A smoothie made just from fruit doesn’t sound like much of a meal, but if you add other things, it can actually be a very easy and filling meal with minimal cleaning up and no cooking time that can be made any time of day!

Some smoothies can easily go from a “healthy” drink to one packed with over 50 grams of sugar. Yes, it is fruit sugar, but it still isn’t good to have so much in one go. It is much easier to eat too much fruit in one go if it is in a smoothie than if you were just eating fruit. Thats why my smothies use many other healthy ingreditnts along with some fruit.

This post isn't necessarily a step-by-step exact recipe. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever followed a smoothie recipe, but here are a list of ingredients I like to put into smoothies, and you can add them together in pretty much any combination, and they will go. I usually don’t add all of these at once. This is just a list of my arsenal I might choose from. Omit what you like, get creative, and adapt quantities depending on how many people are going to enjoy it!
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First of all, the squash or sweet potato has to be cooked. The best way to cook the squash is to bake it in the oven for an hour on 350. this can be done a day or two in advance if you want.

If you are using sweet potato, you may chop them up and boil them until soft, which usually takes 20 minutes.

​In the meantime, we will make the tomato-beef mix

Let's start with turning the stove on to medium with your favorite large pan. Put about a tablespoon or so of grass fed butter in it, and while you wait, chop uo the onion into thin slivers, or dice it if you want.

When the pan is nice and hot and the butter is all melted, put in the chopped onion and let it caramelize for a few minutes, stirring regularly.

And once the onions look a little browned and are sizzling niceley, you can put in the ground beef and break it up into little chunks, mixing it around with the onion. 

Let this brown too for a few minutes, stirring regularly.

Now is when you can add your jar of tomoto sauce. Alternativeley, you can add one of those small cans of tomato paste. Then stir in the dried oregano, garlic powder, and fresh or dried basil. A few shakes of the oregano and garlic, and aout 5-10 chopped up leaves of basil.

Let the beef-tomato mix simmer on medium-low for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, take a masher and a few tablespoons of that grass-fed butter and mash the cooked squash/sweet potato in a pot on low heat. It shoud already be cooked. We just need to melt the butter and make sure its served hot

Once the beef mis has done simmering, push it to one side of the pan and get out your frosen spinach. Put it in the empty part of the pan and let it all defrost and cook. Stir it around every few minutes, but don't mix it in with the beef.

If your pan is too small to do this, just use aother pan. I'm just showing you a way you can reduce pan usage and have less cleaning up at the end.

And when everything is hot, it is time to serve! Make 3 layers in each plate - beef on the bottom, spinack in the middle, and squash on the top. Even sprinkle some cheese on top if you'd like!

Enjoy! This keeps well in the fridge or freezer as leftovers for a few days, and makes a perfect pre-made meal for those busy days.

This is part 5 of my 5-part series, "Go to Meals". These are recipes I do on a weekly basis that I find easy, quick, cheap, and healthy.
Part 1: roasted veggies
Part 2: Easy frittata 
Part 3: Paleo Shepherd's pie
Part 4: Smoothies

Super low-maintainence and warming, this is perfect for winter nights. Although I do find myself making this year-round because of how tasty, easy, and cheap it is. 

I like to make a large amount of this and freeze the extra chicken and broth to use in other recipes or salads.

For the TL;DR people: chop up veggies, throw everything in te crockpot, leave it on low for 8+ hours, go out and do cool stuff, come back, and boom, you're done.

​Now for the step-by-step version with pictures

Chop up your veggies into pieces...

Put the chicken in the crockpot and pile the veggies around it, however they fit...

Sprinkle it with salt and seasonings, then fill the rest of the crockpot up with water. Make sure the lid fits.

Turn it on low and leave it 8-12 hours, dpending on what is convenient for you. Heck, I'm sure 14 hours would be ok. You can totally leave the house and do whatever you want. It's impossible to screw up.

Come home, and boom, dinner's done. Woohoo!

Also, if you did a lot of chicken, you can have leftover chicken and broth to use another day!

This is part 2 of my 5-part series, "Go to Meals". These are recipes I do on a weekly basis that I find easy, quick, cheap, and healthy.
​Click for part 1

When cooking for one, eggs are the hero. When I just want something quick and cheap and don't feel like cooking up a whole meat dish (as meat is usually sold by the pound and can make shopping for one difficult), this is my go-to. Even if you buy the expensive, high quality eggs, the protein in this meal comes to a grand total of a dollar. Add on the veggies and you have a meal that takes 20 minutes or less and costs about three dollars.

I like traditional omelettes, but they can be a little bit difficult and actually require the right frying pan and some cooking talent to perfect. This is like a "lazy omelette", which has more veggies than eggs. It is not quite a scramble, but kind of like a bunch of veggies held together with eggs and cheese. 

​On other words, it's pretty good!

Turn the stove (with the pan on it duuuuuuui) onto medium heat and melt some lovely grass-fed butter on it (maybe a tablespoon or so). Yes, if you haven't heard, butter is back (and healthy) and grass-fed is the healthiest kind. It's also a high-temperature fat, meaning you can use it for frying, unlike olive oil, which is a low-temperature oil.

Those veggies won't work if ya don't cut them up, so while you're waiting for that delicious butter to melt, cut them up into pieces like so (shown below). The smaller you cut them, the shorter time it takes to cook them. 

Only put them in the pan when the butter is melted, and the pan is hot. You know the pan is hot if you put your finger on it and you get a 2nd degree burn. (DON'T ACTUALLY DO THAT!!!)

No, but seriously, you can test if it is hot buy putting one piece of vegetable in and hearing if it sizzles. Then you may put the rest in.

These veggies will probably take about 20 minutes to cook. Make sure you check on them and give it a stir every few minutes, cause we don't want them to burn.

​While you're waiting, you can crack open the two eggs into a bowl and beat them with a fork. We are not putting the egg mix in until the veggies are cooked, so hang tight.

Shown below is what the veggies should look like when cooked. This took about 20 minutes, but you may want to taste one first to make sure they are done.

Now is the part where we add the egg mix. Spread the cooked veggies evenly over the pan, then slowly pour the egg mix all around, trying to cover the whole pan.

Don't touch it for a minute or so. Just keep your eye on it. Look for little bubbles in the egg mix.

What I did next was flip it over in pieces. It would take a lot of skill to flip the whole thing over in one go, and to be honest, it would probably taste the same. The picture below is what t looked like after I flipped it over.

Just remember, if all fails and it all falls apart, you still have a great scrambled egg dish.

Finally, I'm going to sprinkle the cheese I grated over the top and turn the stove off.

And that's it! Cooking for one can be easy, healthy, and cheap. Stay tuned for parts 3-5 of my go-to meals!

This is part 1 of my 5-part series, "Go to Meals". These are recipes I do on a weekly basis that I find easy, quick, cheap, and healthy.
​Click for part 2

This roasted veggies recipe is not a whole meal in itself, but I have found it a perfect side dish to almost any meat , packed cold in a salad the next day, or made into an omelette. Once cooked, it keeps several days in the fridge and can be heated up or served cold

preheat oven to 375. If you are using a cooking fat that is a solid like butter or coconut oil, make sure you melt it

Cut them up like in the picture below and spread them out on the baking tray. It should be only one layer. If you stack them up too high, they will not all be roasted.
Then put enough oil on them until they are all covered. If you have spray oil, that would work too. Try to stay away from canola or soybean oil if you want this to be a healthy dish. No, "PAM" isn't healthy even though it claims to have "less fat". 

Then all you have to do is put it in the oven and leave it for 45 mins to an hour. these veggies were chosen because they all take the same time to cook, making this an easy recipe. This recipe is one of my favorites because you can literally forget about it for an hour. You can even leave the house if you're feeling daring ;)

​They should look like the picture below when finished.