Faith, Food and Family

Need a quick, easy and delicious meal? This is it! It cooks in the slow cooker and makes enough for leftovers. This would be great to take for lunch and you could even meal prep with this and portion out in individual containers. This stuff is so good! Let's get started! Slow Cooker Burrito Bowls Ingredients: 3 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I sometimes use tenders as well) 1 can of black bean (drained and rinsed) 1 can of Rotel 1.5 cups of corn (can use frozen, fresh off the cob or canned) 1 cup of salsa 1 tbsp of jarred jalapenos, diced (you can use more or even leave them out) 6 cloves of garlic, minced 1.5 onions, diced 1 tbsp of chili powder 2 teaspoons of cumin salt and pepper to taste Add ingredients to your slow cooker (I use a 6 quart oval for this). Cook on low for 7-8 hours or on high for 3-4 hours. Serving ideas: Burrito Bowls (over rice or lettuce), Nachos, tacos, etc. This stuff is so good and we make it often. I hope you enjoy ...

I don't know about you but I really enjoy ranch dressing. The stuff in the bottle is okay, but if you look at the ingredients it contains some not so good stuff like MSG and added sugar. It also has a lot of added sodium. I'm trying to watch my sodium so I decided to make a salt-free ranch mix, then I can control the salt whenever I make the dressing or add it to a recipe. It's super easy to make your own ranch mix. If you make a batch of this up, you can have it already on hand to make ranch dressing or add it into other recipes. Let's get started! Salt-free Ranch Dressing Mix Ingredients: 4 Tbsp of dried parsley 4 tsp of dried dill 4 tsp of onion powder 4 tsp of minced dried onion 2 tsp of garlic powder 1 tsp of ground black pepper Combine the spices in a bowl and from here you can process them for a bit in a mini food processor to mix well and make some of the parsley smaller or you can use a coffee grinder as a spice grinder. Then place in a contai...

I hope that all of you have had a blessed Christmas and New Year! I know many of us start the New Year off with the resolution to eat healthier. I definitely want to be on the path to being healthier and am trying to make better choices along the way. Sometimes that can be hard when things are busy but baby steps help. So hopefully I will have lots of new recipes to post of some yummy goodies that are healthy as well! I feel that chicken salad is a pretty healthy dish. Especially if you are careful to check the ingredients of the mayonnaise. I use Hellmann's Olive Oil mayonnaise and really enjoy it. Chicken salad is a favorite of mine, but I usually make the same recipe. Chicken, mayo, dill, celery, nuts, etc. Sometimes I add grapes to it as well. However, this time I tried something a bit different. I added relish and hard boiled eggs. I loved the result! This chicken salad is so good! I hope you try it and if you do, let me know what you think! The Best Chicken Salad ...

Do any of you have any of Trisha Yearwood's cookbooks? I have one and just added another to my collection recently. It's called Trisha's Table and the recipes look so yummy! That is one thing I have really enjoyed about this book is looking at all of the yummy looking photos! They make everything look so tasty! Trisha includes a great recipe for breakfast burritos that would make a great on-the-go breakfast. I am hoping to soon make her recipe for Spinach Frittata as it looked so good! Some of the other recipes I hope to try is the caramelized onion dip, Mama's egg salad, wild rice and mushroom soup, cornbread chili casserole, chicken enchiladas and so much more! This book has lots of fresh ingredients that are great for healthy family dinners. As well as recipes for things like unfried chicken, to put a healthier spin on some old favorites. I look forward to trying some of these recipes soon! Do you all have any favorite recipes from Trisha Yearwood? Want ...

I don't usually have allergies but last week, something knocked me down hard. I know it was allergy based because of my symptoms but I think it also went to my sinuses. I was miserable for several days. I'm feeling better but still can't taste or smell 100%. I was very excited to look through the newest cookbook in my collection while I was sick though. It's called Pure Food by Veronica Bosgraaf. Her cookbook is all about eating clean with seasonal, plant-based recipes. She has actually laid her book out in chapters of the months of the year. So it gives you a good idea of what to fix during those months with the seasonal produce that will be available at that time. This book has many yummy sounding recipes with several pictures of the recipes situated right in the middle of the book. I do wish the pictures accompanied each recipe and that there were more pictures, but I am a picture lover when it comes to cookbooks. I feel with a cookbook, you never can hav...

I've mentioned that we have been trying to eat healthier. It's been baby steps but my ultimate goal is very little, if any processed foods. I'm not sure that I will be able to eliminate them completely but the fewer processed items we eat, the better. One idea that has completely intrigued me, is making noodles out of veggies. I'm sure many of you have seen them around in recipes online or cookbooks. The most common seems to be using zucchini as "zoodles" as some refer to them. My youngest won't eat many veggies and I am looking forward to trying zucchini noodles in his spaghetti. If he will eat them, I think most picky eaters will. I will definitely report back when I am able to make them. With my interest in veggie noodles, I was excited to receive the Inspiralized cookbook by Ali Maffucci. Ms. Maffucci goes into all the ins and outs of spiralizing your veggies. She gives some great pointers and lots of information on what veggies to use. The book...

My latest cookbook to review is Supermarket Healthy by Melissa D'Arabian. If you watch the Food Network, you may remember her from the Next Food Network Star competition. I loved the feel of the book and the beautiful pictures right away. There are plenty of healthy recipes in this book. You'll find things like Morning Glory Muffins, Baked Eggs in Tomato Sauce, Creamy Cauliflower "Baked Potato" Soup, Poached Chicken Puttanesca, and more! There aren't pictures for every recipe, but many do have pictures. The food looks very yummy! One of my favorite parts of the book is where Melissa gives you a blueprint to customize dishes how you like them. For instance, on page 36-37, there is a blueprint to customize your own frittata. I think this would be a great help from those cooks who want to start learning to come up with their own recipes. It's kind of a stepping stone to take to learn how ingredients work together. I think it was a great idea to add that ...

I have been very excited to get my copy of The Skinnytaste Cookbook by Gina Homolka with Heather K. Jones, R.D. First let me say that the book is pretty good size. There’s a little over 300 pages and it’s hardback. The book is filled with beautiful pictures of many of the recipes. The author starts the book with “The Skinny Basics” which gives some great tips on eating healthy. She talks about making a plan, keeping it simple, portion size, and giving your kitchen a skinny makeover. Most recipes have a picture along with it. Which I always feel is such a plus in a cookbook. We eat with our eyes and it’s difficult to know if we want to make something if we don’t know what the recipe looks like. So I was very happy that Ms. Homolka included so many. Some recipes that really stood out to me were Make-Ahead Western Omelet Muffins, Too-Good-to-be-true Baked Potato Soup, “Un”Stuffed Cabbage Soup, Chicken Philly Cheesesteaks, Loaded “Nacho” Potato Skins, Turkey Santa Fe Taco Salad ...