Fast pot roast with sweet potatoes and butter beans

2 Fully cooked, frozen pot roasts

1 can of butter beans

2 sweet potatoes

1/2 onion

Cinnamon

Salt and Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Brown Sugar 

Butter

This was a weeknight meal where I had very little time. I'm using store-prepared pot roasts, but you could use left overs of homemade pot roast, of course. I think the whole thing took less than 20 minutes. Very filling and tasty, if not the fanciest thing in the world. 

Wash the sweet potatoes and remove any long "hairs". Stab each potato with a fork multiple times on each side. This prevents the potato from exploding as the liquids heat in the microwave. 

Wrap each potato in a wet paper towel. 

Place potatoes in the microwave. 

Cook on high for 8 minutes. 

While the potatoes are cooking. Cut the half onion into chunks. 

Put onion chunks into a food processor. (If you don't want to use one, you can finely dice the onion.)

Melt butter in the pan.

Add onions, salt and pepper. 

While the onions cook, drain the liquid off of a can of beans. Add beans to the onions. 

Cover the beans with water and let them simmer while you work on the other items. Most of the water will be gone by the time you're ready to serve. 

When the microwave beeps, use tongs to flip over the sweet potatoes. Be careful, they're hot!

Put them on for another 4 minutes or so. If they feel very soft at this point, just put them on for 3 minutes. If they still feel a little hard, you can put them on for 5 minutes. 

I bought low-sodium pot roasts so I can control how much salt I put on them. These still had plenty of flavor. 

I took out two of the individually wrapped roasts.

Then I followed the directions according the package to heat them up. 

When the sweet potatoes are done, I took them out with the tongs - super hot - and cut them open so they could cool off a bit before I handled them. You can't tell from this photo, but the potatoes are steaming hot! 

I scraped out all of the sweet potatoes, throwing away the skin. It is easier sometimes just to peel off the skin than to dig out the potato. Either way, get all the insides in a bowl and mash them with a fork. If you want to make them extra delicious, add a little butter. If not, they are still fabulous. 

Add a little cinnamon, salt, pepper, a touch of brown sugar and a dash of cayenne pepper. Mix it all up. 

When the pot roasts are ready, pull them apart with two forks. 

To prevent the juices from getting everywhere, I served my meat in little bowls and divided the juices, pouring them over the meat. 

I served it all up on a large plate. Like I said at the beginning of this recipe, it's not fancy but it is very tasty and filling. It's also pretty affordable. Best of all, it was super fast and great for a weeknight when I didn't want to think too much about dinner. 

Enjoy! 

Weeknight Chicken Pot Pie

2 chicken breasts, cooked and cut into bite-sized squares
1 onion, diced
3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
2 cups of chicken broth
1 cup of frozen peas and carrots
Garlic powder
Thyme or oregano
Salt and Pepper
Store bought biscuits (I made some from a bag from the freezer section of the grocery store)

This recipe went so fast, I forgot to take photos as I went along.

In a pan melt one tablespoon of butter and cook the onions. When they are soft, add the chicken, peas and carrots. Heat all this up and then set it aside in a bowl.

Melt the remaining two tablespoons of butter in the pan and add the flour, stirring it with a fork to remove the lumps and make a paste. Let it bubble for a minute and then add in the chicken broth, stirring. When the sauce starts to bubble, add the garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce over the chicken mixture and stir to combine.

Serve about two large scoops full in a bowl topped by a biscuit. I cut the biscuit in half to make it more like the topping of a pot pie.

Spinach Alfredo Pasta

1/2 onion, diced

1 cup frozen spinach, chopped

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

2 cups milk

3/4 cup parmesan cheese

Garlic powder 

Salt and Pepper

Special equipment: food processor (optional)

This was made on a day that we had "nothing in the house" because I had not gone to the grocery store. I like it because it is simple and satisfying and I don't need any special ingredients. 

In a pan, saute onion and spinach in melted butter until onions are soft. Sprinkle flour over the veggies. 

                            

Cook for one or two minutes and then add the milk, stirring often. 

Add salt and pepper. Thin the sauce with more milk, if needed. 

Let the sauce bubble for a few minutes and then add garlic powder and parmesan cheese. 

Cook pasta according to the directions on the box. I always like to take the pasta out one minute before the minimum time suggested. (I prefer aldente pasta to mushy pasta.)

Serve with a little more parmesan cheese on top.

2-Step Guacamole

1 avocado
1 tablespoon pico de gallo
Salt and pepper

Cannot get any easier or yummier than this! I use pico from HEB that is already prepared but fresh. If I happen to have a fresh lime, I squeeze the juice on the finished product.

In a bowl, add pico.

Add avocado, salt and pepper.

Smash with a fork.

Enjoy!

Basic Lasagna

1 16oz can of crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce

1 bag of shredded mozzarella cheese

about 1 cup of parmesan cheese

3 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons of butter

1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese

1 onion

2 tablespoons of flour

1 box of OVEN READY lasagna noodles

Red Wine

This is a very basic lasagna recipe. You can always add ingredients, like meat (1 or 2 ground sausage links, browned or 1/2 pound of ground beef, for example) or spinach or mushrooms or pretty much whatever you like. The measurements in the above ingredients are approximate.

In the pasta aisle, there are two types of lasagna noodles. I like to use the "no boil" or "oven ready" noodles because they are faster. Check the box. The other noodles you will need to boil. If you have the kind that you do NOT have to boil, then do the following:

In a large bowl, fill it nearly all the way up with the hottest water that comes out of your tap. Pour a touch of olive oil in the bowl. Stack the lasagna noodles in the water, criss cross so that they don't stick to each other. 

In a deep pan, heat oil and add onions, salt and pepper. 

When the onions are soft, add the can of tomatoes. 

Add as much wine as you'd like. :) I recommend about a cup. Boil the sauce until it is not too liquid-y (reduced by 1/3)

In a sauce pan, melt the butter. When the butter is melted, add the flour. You want the same amount of butter and flour in the pan. With a fork, stir these two together to make a paste. 

Let the paste bubble for a while and then add about two cups of milk. Turn the heat to medium-low and stir with a fork until all the lumps are gone. 

The sauce should get very thick, like this: 

Add salt and pepper. Put about twice as much pepper as you normally would - don't worry, it won't be too spicy. The milk and cheese will absorb it and it will just taste flavorful. Go light on the salt because the cheese you add later will be salty. 

Stir and add milk until it is thick but not clumpy. It should look like this. 

This is a "basic white sauce". If you added a lot of parmesan cheese and garlic, it would be alfredo sauce. But we'll do that another time. 

Add the container of ricotta cheese to the sauce. I used ricotta cheese in another dish earlier this week, so I didn't have the whole container. That's ok. 

At this point, the sauce was way too thick, so I added milk until it looked more like sauce and less like paste. 

I let the sauce bubble a bit and then grated some garlic into it. Then I turned the heat completely off. 

Once both the sauces were done, I got my "station" set up. Meaning that I put both sauces close to me, opened the bag of mozzarella and the box of parmesan, with the noodles close at hand. This way, when I start layering the lasagna, I'll have everything I need. 

First, scoop out a couple of ladle's worth of tomato sauce into the bottom of the glass pyrex so that the noodles don't stick when you bake it. 

Then lay out one layer of noodles, covering the pan. For mine, I had two horizontal and one vertical 

Add several scoops of tomato sauce and top generously with mozzarella. 

Add another layer of noodles, but this time, I put the horizontal noodles on the other side, so that when you cut into the layers, they will stick together better and not slide apart. 

Add a layer of the white sauce. Top with parmesan cheese. 

Add more layers, switching the position of the noodles again. 

More red sauce and mozzarella. 

More noodles, again switching. 

More white sauce. 

I didn't count my layers right for this one so I ended up with white sauce on top and no noodles to cover it. Ideally, you'd want to cover this layer of white sauce with noodles and then top with red sauce and cheese, but I improvised and topped the white sauce with red sauce. 

Then I covered it with a layer of mozzarella and parmesan cheese. 

Bake this for 20 minutes or until it is bubbly and the cheese on top melts and becomes a little brown. 

Despite the mix up with the layers, it worked out great. The cheese on top makes a nice crusty layer.

VERY IMPORTANT: After it comes out of the oven, wait 10 minutes. I know. It's hard. But if you cut into it while it is too hot, then it will slide apart and become a soupy mess. Trust me. Set the timer and walk away. When you come back, and cut a slice out, it will all stay together and look like this:

Enjoy!