I just enjoyed having him sitting there and talking to
Me I feel like that’s some of the best memories I had with my mom was sitting at the kitchen table or the island and just chatting with her so it is very rewarding to already start getting some of that with my kids even though they’re still young so just chop top that
Chicken quickly throwing it in and I’ve got a rice all rinsed I actually remember to soak that overnight as well so that it could start kind of um breaking down some of that ftic acid and adding in some chicken broth that I had in the back of the fridge I
Was pretty excited because I had forgotten it was back there so I always try to kind of go through the whole fridge before I make these type of meals because you can throw in like everything just add a bunch of herbs and stuff and
It works out great so I did Herbs de Pro some celery salt basil and I didn’t have any time which is kind of one of our favorites but this poultry seasoning had some time in it so that was a good second option and we will try to remember to get some time um
Coming up here I like in the big packets of it from Azure standard which I actually already missed this month’s order but I will add it to the next one it last a long time and you can throw them in the freezer and they just stay
Fresh and I can add them to my little glass containers for the Spice Stars so while that chicken and rice is simmering on the stove I’m getting our bread ready to go in the oven of course my Dutch oven is being used right now
And so I will just use my cast iron I have really just started solely using that for my bread just because it has come in handy a lot more I use my cast iron more frequently and I have another cast iron in case it is being used so it just
Works works out better and I haven’t really had a problem I also have since changed out my blade for my scorer and that’s why it’s dragging so much for some reason it just wasn’t clicking in my brain that was the problem I’m like why is this so difficult all of a sudden
And that’s why so I changed that out and it’s doing fabulous again so that is why it’s dragging I put some ice cubes in there like you would with a dutch oven just to kind of create more spring and I just don’t have a problem guys I
Haven’t really missed putting it in my Dutch oven honestly um I would still do it I probably is the most springy option for your bread if you’re trying to impress but um for a pinch and for just my little family that doesn’t care we just put it in the cast IR so our
Chicken and rice is now pretty much done I am adding some salt and pepper because I had forgotten to do that earlier and I can’t remember if I mentioned but I did add some minced onion some dried minced onion that I keep for when um we don’t
Have any onions or something so since that onum was bad I was not going to go search for another one so I just went the cheater route and it worked out perfectly so here it is it is all done and now this is where you can really get
Wild with it guys you can do kind of boring you know whole milk like we did here because I didn’t have time for the other but this is where it can get really luxurious you can do cream cheese in it kind of blend that with a um
Immersion blender and a little milk and make like this creamy add in that um will melt into it make it all creamy see it turned out pretty or you can do a rue and just do some butter and some flour but you would have to do that like in a
Separate pan and add some broth and milk and some seasonings and that turns out scrumptious as well but you will see this is still creamy this is great it was fine wasn’t like you know didn’t knock it out of the park this time but it fed bellies and we were all happy so
Here it is guys I hope you enjoy these meal ideas I would love to hear some of your meal ideas in the comments for some reason when I’m going through my meal ideas for the week my mind draws a blank so if you have some for me please do
That and we’ll see you back next time guys Thanks