When Clay and I got married, I had lived and worked on my own for a year. For the sake of his stomach I am so thankful for that year! I mastered the basics of preparing meals for myself during that year and had a small but useful repertoire.
After the wedding, I was working full time in a new job. I didn’t have much time to research recipes and I definitely didn’t have the 2 or 3 hours that it seemed like every recipe required from start to finish!
I was getting home well past 5 o’clock every night and we were hungry! Thirty minutes were really all that I had to spend on preparing a meal for us. So, my small recipe arsenal I had mastered in my single working year came to the rescue!
While the tacos, spaghetti, and homemade pizzas worked just fine (and Clay never ever complained!) they got pretty boring to me pretty quickly. I wish I had had more time to look up recipes and try things out, but life was busy!
After several more years of cooking for my family and slowly trying a lot of recipes, I have a few winners that I wish I had known about earlier!
These recipes are super easy, very quick and something we always (even the toddler) eat really well!
1. Ground Turkey Stroganoff
When I think about simple comfort food, this recipe is it! It’s so so easy and always delicious! Rosy always signs for “more” of this when we have it for dinner, and the leftovers are just as good as fresh.
I use gluten free noodles and gluten free cream of mushroom soup to make this work in our kitchen, and it works great!
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16311/simple-beef-stroganoff/
2. Chicken Tacos/Quesadillas
Tacos were definitely on the short list when we first got married, but they were of the ground beef variety!
I wish I had not been intimidated of my crock pot early on, because it would have been a dream! This is the perfect recipe to start with if you’re nervous about leaving food cooking all day and it’s SO delicious to use as leftovers or lunch as well!
Just a side note, but if you’re new to the crock pot, you may have to experiment a little bit. Mine cooks SUPER fast so I always have to shorten the cook time on a recipe by a few hours.
We use this chicken on tacos, chicken taco soup and quesadillas and it’s SO delicious and the definition of easy.
https://www.spendwithpennies.com/crockpot-chicken-tacos/
Clay doesn’t like onions or chunky salsa, so we omit the onion and I always blend up the salsa before putting it in.
3. Pork Chop Bake
This recipe is another comfort food that hits the spot after a long day!
I do a few things differently in this recipe. I use long grain white rice instead of instant, half of the butter, and gluten free cream of chicken and celery soups.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/216871/pork-chop-and-rice-casserole/
It’s SO good and SO easy!
4. Chicken and Rice Soup
An easy and filling meal. I’ve used rotisserie chicken, chicken I cooked in the crockpot, and leftover grilled chicken all in this recipe and they all end up tasting just as good!
This is a great recipe to leave in the crockpot on a Sunday morning and just add the rice when you get home from church.
https://www.spendwithpennies.com/chicken-rice-soup/
5. Sheet Pan Shrimp Boil
This is probably the easiest recipe on the list and definitely the most impressive! I’m not a fan of corn on the cob, so I replaced it with zucchini and it was delicious.
The first time I made this, Clay commented on how it was a lot of food, and then we cleaned the entire sheet! Granted, I was pregnant and breastfeeding so my appetite was quite a bit bigger than normal!
https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a53582/sheet-pan-shrimp-boil-recipe/