Low Effort Dinners I Make When I Don t Feel Like Cooking

Sometimes I don't feel like cooking and I think we all have those days, right? Life gets busy, the list is long, and by the time evening rolls around energy can be pretty low, but there are still bellies to fill. So I like to keep a handful of low effort from scratch meals I can turn to on nights when I need something that doesn't require much thought. So come join me in the kitchen. We'll cook up something good and share a little bit of real life along the way. When dinner time feels like a lot and I don't have a whole lot left of myself to give, I really like to utilize the oven because it does most of the work for me. Just a little bit of prep time and I can let it do its thing and I can get back to whatever else I need to do and it just saves me some mental capacity. And when I am feeling that way, I also like to have one main star, one main dish for dinner and not have a bunch of sides and other things. It saves me some mental space there. Just have one well-rounded dish. Sometimes I will use sandwiches. They are just easy, but I like to dress them up, elevate them a little bit so that they still feel like a real meal, make them a little bit special. So I'm going to make a chicken caesar salad so we're going to start with a pound of chicken breast here. This is enough for my family of four, so adjust as you need. Raw chicken incoming. I'm going to cut these in half lengthwise. They're a little bit thick and then pound them thin. Now, this is the healthier homemade version. Of course, if you'd like to take another shortcut, you can purchase some just panko crusted chicken breast from the freezer section at the store. You could use rotisserie chicken if you want. I had to take my sweater off. It was getting toasty in here, which is odd because it's really cold outside. But anyways, we're going to make our own chicken schnitzel. I want to pound this thin. You want it very even so it cooks evenly. Pound it thin. Grab some eggs, some flour, and some panko. Okay, two eggs going into a bowl. I really miss our chickens laying eggs. It has been a very long time since our chickens have laid. They're really having an off year. We have never had a year where our chickens haven't laid at least somewhat over the winter. They've just said no. We're not doing it this year. And we're getting the eggs from a local farm that says they pasture raise, but the eggs are so colorless. They don't even look appetizing. Even, like I know it's winter, usually they lose some of their vibrancy during winter. But with our chickens, they were always this beautiful vibrant orange and it might have just been the way that we were feeding them. But they just don't look so appetizing and I really can't wait for our chickens to lay eggs again. Flour and panko. You can make this gluten-free by using gluten-free flour and panko crumbs. I'm not really measuring. I'm just going to put some on the plate here. Start off sparingly so I don't waste and add more if I need it. There's that. Now I need salt and pepper. We want to generously season the chicken breasts themselves. Okay, we're gonna rub it in. Flour, eggs, panko. Now to cook these guys, you can do it a couple of different ways. I want to save myself some time and work standing over the oven watching something. So I'm going to utilize baking. You can shallow fry these in some olive oil in a skillet about six minutes per side or until it's cooked through. To bake, I want them to stay crispy. So I'm gonna put down, this is just a little cooling rack, but you can use it to bake. I'm putting it on top of my tray here. And I'm gonna take some olive oil spray. I'm gonna spray my chicken cutlets on both sides, set them on here. That'll help them get nice and crispy in the oven about 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes, give or take. I'm sure you could air fry them. I don't have an air fryer. So sorry, but I can't help you there. Of course, we need some Caesar dressing. I make mine homemade. Of course, you can buy some if that's what you have time for. I do have a whole video on, I think I have eight different homemade salad dressings you can make yourself. I can link that in the description, but we're going to do my Caesar salad dressing right now. We're going to start with some mayo using one cup. I just eyeball everything. Two cloves minced garlic. Dijon mustard, two teaspoons. We need some Worcestershire, two teaspoons again. Some white wine vinegar. Two tablespoons. Two tablespoons of olive oil. A little pinch of salt. Pinch of pepper. Need a lemon, half of one. I'm gonna finish it off with some grated parm. I guess I'll do this one. Freshly grated is where it's at. I'll just be here for the next 100 years. Okay, about a half cup freshly grated parm and then we're just gonna blend this up. Looks and smells lovely. Tastes just like what you would get at the grocery store, but so much better for you. Set that off to the side. I need to shave some parmesan for the sandwich and we're going to chop up some romaine. Now I'm gonna cut this up small. You don't have to. You can just not cut it up at all and lay it on the sandwich, but I like to mix this with the salad dressing just so it's all like really well incorporated and you have a lot of flavor in every bite. I just think it sticks to it a bit better, but that's just my preference. I'm gonna give this a wash. Chicken just came out of the oven. The last thing we need, sub roll. I just had some of these in my freezer from Wild Grain. So that's what I'm using. I am going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil on here and some garlic powder and you could very easily mix up some garlic butter and spread that on if you would prefer that. This was just quick. I'm gonna pop this right on my oven rack underneath the broiler for like a minute or so. If you're not new to my channel, you know, I love to cook. It's a big part of my life. It's actually a love language of mine how I love on the people in my life. I consistently do the grocery shopping or growing a food. I meal plan, I cook and I quite enjoy it. What I have come to realize over the years is I'm pretty good about taking care of the people in my life, prioritizing them, but I'm not so great at making sure I take care of myself in that same way. I also eat pretty differently from the rest of my family. So that often means separate planning, separate cooking and that's what gets pushed off to the side and right now I am in a really busy season. I have a lot going on behind the scenes here and sometimes I just need a little bit of extra help. It's not that I don't know how to cook for myself. I do but sometimes, sometimes it's really nice to have someone else take care of me and Hungry Root has done that for me. Hungry Root works like a personal nutrition coach slash grocery shopper slash meal planner all in one. They plan, they recommend and they shop food for you based on all the questions they ask you when you sign up. They're going to ask you things like what you do and don't like to eat, what your goals are, if you have a certain diet you follow, if you don't like certain flavors and do like others. It's definitely not a generic quiz at all. They're actually paying attention. The more you order, the more Hungry Root fine-tunes things based on what you actually use and enjoy. They get it right every time with food and recipes we love. If you like variety, there are over 50,000 recipes to choose from every week plus a huge selection of healthy groceries. Everything from quick lunches and smoothies to simple dinners and snacks and there aren't any junk ingredients hiding in the food. Everything is made with high quality ingredients including meat and seafood with no hormones or antibiotics. All of those things really matter to me. This week I focused on lunches and a few breakfasts for me. I need help to make sure that I am feeling well fueled for my day. I also added a few quick lunches for the kids for those really full days when we're running in all different directions. I grabbed a couple simple dinners as well for some busy nights we have coming up. This one is a pork carnitas bowl. It's absolutely delicious and ready in just a matter of minutes. Everything we have tried has been so good. Maybe you're someone who set health goals earlier this year. This is the kind of support that makes it feel achievable. Right now they have a really great offer for you for a limited time. You get 40% off your first box plus you're going to get a free item in every box for life. Just click the link in the description box below or you can go to hungryroot.com and use my code Seed&Sparrow. That's 40% off your first box plus a free item of your choice in every box for life. Just head to hungryroot.com and use my code Seed&Sparrow. Chopped up romaine. A little bit of Caesar. Give that a toss. Nice and toasty bun. Some shaved parmesan. Look at how nice and crispy this is. See if you can hear. I'll put it next to microphone. Beautifully crispy even in the oven if you bake it like I did. That's gonna go on here. We're gonna top it off with our little salad. Yum. I mean come on. That's a yummy dinner. We got some veg. We got some protein. We have some carbs. It fills bellies and it's yummy. Can't complain about that. I'm gonna squish this guy on down. There's something super satisfying about squishing a sandwich down. I love a good squish sandwich. So here is one example of what I would make for dinner when I don't feel like cooking. You can make it as homemade or as not homemade as you want. You can use whatever you have. You can make it into a wrap. You could use tortillas or some naan bread. You could use a different type of dressing, a different type of lettuce, what have you. So there's number one. We're gonna move on to number two. Normally, I wouldn't make all of these in the same day, but we had a very terrible sickness work through our entire family and I was not able to film at all this week and honestly, I was concerned I wasn't even gonna be able to get a video out to you. But thank you Lord. I am feeling much better today. This is the first day where I feel I can stand up and I have some energy. But I had a contract that I had to keep. So I'm thankful I am able to bring you some recipes. This week, they're all gonna be today. So on to recipe number two. This next meal is probably the definition of simple yet full of nutrients and really delicious. It was a viral recipe going around for a while. There's a bunch of different variations on it. So this is how I do it. I'm gonna take a pound of orzo and dump it into my dish here. I also have, I should have four of these, but I forgot I used one for breakfast the other day. This is just some chicken apple sausage. You can use any type of sausage you want. About 12 ounces to a pound and we're gonna slice it thin. Throw that in. We need some spinach. I had some frozen spinach. That'll work just fine if you are using fresh and about two cups of chopped spinach. One container of cherry tomatoes. I am using this Boursin. It's garlic and fine herb cheese. It's a spreadable gourmet cheese. They have other flavors you can use. You could also use some spinach and artichoke dip. You could probably even use some cream cheese with some seasoning blend mixed in. Totally whatever you have, make it work for you. I'm gonna open this guy up, pop it in the center. And then to finish it off, I have three cups of my homemade chicken broth I pulled out of the freezer. This goes into a 400 degree oven. 30 minutes. We're going to pull it out and we're going to stir it up. Put it back in until the orzo is done. We'll keep an eye on it at 15 minutes again and then again at 30 minutes if it needs it. Low effort meals like these help me out so much, especially in these really busy seasons. I am in one right now. I am just trying to keep up and do all the normal housework things. Of course, work on some house projects. You know, the usual things. But also trying to work ahead just in case there's a potential home for us this spring or summer. But other than that, the usual housework, feeding bellies, taking care of children, taking care of animals. Here's Miss Edith. I almost never show her and she deserves the spotlight. I mean, we could all use some more of bunnies eating in our lives, I think. We've got homeschooling. I'm driving Eleanor out to my mom three days a week and then doing schoolwork with her two days a week myself. I have my hands full with taxes. Anybody else? Right now, fun times, right? But I decided to put it off for a moment and focus on the garden. So the plan for this year's garden is flowers. Flowers and more flowers with maybe a little bit of food for just fresh eating. I'm not planning on growing food for my family for the year because of the potential move we might be making. And on that topic, there really isn't any update. We are just playing the waiting game. The market is completely dead in the area and the surrounding areas that we are looking to move to. So for now, we're just taking it one day at a time. I am going to be starting some flower seeds. So my plan is I want the garden to stay maintained. I want it to look nice, especially if we are going to be showing our property. I don't want weeds to take over. So I'm going to be doing a lot of low-lying, ground cover type flowers. Think alyssum, lobelia. I'm going to purchase some wildflower mixes too and just scatter seeds. But I'm also going to be starting some. So I'm going to be doing that today. If you aren't familiar with my garden, I'll try and find a good picture of it here. So it's in a rectangle. All the outer beds, I'm going to make flowers, except for where the strawberries are. And then all of the smaller inner beds, I'm going to use those for our fresh eating for the vegetables. I have started my lisianthus and they are popping up, which I am super excited about because these are notoriously hard to get to germinate. The thing though, taking up a lot of my time is the blog. I am working at writing up blog posts. And I have a question for you. Would you like me to just make the blog live here soon, regardless of how many posts I have up? That way, moving forward, you can actually use it. And I will just prioritize writing up the recipes that will be included in each new weekly video. So you can just go and you can click on that link. Does that sound okay? Or would you rather there be more recipes for you to choose from, from the get-go? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, please. And thank you. Here is what we are looking like here. I'm going to give this a stir and put it back in until that orzo is done. That's the only thing we're waiting on. Pop this out of the oven for a second. Decided to grate some parmesan on top because cheese makes everything better. And I'll just put this back underneath the broiler for a minute or so. Then this one is done. Third recipe. We're going to take a pound of ground beef. We're going to brown it up. We're going to make some sheet pan, kind of like quesadillas. We're going to make them Big Mac style. All right, we need a baking sheet. I promise it's clean. And a bunch of tortillas. If you had burrito size, it would work a lot better. They just cover more space, obviously. But I am actually... First, we need to spray this well. Okay, now we can layer... Oh, sorry, just joking on olive oil. Okay, anyways, we're going to layer these in here. I think three per side. There's going to be a gap in the center. Okay, do one on the ends. I'm looking for the bigger ones. We'll do two small in the center. Okay, just like so. I'm going to add some seasoned salt to this. And get it over onto our tortillas. Now, if you're using a bigger sheet pan, you're going to want to probably use two pounds of ground beef. I could have probably used a pound and a half, but this will do. Of course, we need some cheese. I think I'm just going to use this side. So that I can just throw it on here just a little bit faster than grating. Now, we need some burger sauce. So for the Big Mac sauce, I am using one cup, roughly, of mayo. I might not do this exact because I'm not making a super big batch. But I'll tell you the correct amounts. I need a quarter cup of pickle relish. But I don't have any, but I do have pickles. So we're just going to dice this up. In goes the pickle relish. About two teaspoons of mustard. Good tablespoon of ketchup. Teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. Tablespoon of sugar. And a quarter teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder. Drizzle it over the top of the cheese. I'm going to take these two, put them right in the center. And then fold over all of the others. Let's flatten them out for a second. Just let that compress them for a little bit. I'm going to spray the tops of these with olive oil. You could brush on some butter too. Okay, now I'm going to get another sheet pan. Just use the one used for the chicken. Make sure that's all shut. Put that on there. Squeeze it down. This is going to go into a 450 degree oven for about 25 minutes. This one is delish, my friends. I hope you try it. You can serve it with some burger toppings like lettuce and tomatoes. Maybe some more of the burger sauce. You can switch up the variation. Just do more Mexican style. You could do chicken, bacon, ranch. You could do all sorts of things in this. Have fun. Play with it. I hope you enjoyed coming along with me today. Hopefully these recipes help you out on those nights where you just don't really feel like cooking either. I would so appreciate if you took the time to like this video. Drop me a comment down below. That can just be an emoji that helps the algorithm out. Thank you so much for taking some time to spend with me today. You have a blessed week, my friend, and I will see you next time. Take care.