My New Fave

I don't mind cooking most of the time. I actually even enjoy it when I have everything I need and know what I am making and am not in a rush. But I hate figuring out what to make, trying to keep Sydney occupied while I make it, etc. etc. Usually each day I put dinner off until just before Aaron comes home, which means in order for dinner to be done somewhat on time, I have to choose something that can be done in about 3o minutes. So my choices are tacos, spaghetti, or a Banquet boxed meal (we actually love these and you should try them - particularly the pizza pasta and the chicken/gravy/biscuits/potatoes). All good meals, but they get old having them too often.
I decided we were going to broaden our horizons and find new Quick and Easy meals we liked. I don't usually try new recipes though, because I have a few requirements that they usually don't meet. They are as follows:

1. The recipe must be FAST.
2. The recipe must be EASY (aka have about 8 ingredients or less - this is a vague and general rule. I do actually have recipes with more than 8 ingredients, but I stay away from long intense recipes (Sorry Kiery!)
3. I must have the majority of the ingredients AND gadgets needed in my current possession. I really hate buying new things for a meal you want to try and discovering you hate the meal anyway and you will never again use the 7 lb bag of ingredient x you purchased and used 3 tsp of.
4. Any ingredients I do not own must be fairly easy to find and cheap. I found a recipe for potatoes last week, and the first ingredient was Spanish Smoked Paprika. Excuse me? What? That doesn't work for me.

Enter my new favorite magazine:
I've been getting this magazine for a couple of years, but I've never made a recipe from it. Who knows why. Until this month. I realized I own almost all the ingredients for about 95% of the recipes in here, so I tried a taco bake and was pleasantly surprised! This week we had the Chicken Parmesan (the breading is made with Ritz crackers!), the bruschetta chicken bake, and the blueberry cheese rolls. While none of them are what you would consider gourmet (Olive Garden's Chicken Parm is better), they are really good, fast, easy, and use ingredients that I own! Yay!!!! After a little bit of tweaking a couple of things (the bruschetta needs a bit more wetness and we made raspberry cheese rolls instead of blueberry) I think we're going to really love some of these and use them frequently! At least we'll have a bit more variety in our menu now! If you want to get this magazine, you can sign up for free here! Enjoy!
P.S. Don't use the tangy pork chop recipe. It was really icky.