DINNER IDEAS for your BUSY LIFE QUICK EASY and HEALTHY

Okay do you have your family favorite recipes that are just like your go-to because you've made them so many times it's you know your family loves them. So today I'm going to be sharing four awesome recipes that we make on rotation all the time. These are quick and easy and they are healthy so delicious but you're just going to love the ease of these meals. I'm using a lot of basic pantry staples that you probably already have on hand and then just really simple proteins, chicken, ground turkey. These are going to be awesome recipes. I'm so excited to share them with you. Well if we haven't met before my name is Anne. Welcome and this is the Venumade Kitchen. We are in a really busy season right now so my daughter's getting ready to graduate in one month so you know if you have children out of school or you know you're approaching that you know how busy that season is because you've got all the last little things before graduation and that's where we're at. So I'm just trying to like get by and when I'm in the kitchen I need like just my basic family favorite recipes that I already know how to make so that's what today's video is going to be about and I think you're really going to enjoy these yummy easy and healthy meals. So to start out with our 15 minute fried rice we just have a couple of things to chop. I've got a couple of celery sticks here and then I have about three large green onions and then I do need to cut up my chicken but pretty much everything else is all pre-done. I'm going to use some frozen peas and carrots. I've got some cabbage or actually some broccoli slaw that I'm going to use so I don't have to chop any of that. This is so quick and it's absolutely delicious so if you have leftover chicken or pork this is such a great like quick and easy weeknight recipe. I'm also going to be using this Uncle Ben's brown rice just to keep it a little healthier today but you can use any kind of white rice leftover white rice or even Uncle Ben's um like basmati rice. So great convenient item to have on hand for a fast and easy but still healthy meal during the weeknights. So I'm just going to get my celery chopped up and my onions chopped and then we're going to move over to the stove and get everything into the pan. Okay so I've got my large non-stick skillet here and I'm going to add in one teaspoon of olive oil. Actually I'm going to do one tablespoon and then I'm also going to do one tablespoon maybe a little bit more of sesame oil. This is going to give it such great flavor. Maybe I'll just do a dash more. Perfect. And you definitely want your pan to be nice and hot because we want to kind of sear all the ingredients really quickly. So I'm going to add in my celery and then I'm going to add in just about half of the green onion that we sliced up. I also have one cup of frozen carrots and peas. This is awesome to have on hand. I didn't have to chop up the carrots. Okay and we're just going to saute these ingredients for about three or four minutes just to get a little bit of color on them. Obviously we want to make sure the carrots and the peas have de-thawed and the celery is nice and tender. Okay so this is just about where I want it and so now I'm going to add in a cup of this broccoli stock. You could also do like a cabbage mix to make it really easy. So I'm going to do maybe a little more than a cup because I'm actually kind of doubling this recipe from what's on my website. So we'll just cook this down for a couple more minutes just until the broccoli is tender. Okay that is looking good. So now we're going to add in our rice and I'm using two packets of the whole grain. I didn't microwave this. I just broke it up and then add it and I'm adding it to the pan so you don't have to pre-cook this in the microwave. Okay so we're just going to toast the rice and just basically heat it through for about five minutes and then we'll add in our chicken. And the reason Uncle Ben's rice works so well is it's already pre-cooked so you don't have any of that starchy liquid in there. That way the rice stays nice and fluffy and it doesn't get kind of gloopy and gummy. Okay so if you can hear that kind of sizzling and popping that's where the rice on the underside is getting nice and toasty and that's how I like my fried rice. I just think it gives it so much flavor and I love the texture of it that way. So now that this is cooked to my liking at this point we just need to cook our eggs. So I just create a little well in the center here. I'm going to add a little more let's do a little more olive oil and then you just kind of want to scramble it and break it up quickly and it'll cook so fast that once it doesn't have any more liquid to it then I'll incorporate it in with the rest of the rice and chicken. That looks perfect. Okay so we'll just start mixing that in and then we just need to add in a couple more ingredients when we get to finish this up. Okay I'm going to add in some soy sauce. I'm going to do about three tablespoons. I'm really just going to eyeball this. Classic fried rice ingredient. Maybe I'll do four just because we really like soy sauce and as you can see I didn't add any salt to this because the soy sauce already has plenty of sodium. I am going to add in a little bit of black pepper and then we're going to finish this off with some toasted sesame seeds, a little bit of red pepper flakes for heat and then I'm just going to top it with some green onion, the leftover green onion that we have. Other than that this is ready to serve. Okay here we are. All right so obviously with fried rice you can customize it with your favorite veggies, sauces if you want to add garlic, more soy sauce, more sesame oil. It really is just do it to taste and so I'm going to give this a try and see if we don't need any more soy sauce or I don't know something else but it sure smells delicious. I think what I love so much about making fried rice at home, not that I don't love it in the restaurant, but I can kind of control what goes into it. I can definitely taste all the veggies and the chicken but it's not super oily. I find that fried rice in the restaurant, I almost feel like I have the plus on when I'm done eating it because it's so oily so I love this. I'm going to add a little more soy sauce because I feel like it just needs a touch more like saltiness. Definitely a fast meal, super easy, it's delicious and healthy. I hope that you try this and you enjoy it as much as we do. Such a great recipe to have especially on busy nights. This homemade sloppy joe recipe I have been making for years. It is my favorite. It is not only easy but it's healthy and it just has a lot going on. There's actually kidney beans in it which just gives it even more like just a filling combination. I just love it and there are a lot of ingredients but most of them are like pantry staples and then we just have a few veggies to chop up. I'm going to do this red pepper here, probably not the entire thing. I might leave out a couple of these and then I've got some onion. I'll do probably a half a cup. I've got a large garlic clove and then I like to chop up some pickled jalapenos, just like a tablespoon or so. It just does something really yummy to this sloppy joe recipe. So I'm going to get these ingredients chopped up and then I've got my pan heating over on the stove at like a medium heat. We're going to get some olive oil in there and I've got to cook up my ground turkey and you can definitely make this with lean ground beef but in the name of kind of a healthier recipe we're going to do ground turkey. Plus I really like it with ground turkey. It's less greasy I guess and I think it still just has great flavor. My heat is at like a medium and I'm going to add one tablespoon of olive oil and I'm going to add in my lean ground turkey here. Try and pick this up without having to touch it and wash my hands again. All right so we're just going to crumble this. I got to turn this around here. I just want to crumble the meat until it's no longer pink and the great thing about using the ground turkey is I won't have to really remove any grease. There won't be any. So if there's a little bit of liquid in the pan it's probably just liquid not fat. So that's a nice bonus. I actually grew up eating sloppy joes. You have to let me know in the comments if you grew up eating them or eating that meal. But my mom did not make it from scratch. We ate the can of man and it was super delicious. But when I discovered this homemade recipe, I mean we're talking years ago. It was probably I don't even know like 18 years ago maybe 17 years ago. Anyway it doesn't really matter but that's how long I've been making this and it just doesn't compare to the manwich. I have never bought a can of manwich since. Certainly it's a convenient item but when you can make it super quick homemade like this and the flavors are just so good this is the best way in my opinion. Our ground turkey is finished cooking. That only took like six minutes but you can see there's a little bit of liquid in there and that's totally fine. We're just going to leave it. I'm going to add in my peppers and my onions. I'm also going to do my garlic there and then we're going to want to saute this for another five minutes or so just until the veggies are softened. Okay onions and peppers have softened. Those look perfect. So now we're basically just going to add in all the rest of the ingredients and I've made this like I said so many times that I don't have everything measured because I just kind of know but all the measurements are on my website. So if you see me not measuring something that's why. So we're going to add in our jalapeno. We're going to do one and a half cups of tomato sauce and then I'm actually going to add a quarter cup of water to this and add that in as well. We're going to do two tablespoons of tomato paste. That looks like about two tablespoons. We've got one tablespoon of red wine vinegar. This is such a key ingredient. It adds such a great kind of little bit of zip or tang to it. We're also going to add in one tablespoon of worcestershire. We all know how yummy worcestershire sauce is in savory foods. We're going to do one and a half teaspoons of yellow mustard. Okay and then this might seem a little crazy but I'm going to add in one tablespoon of molasses. If you don't have molasses you can certainly make it without it. I've been without and I've still made it and it's good but the molasses just gives it this rich deep flavor. Oh my gosh I just love it. And then we're going to add in one teaspoon of salt. We're not going to do any pepper because that jalapeno is actually pretty spicy. The pickled ones that I have so I don't want this to like burn our face off. And then I've got one can of drained kidney beans and that is it. We are just going to stir all of this together and then I'll just bring it to a low simmer and I like to cook it for another how five to eight minutes just until everything is warmed through and the ingredients have had a chance to kind of marry together. But for the most part and then obviously this will all thicken up too. It won't be quite this runny. And then we get to serve it on our buns. I'm telling you it is just such a great recipe. I love it so much. I hope you guys try this. Okay how does one eat a sloppy joe on camera? Because you really need two hands for this. So I might have to take a bite and then take a pause and come back to you. So let me take a bite real quick and then and then we'll evaluate. You see the hole in my bun? That was so funny. It's like hollowed out. This is seriously the best sloppy joes ever. You can obviously use any kind of bun that you like in the name of keeping it kind of healthy. I did the whole wheat bun. You could add cheese to this. We've done that before. We've also done coleslaw over the top of it. Oh my gosh that is so good. But for just a quick and simple dinner maybe a side salad or bake up some french fries or fruit salad or something like that. Such a delicious quick and easy but still healthy. Got lots of protein, lots of fiber from the beans. I know you're going to love these sloppy joes. Okay so for our chicken melts I've got to get some of my veggies chopped. I've already pre-sliced my cheese. I have eight slices of cheese and this recipe is going to make two sandwiches. And I sliced them pretty thin. So we are going to be adding, I've got one small celery stick here. I'll probably add this whole thing, just a little small handful of parsley, but you can do dried parsley. I'm going to do some red onion slices, just a few, and then a couple of really good size slices of tomato. So I'm going to get these things prepared and chopped up and then we'll move on to the next step. Now that our veggies are prepared we can kind of pull all of this together. So this is kind of like a tuna melt. I actually used to make something very similar to this, only I would do it open-faced and then I would put it under the broiler. But my family's not big on like heated up tuna fish so I thought chicken melts would be really fun. And so this is one full, like one large chicken breast and I cooked it and shredded it and then just chopped it up even more fine. That way it just had a very small texture. So to this I am going to add some mayonnaise. I'm going to do a couple of tablespoons. I'm also going to do one teaspoon of honey mustard, maybe just a little bit more actually. You can use regular yellow mustard, you could do Dijon mustard. I thought the honey mustard would be kind of fun, just give it a little bit of sweetness. Plus I think honey mustard and chicken go really good together. And then we're going to add in our parsley and our celery. I forgot what it was called. And then for our red onion slices, I'm actually going to add this to the top of the bread because I don't really like mixing onion in with the chicken or like my tuna melts. I feel like it just overpowers the entire thing. So I'm just going to do slices on top. So I need to grab some salt and pepper. I'm just going to kind of season this to taste, just kind of what I think. And of course some pepper. So I'm just going to use my spoon here that I use for the mayonnaise and just mix everything together. And I'll be able to kind of tell like the consistency of it. You don't want this to be super heavy with sauce because you want it to hold together pretty well in your sandwich. Plus we're going to be adding the cheese, which is going to give it that gooey meltiness and then some tomato, which will also be juicy. So this is actually looking pretty good. You can kind of see where it just like starts to come together. So that should be perfect. And you can add other seasonings in here. If you want to do some garlic powder or even a little bit of cayenne pepper for some heat, you could also add bacon to this. That would be really yummy. All right. So this looks good. I think I'm going to give it a taste just to make sure it's the right seasonings. That is delicious. I love the honey mustard in there. You just get a little hint of it. Okay. So let's get our sandwiches pulled together and then we'll move over to the stove. All right. So I just wanted to show you the kind of bread that I'm using. I'm doing the naked honey wheat. And the reason that I love this bread is because it's pretty thick. And because this is going to be like more for dinner, I want there to be some substance. Like we want to, we want to be able to get full for dinner. So that's why I'm doing this thicker bread. Plus it is really delicious. So I'm just going to take my butter here and just spread a little bit of butter over the top of the outside of the bread. We're not going to be doing the underside because that's where the cheese and the chicken salad is going to go. And actually my butter is not very soft, even though it was sitting out at room temperature. That's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect, right? Just as long as you've got some butter on there. So you get that nice, like buttery goldenness on the top. So good. I remember growing up, we used to have BLTs occasionally for dinner and I loved it. It was so fun to have just like sandwiches for dinner. So I'm going to flip the bread over and then I'm going to add some cheese here. I'm just going to place two slices on this bottom side and it'll kind of ooze out. Get on that one. And then once we get the chicken mixture on, then I'll add it to the top. Next comes all of this goodness here. So just pile it on. Like I said, this is enough for two sandwiches. All right. And the next, I'm going to add some red onion slices. And if you want to dice up the red onion and put them in the chicken mixture by all means, or if you just want to like roughly chop them up, but I'm just going to do these little slices and just have a little hint of that onion flavor, or you know what, if you don't like onion, just leave it out. Okay. And then we're going to take our tomato here and we're just going to do one slice. This is why you want like the big beef steak tomato. So it kind of covers the entire bread. And I am actually going to, cause I just have to, I'm going to salt the tomato just a little bit. So every layer has the perfect amount of seasoning and you know what? I'm going to do some pepper. Why not? Okay. And then we're just going to add our next two slices of cheese and you can certainly add, actually I think I'll stagger it like that. You can definitely add more cheese or a different kind of cheese. If you don't want cheddar, you could do like pepper jack. That would be good for something spicy. Don't those look beautiful? So then obviously I'm just going to flip this side over and place my bread piece right on top. Okay. So let's get over to the stove so we can get these babies grilled. So I've got my large skillet here. I'm heating it to like a medium low because I want to make sure that I don't get it too hot. I need the cheese to melt before the bread gets toasty. So I'm just going to lay my ginormous sandwiches down here and then I'm just going to take my spatula and I just kind of press it down just slightly. I don't want to like smash the tomato and cause all the juices to come out, but this will just kind of help me when it comes to flipping them. And then what I like to do is I'm just going to put the lid on and that will just get some heat in here so that we can get the cheese melted because that's really all that we need to do is toast the bread and melt the cheese. All right. Let's take a look. It's been about five minutes and I can see that the cheese is starting to melt. Let me just take a peek under there. See what it looks like. Oh, that looks perfect. Okay. So this is the tricky part because this sucker is full. Just gonna flip it over. Try not to burn your wrists off. Oh my gosh. Does that not look delicious? And it smells so good. I lost a little bit of an onion, but that's okay. I'm just going to squish it down again just a little bit because I want to get that underside of cheese melted. And I'm just going to turn the heat down to low just because the pan is good and heated now and so it's going to toast the underside pretty quickly. So I'm going to pop the lid on and then once the bottom is toasty, we get to taste this. All right. I know you just saw it up close, but I had to show you again. It's nice and crispy. Look at that. And then I just got some chips, but you know, you can bake up some french fries or a fruit salad, just something simple. This was so easy to make. Okay. We're going in. I don't even want to take the time to describe it because I want to go in for another bite. Guys, this is phenomenal. It is so delicious. And that little bit of onion flavor, I'm so glad I didn't dice it up and add it in with a mixture. That juicy tomato, it's not warm really. So if you're worried about like that cooked tomato texture or flavor, it's not. It has just a perfect amount of like, gives it some juiciness and flavor. All right. If you want to up your sandwich game and serve your family something fun for different or fun for dinner, I can't talk. I'm speechless. I'm delirious. It's so delicious. They will absolutely love this. So for our ground beef burrito bowl bake, we're going to start by adding one pound of lean ground beef to our skillet here. I've got this set on like a medium heat and we're just going to crumble this. I'm going to cook the beef until it's no longer pink. Okay. While our ground beef is sizzling away over there, I need to get the rice into the microwave. I'm using whole grain brown rice just to kind of keep this a little bit healthier, but you can use any kind of rice. Or if you have three cups of cooked rice, that's already prepared. Or if you want to cook that up and not have to purchase these. Sometimes I can find these Uncle Ben's on sale. And so it's just more convenient. Sometimes the trade-off is, do I want the extra work or do I want the convenience? And so I definitely wanted the convenience. Plus these were on sale and sometimes you can even find them for like $1.50. So I'm just going to kind of break these up and cook the rice according to the package directions for 90 seconds in the microwave. And then we will move on to the next step. Okay. So our ground beef is finished cooking and there's just a little bit of grease in the pan. And I just went through with a paper towel and removed that. So we're going to add in one packet of taco seasoning. This is just a low sodium. I didn't have any of my homemade on hand. I had just like a teaspoon left and I was too lazy to make it. And I had one of these, so this is what we're going to do. And like I've mentioned before, I love to toast the taco seasoning first before I add in the water. So now we're going to add in a quarter cup of water and I'm just going to cook this another minute or so, just until the water is evaporated and the meat mixture is kind of thick. All right, the ground beef is done and I just have it setting aside. So we're just going to add our brown rice here to our 9 by 13 inch baking dish. And I've sprayed it with nonstick cooking spray. Okay, add that in. And then we're going to kind of transform this rice just a little bit. We're going to do like a kind of a cilantro lime rice kind of thing. And so I'm just going to add a good handful of this cilantro that I've chopped up to the rice. And we're going to reserve the rest of this for a really simple sauce that we're going to make. And then I'm just going to squeeze over half of this lime over the rice and the cilantro. That is a juicy lime too. That is perfect. So I guess depending on how juicy your lime is, you definitely want a good amount. Okay, and then we're just going to take a fork and I'll just combine everything together. Already, like the second that cilantro hits the warm rice, I could just eat this right here. Give me some chips. Maybe add a little bit of salt. Oh man, so good. And I'll just spread this out into an even layer here. Okay, I just wanted to get my board cleared off so that we could see everything here. So if you're not filming this recipe, it does definitely goes very quickly. So I'm going to add a little bit of cheese to the top of the rice. Just probably a quarter cup. I'm not going to do a ton, maybe a little bit more. And this is just Colby Jack. You can use any kind of cheese you want. If you have a package of the pre-shredded, like Mexican blend cheese, that would be perfect. But I already had cheese, so I didn't want to spend the extra money on pre-shredded cheese. Now we're going to add our ground beef mixture right to the top here. Smells so good. And you could add ground turkey. You could do chicken. Already, doesn't this look so delicious? All right. And then next we're going to add this can of Mexicorn. I just drained it to make sure there wasn't any extra liquid. And we're just going to sprinkle this right over the top of the ground beef. Okay, where's the peppers? Where's the Mexican part? I bet all the peppers are at the bottom, or did they just like add... I think there's like maybe four little peppers in this whole can of corn. That's okay. Then I have a can of black beans that I've drained, but I did not rinse them. So whenever we get burrito bowls at like Qdoba or Chipotle or something like that, you know, they scoop the beans out of that thick starchy sauce, which I just love. I think that that adds just a nice creaminess to your bowls. That little bit of starchy liquid left over on the beans is really yummy, but you could definitely rinse them if you don't want that extra starch on there. So we've got so much protein, we've got lots of fiber, and then of course the whole grain rice. It really is a healthy dinner. Okay, and then finally we're going to add a little more cheese to the top. I think that this is such a fun way to enjoy like burrito bowls. That way you can just make it all in one pan, and then people can kind of scoop out what they want and add more fresh toppings. It's just such an easy, I think just an easy way to enjoy burrito bowls. Okay, so I'm just going to cover this with foil, and I've got my oven set at 350, and we're going to bake this with the foil on for about 20 minutes, and then I'm going to remove the foil and we'll bake it another five minutes. I don't want the cheese to get like super crusty on top. I still want it to be kind of cheesy and gooey, and then we'll add just the remaining shredded cheese to the top just to make it look pretty. I'm going to get this in the oven, and then we're going to get the rest of our ingredients together and make our awesome cilantro jalapeno cream sauce. While that is baking away, we're going to make our jalapeno cilantro cream sauce. It's so simple. You could definitely buy like cilantro lime dressing if you want to just skip having to make it, but again, I already had the ingredients on hand and I didn't want to spend the money on dressing when I could just make a real quick one here at home, so I'm adding just about a half a cup of sour cream here to my little mini food processor, and if you have a blender, that works great. If you don't have anything like this, you could just mix everything in a bowl and make sure that the jalapeno is chopped nice and fine, so don't sweat that if you don't have stuff like this, and then I'm going to be adding in this entire jalapeno here. I'm going to remove the seeds and the membranes just because I don't want this to be like burn your face off spicy, so I'm just going to basically take the top off. I slice the jalapeno in half like this, and then I just take my spoon and just scoop out the seeds over the garbage can, so I'm going to do that real quick, and then we'll come back here and I'll chop it up. Okay, and by all means, if you are not a wuss like me, then feel free to leave in some of the seeds, so I'm just going to kind of give this a little rough chop just to help out my food processor a little bit. That looks good, so we're just going to add in that whole jalapeno, and then I have my other half of a lime that I'm going to use in here. I just need to find my lime squeezer, and I know this is going to be juicy, so you're going to want like a good tablespoon, maybe even a little bit more, and next we're going to add in some salt. I have about, oh, a half teaspoon or so. We're also going to do some ground cumin. Same thing, just about a half a teaspoon is going to go in, and then our last ingredient is that extra cilantro that I had chopped up. I did reserve just a little bit for the top of the bake. Again, just add some garnish so it looks pretty. Okay, so we're just going to pop the lid on, and I'm just going to grind this up and mix it as well as I can. I want it to be nice and smooth, but you'll still see a little flex of green in there, but mainly so the jalapeno is nice and chopped up. All right, this looks perfect. It's exactly what you want. Okay, I'm going to give it just a little taste, make sure it doesn't need any more seasoning. Oh my gosh, that is going to be so delicious drizzled over our ground beef bowls and so easy to whip up. Okay, so let's move on, get a few more ingredients, and then we can pull all this together. Number one, it's like bigger than my face. I had to get a little bit of that dressing. My mouth is watering. This is amazing. There's just so much flavor and lots of like fresh ingredients, which I think are really important when you're trying to eat a little healthier, and that rice under there that we jazzed up with a little bit of lime juice and cilantro, like just building those layers and the flavor makes this such a delicious and flavorful burrito bowl. Honestly, the best. Well, I hope this video gave you some inspiration for some quick and easy but healthy meals to prepare for yourself or even your family, and make sure to check out the descriptions. That's where all the recipes are, and if you're new here, I'd love for you to be part of my YouTube family, so make sure to subscribe. I hope you have a really blessed week, and we will see you next time.