Bite by Byte

I promised Matt that while I was unemployed that I'd take over dinner preparation since it would give me something to prep and plan for each day. Call it step one in creating a temporary new routine that also is budget friendly on a reduced income.

I became a fan of Budget Bytes some years ago, including buying the app so that I had an easy way to access recipes while in the kitchen.

Here are the meals I've made since the beginning of the year, supplemented by some usual stand-by meals:

Chili Cheese Beef Mac - First meal I made and it was the comfort food we needed

Banana Flax Muffins - I didn't use walnuts because I don't like them. I liked that these weren't overly sweet and the flax gave it a nice nutty taste without having to use actual nuts.

Turkey Chili Smothered Sweet Potatoes - I thought I had ground turkey in the freezer. Turned out it was ground chicken. Worked just fine and Matt, who doesn't like sweet potatoes, said he'd eat this again

Green Chile Breakfast Quesadilla - I made this for lunch one day for a switch from sandwiches and soup. Winner!

Unstuffed Bell Peppers - Another winner with plenty of leftovers. I was worried about the rice not cooking through, but I kept an eye on it and added some additional beef broth when it looked like it was cooking off too quick on low. 

Matt has been a very willing consumer of all of these and joked that maybe I didn't need to go back to work if I was going to keep cooking like this. He also said he was going to gain so much weight. 

You probably noticed the lack of chicken in these recipes. That'll be rectified next week. I had bought club packs of both chicken and ground beef and it just happened that the recipes I wanted to try called for ground beef. I also want to mix in a few more vegetarian/vegan recipes, which the site has plenty of, to be sure we're getting all the veggies we need.