A Few of My Favorite Recipes

Happy Winter Break, friends! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are relaxing and enjoying your well-deserved time off! One of my favorite things to do during these types of breaks is to discover and try out new recipes. So I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with you!

One thing you need to know about my cooking "style." I can't cook. I'm really good at dumping food into the pan/pot (as you'll soon discover). I like recipes with ingredients I've heard of and that make the fewest number of dirty dishes. We are BIG Green Bay Packers fans in this house, and with the Wisconsin Badgers heading to the Outback Bowl next week, we have a few "go-to" dishes we serve.

We always have some kind of soup cooking on Sundays. The hubs is the master soup maker over here, and while I begged and pleaded for him to share his turkey chili recipe, he insists it stay a secret. Fine. Be that way. Occasionally, he allows me to make my chicken taco soup, and it is SO tasty!

The recipe calls for garlic, but we just buy the pre-minced garlic in a jar instead of the actual cloves. It also calls for half an onion, but if you don't have an onion, onion powder works just fine too. When we make this, we usually buy a rotisserie chicken. You could buy a raw, whole chicken and cook it yourself, but I like to do things the easy way! :) We use the breasts to make something else (usually enchiladas), and then use the rest of the meat for the soup. If you want to use the whole chicken, then just double the recipe. Also, I use my mom's canned tomatoes for the tomato sauce. I'm not sure what the equivalent would be at the grocery store.

I also love this super easy chicken taco dip. 4 ingredients. Throw into crock pot. DONE!

I wasn't able to get a picture before the hubs and the littles attacked this! My kids don't like black olives, so I leave it out when I make it. 

Lastly, we do need to eat something on the healthy side, so we make this fruit salsa and cinnamon chips recipe.

I could seriously eat the whole batch by myself! It's got fruit; it's healthy, right? You can buy the cinnamon chips from some grocery stores (we usually find them at our local fresh food market, rather than a chain grocery store); however, we like the homemade ones best.

You can make the chips two ways:
1. Using Pam butter flavored spray. It's easier and not as messy, but not as tasty.
2. Using melted butter. Your kitchen will be a hot mess, but they taste SO much better. And I'm sure they're healthier too… (that was me being sassy!)

Click here for the recipes! I've included them in full 8x11 size or a smaller 3x5 for a recipe book.

I am noticing a theme with my recipes…. taco soup, chicken taco dip, fruit salsa and chips…. Yes we eat a lot of Mexican food in this house! My dad is from Mexico, so I grew up eating a lot of tortillas.

Enjoy!