Food - Pocketful of Joules

Quickie Quesadillas

Raise your hand if you go to the grocery store and come home with nothing to eat for dinner.

{totally raises hand and waves it in the air}

I cannot tell you how many times I go grocery shopping after work, pay a bunch of money for groceries and then stop by Chick-fil-a on the way home. It’s kind of annoying. I mean, I JUST bought groceries… why am I spending extra money on dinner?!

It’s taken a while, but I finally figured out a couple of easy-peasy meals that I can throw together on grocery shopping nights. They are quick. They are easy. And most of all, they are tasty!

Here is one of my favorites: Quickie Quesadillas.

I use shrimp and BBQ sauce in this version, but you can use pretty much anything you have sitting around. Shredded rotisserie chicken, beans and cheese makes a yummy combo. I also like just shredded cheese and a spoonful or two of any salsa. Be creative!

What you need:

Shrimp (you can stop by the seafood counter and have them steam you some fresh while you shop)
Large flour tortillas
Shredded cheese (I like a cheddar mix)
BBQ sauce

Step 1: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut your shrimp into bite-sized pieces and spread them around on half of the tortilla.

Step 2: Throw on some shredded cheese and drizzle with BBQ sauce.

Step 3: Fold in half, put on a baking sheet and shove those babies in the oven. They will probably take about 10 minutes for the cheese to melt.

Step 4: Cut up your quesadilla (a pizza slicer works great), eat and make yummy noises!

You can even make a few extra quesadillas, wrap them in foil and throw them in the freezer. Then, when you’re running late you can just pull them out of the freezer, unwrap the foil and cook them from frozen for about 15 minutes. This works out great if you have some leftovers you need to use up — a bit of rotisserie chicken you would otherwise throw away, some leftover salmon, any kind of roasted veggies… there are TONS of variations you can try!

Do you have a go-to recipe for dinner on hurried work nights?

Reviewing Hello Fresh {spoiler: I love it!}

I have another review that I am super ecstatic to share with you all. Do you remember when I tried Blue Apron, a food delivery service that sends you all the ingredients you need to cook a few meals? While I really liked the idea of having all the ingredients sent to my house to try new recipes, I had some issues with the service. Mainly, that the portions were small for the price and the recipes were a bit fancy for us.

When I saw a deal for a similar service called Hello Fresh, I jumped at the chance to try it out. I signed up to receive 3 meals for 2 people and was able to pick from five meals to determine the ones we wanted to try.

The regular cost of the package we got is $69, which includes shipping…however I have an awesome promo code at the end of the post that will save you some moola. Hello Fresh also has options for larger amounts of servings if your family is bigger than ours.

We received three meals in our order:
– Lemony Shrimp Linguine with Roasted Red Peppers
– Sautéed Chicken with Mushrooms and Mashed Potatoes
– Steak & Brussels Sprouts Stir-Fry

Our order was delivered on Thursday and I was able to make the meals on Friday, Saturday and Monday. Which I’m pretty sure is some kind of record for me cooking meals at home.

Here’s what we thought:

Meal #1: Lemony Shrimp Linguine with Roasted Red Peppers

After my last experience with a recipe subscription box, I was almost afraid to look at the recipe and I was so pleased to find this one clear to understand and relatively easy to make! I love that each recipe page comes with the nutrition information and that the recipe steps were really straightforward.

The only thing I changed on this recipe is that I sautéed the red peppers instead of turning on the oven and putting them on a baking sheet as instructed. I’m sure that would have been quite tasty too, but I try to dirty as few dishes as possible when cooking.

Travis and I both loved this meal. It was light and tasty and the portion was perfectly sized for both of us. I even grabbed away some of the noodles and a few shrimp for Jack to eat.

Meal #2: Sautéed Chicken with Mushrooms and Mashed Potatoes

For our second meal, I knew that we were going to love it because Travis and I both are big fans of mushrooms AND mashed potatoes. I was concerned that the provided potatoes wouldn’t stretch very far though, especially because Jack would want some, so I threw in a few more from my home stash.

This recipe was also relatively easy to make and all of us gobbled it up. We even had some leftover chicken that Jack inhaled the next day while telling me that chicken was his FAVORITE and NO mommy can’t have any. So I guess that makes this recipe a winner too!

Meal #3: Steak & Brussels Sprouts Stir-Fry

I only recently decided that I like Brussels sprouts, so I was excited to try and make them at home with this recipe. Once again, the recipe was super easy to follow and I am in awe of how well the steak turned out since I’m not very good at cooking steak (my theory is that I should just go to a restaurant to eat it because they don’t mess it up).

This meal was really good though and I loved the mix of steak, Brussels sprouts and a hint of lemon. Travis liked it too, but said that he didn’t like it as much as the shrimp and chicken meals. Once again, we had plenty of food to satisfy both of us. Jack wasn’t very interested in it, so he didn’t bother trying to share with us.

Oh and I just had to show you how incredibly CUTE the soy sauces were… because “cute” and “soy sauce” aren’t normally in a sentence together:

I’m so glad I tried Hello Fresh because I really loved the entire experience! The recipes were new to us and I feel confident that I can buy everything I need at the grocery store and make them on my own with their provided recipe sheets.The service got me out of my ‘let’s just have sandwiches’ rut and I actually enjoyed cooking and eating dinner at home. I don’t plan on continuing the service on a weekly basis, but I’m thinking a delivery once or twice a month will be perfect for us. I can’t wait to try three more recipes in my December 18^th order!

Would you like to try Hello Fresh for yourself?
They have a referral program where if you use my special code on your first box you will be able to get $40 off. That brings your total to $29 for three meals which will serve 2 people. Pretty great, right?! When you get your checkout, just use this promo code: ETXYKD.

If you do decide to try Hello Fresh, please let me know what you think. A little tip though, when you sign up for your first delivery go in and immediately “pause” your second delivery date. That way you can try out a box and decide whether you want to keep the subscription before having to pay for a second box. Then, if you don’t like it just hit “cancel” and you won’t get any more boxes or be charged more than the initial payment of $29.

Have you ever used a food delivery service like Hello Fresh? Tell me about it in the comments!

{Disclosure: This was not a sponsored review. I paid for my Hello Fresh subscription with my own money. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own. If you choose to use my special referral promo code, I will receive a credit towards my future Hello Fresh orders. For anyone who does decide to use the code… my tummy thanks you!}

DIY Snack Mix

You know when you think of an idea and then immediately think, WHY have I not thought of this before… it’s so freaking SIMPLE?!

Well, this is one of those posts.

And you guys might already be doing this at home and I’m like 8 years behind the times, but I figured I’d throw it out there just in case.

Let me back up for a second and say that I love snack mixes, but there is always something yucky that ends up getting thrown out. For your typical trail mix, it is always made up of those weird wannabe M&M’s and way too many nuts for my taste. For Chex Mix there is typically something gross, like odd pieces of small toast thrown in there or “chocolaty cookies” that taste like stale Oreos.

So WHY did it take me to the ripe old age of 37 to realize I can make my own snack mix?

Say WHAT?! I could be the master of my own mix (that’s going to be my rap name, FYI) and ONLY include the things that I actually like to eat?

Fantastic!

I poked around my pantry and found a few things that I like to snack on:

Pretty, right? Actually, if you’d like to be a little less pinteresty, here’s what my counter top ACTUALLY looked like:

I decided to use Honey Nut Chex, some pretzel wheels, cheddar goldfish, raisins, M&M’s and some leftover candy corn. To keep it relatively healthy, I did very small amounts of the candies. This is a great way to get rid of the one cup of cereal that sits in the box for months because nobody feels like finishing it.

I threw everything in a gallon-sized baggie so that I could mix it up easily without ending with a bunch of crumbs. Then I just threw it in a snazzy Ikea container that I had sitting around the house:

That’s IT! It sat on the counter for a couple days before it was entirely scarfed down by myself, Travis and Jack. Easy peasy and no yucky bits that get thrown in the trash. Or fed to Ollie.

Sorry Ollie.

What snacks would you throw together in your perfect snack mix? Have you been doing this FOREVER — if so, why didn’t anyone tell me?