This is a simple meal my family always enjoyed.

Preheat oven, then bake frozen sweet potato fries per the package instructions.

While that happens, make the Sloppy Joes:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 cup ketchup
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 3 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1. Brown the ground beef and onion over medium heat. (If you want you can add green bell pepper and/or chopped celery at this stage, but I don’t know why you’d want to).
2. When the pink is gone from the meat and the veggies are tender, drain.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
4. Serve on a roll of your choice, along with the sweet potato fries.

 

Ingredients: 

• Boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into bite-sized pieces
• olive oil
• Sweet onion, thinly sliced
• garlic, minced
• 1 can artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
• 1/2 jar sun dried tomatoes packed in oil
• 1/2 jar deli sliced roasted red peppers
• 1 jar vodka sauce
• 1 box rotini pasta

Cover the bottom of a heavy kettle with olive oil and slowly “melt” the sliced onions, cooking until they are limp and translucent.

Start the pasta water. Once it’s reached a full boil, cook the pasta per package instructions, drain and reserve until “sauce” is complete.

 

Add the chicken and garlic, cooking over medium heat until there is no pink left in the chicken.

Add the rest of the vegetables to the pot and cook for 5 minutes.

Add the jar of vodka sauce and heat thoroughly.

Add the cooked pasta and mix well.

Serve with freshly shredded Parmesan cheese.

I’m going to share the recipes for one of my family’s favorite fall meals.

• Roasted Sweet Potato and Green Bean Salad
• Holiday Chicken

The first recipe is one I found on line. My adult son likes it so much, he makes it for himself in his bachelor apartment.

The chicken recipe originally started as a butter advertisement in a magazine that my friend Robin shared with me, but has gradually morphed into something else. This is one recipe my daughter begged for when she was at college. I’ve served it to almost everyone who’s come to my house for a meal. It has been my “secret” recipe for years. I’m sharing the bare bones. Yes, I give measurements, but I mostly eyeball the general proportions.

SERVES 4

• 2/3 cups butter
• 1/2 cup finely crushed Keebler Onion Toasteds*
• 2 TBS grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 TBS dried basil
• 1 TBS dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1/4 cup apple juice
• 1/4 cup chopped green onion
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Melt the butter
3. Combine cracker crumbs, Parmesan, basic, oregano, garlic powder.
4. Dip chicken in melted butter, then coat with crumb mixture. (Reserve leftover melted butter)
5. Place chicken in an ungreased glass baking pan
6. Bake for about 30 minutes
7. Add apple juice,  green onion, parsley to reserved melted butter.
8. When chicken i s golden brown, pour the butter-apple juice sauce over the chicken and bake for another 3-5 minutes.
9. Serve with sauce spooned over the chicken.

Miscellaneous notes:

• Chopped fresh chives also work well in the sauce
• I usually melt more butter, because my family really likes the sauce over the chicken.
• The Keebler Onion Toasteds are crucial to the success of the recipe. If you opt for another type of breadcrumb, add onion powder to the crumb mixture.

 

 

I recently made a new kind of wrap my husband says is better than the one I posted last month. He likes the moister version.

I started out with a high protein flat bread…

 

 

 

 

 

I spread 3/4 of it with roasted garlic hummus…

 

 

 

 

 

Added good deli turkey over half…

 

 

 

 

 

Layered whole baby spinach leaves atop the turkey…

 

 

 

 

Added strips of roasted red pepper…

 

 

 

 

 

And starting from the filled end, rolled tightly, then tightly wrapped in plastic wrap. Another grab and go meal.

These wraps became a summertime staple for us last year. I keep a batch in the refrigerator nearly every week. They make a quick and easy lunch on the run. My husband will grab one before he heads out to a baseball game. I packed them when we went to our film festival last year, making for an easy, inexpensive lunch one of the days.

Here are the ingredients:
1/2 c. softened cream cheese
1/2 c. softened feta
1/4 c. Kalamata olive spread
a few generous dashes of onion powder
fresh chives
fresh oregano
spinach
8″ tortillas
good sliced turkey from the deli (not prepackaged national brand)

 

Mix together the room temperature cream cheese, feta (try to get out as many lumps as you can), Kalamata olive spread, onion power, snipped chives, chopped fresh oregano. (I love going to my garden and plucking the herbs I need).

 

 

Spread the mixture over all of a tortilla

Place a slice of turkey on one half of the tortilla.

Cover the turkey with spinach leaves

Starting with the turkey-spinach side, roll the tortilla as tightly as you can.

Wrap each rolled tortilla tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours before eating.

They’ll last for a week in the fridge. So easy to grab and go.

The recipe makes as many wraps as it makes. It depends on how thick or thin you spread the cheese/olive/herb mixture. I usually get between five and seven wraps per batch. If you use larger tortillas, your yield will be less.

Enjoy!