This post is sponsored by Walmart. All opinions are my own.
With the holidays coming up and knowing that I will be hosting a few family and friends at our house, I’ve been trying out recipes that are easy to make for a large group and that my kids will actually eat!
Being a mom of two and running my own business leaves me very little time to grocery shop. I do most of my shopping at Walmart Grocery as I love that they have fresh and organic produce and good cuts of meat which is essential in this recipe! You can even place your order online and pick up in store which is a huge time saver!
I’m a fan of beef stew and typically make it on the stove but thought I’d try making it in the Instant Pot. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll go back to making it on the stove again! It was nice to cook it all in one pot and with the prep + cooking time it was all ready in about an hour!
I basically followed this recipe which I found to be very easy to follow. I omitted any green items like the peas, even though I like them, my daughter is currently in the stage where she won’t eat anything green and I didn’t want her to make a fuss so I left them out. Kids are so fussy but having her eat the stew was enough for me as I can sneak her greens in other foods!
Everything I got from Walmart was fresh and easy to prepare. I always try to buy organic so I’m happy that I can get everything for my recipes at Walmart. When you are making dinner for a big group it can get pricey too but I’ve found that everything at Walmart is very reasonably priced and you don’t need to spend a lot to make a delicious meal.
My girls loved the beef stew and I just love watching them eat it! It’s nice to be able to cook for my girls even on the crazy busy days that we have.
Grab everything for you need in this recipe here:
Check out my other holiday favorite and share your favorite holiday recipes with me. On social media use #WalmartCommunityTable.
This post is sponsored by Walmart. All opinions are my own.
I cook often for my family, but when it comes to large groups, I get scared of trying to cook for so many people and end up ordering food. We started hosting a lot more parties at our house and we do a lot of entertaining during the holidays so I finally found a recipe that I’m comfortable serving! It’s fast and easy to do and it always turns out delicious! I love shopping Walmart Grocery where I can pick up fresh and organic ingredients.
The ingredients are so simple which is why it’s important to pick up really fresh ingredients. I love shopping Walmart Grocery as I can order online and pick up in store. They even offer delivery which is so awesome for those of us short on time! I usually don’t mind picking up though as I pick up my daughter from school and then head over to Walmart and my order is ready for me! They have a great selection of organic vegetables and fruit and I can always trust that it’s fresh.
I also love that I can add in other items to my order like beauty items, things for my kids and even fresh flowers! It’s so nice to be able to do all my shopping in one stop!
There’s really not a lot to the recipe, I just take some fresh salmon and cut up vegetables, I love zucchini and squash, but you can customize it to your liking! And then I just cover everything in olive oil and salt and pepper. You can then add anything from a marinade, I love this Korean BBQ one, a simple lemon and honey or even hummus and balsamic vinegar. It’s the best in that you can really customize it to what you feel like making that night!
You can cook everything in the oven and then I roasted a side of small potatoes and it was delicious! When you have more people just add more salmon and vegetables. So simple right?
I would love for you to share your favorite recipe as well! Post on social media and use #WalmartCommunityTable.
I can’t believe it’s already FEBRUARY. It seems like New Years was just yesterday and I was making all sorts of goals (new and old) for 2018. If you’re like me, you might have had some health + fitness related goals on your list this year (like every year, am I right?). Since I started my own health + fitness lifestyle a few years ago, I’ve found things that work for me and my busy schedule and others that just don’t. MEAL PREP is one of those things that just WORKS. The better prepared I am at the beginning of the week, the more likely I am to stay the course. But on those weeks that I don’t have time or just decide to “wing it,” I’m 100% more likely to veer off track.
Quick, easy and healthy recipe
In the perfect world, I would love to spend hours + hours on meal prep, have enough time to workout and take a long shower to release those toxins from a nice long sweat sesh but in reality, my days are busy running around between work, kid’s homework, after school activities, tournaments and church obligations. This means I have to be smart about how I’m spending my time and my preference is not to slave over a meal for hours on end. I’m all about quick + easy – and if it’s healthy, that’s an added bonus!
Enter: Eggroll in a Bowl. This meal is so quick that in the time it takes you to read the ingredients, you’ll have made the entire dish start to finish! This dish is easy to make in bulk which means when it comes to meal prep, you make it once and have lunches for the rest of the week! #winning! Being Korean, I’m always looking for Asian inspired dishes for meal prep (something other than rotisserie chicken and broccoli because we all know that gets old…FAST!). Try this for your next meal prep and let me know how it turns out!
EGGROLL IN A BOWL
Prep Time: 10 min.
Ingredients
1.5 pounds ground turkey
2 bags cole slaw mix
1 teaspoon grated ginger (or ginger powder to taste)
1 teaspoon minced garlic (or garlic powder to taste)
1/4 cup liquid aminos (or soy sauce)
4 eggs beaten
Instructions
1. Heat ground turkey, ginger and garlic in a large skillet on medium high heat (season with sea salt + pepper). Drain fat.
2. Add in 2 bags cole slaw mix and liquid aminos (soy sauce). Stir to combine.
3. Push eggroll mixture to the side of the pan and pour in beaten eggs. Scramble.
4. Return to heat and combine eggroll mixture and scrambled eggs. (NOTE: cook as long as you like depending on how cooked you like your veggies. I like mine with a bit of crunch so only stir to combine and let the heat from the mixture wilt the veggies slowly)
5. Serve by itself or over brown rice.
ENJOY!!
For more ideas on meal prep and other related fitness inspiration, check out and like G.I. Jen Fitness!
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I love to cook but now that my schedule has been so busy, the last thing I want to do after working 16 hours a day is to get in the kitchen and cook. This has led us to eating out more than we like and I was feeling a bit lethargic and not so healthy in general. I recently subscribed to Whole Living magazine and I’m obsessed with it. I read every single article and have really changed our food and eating habits because of it. I came across this “detox” that sounded perfect for me. From the magazine: “New Year’s resolutions a distant memory? Whether you want to recommit to
a healthier eating regimen or simply treat your body to some R&R,
our three-day reboot is a delicious way to do it.”
Last week, I did the 3 day reboot and the rest of the week I stuck to a generally healthy diet. I ended up losing 3 pounds during the week (which to be honest, was probably just water weight) but not only that, I just feel a lot more “cleaner”, healthier and energized.
Read more for my thoughts and tips on the detox…
I wanted to share with you guys because I often get questions about my diet and exercise which I’m hesitant to post about only because everyone’s bodies are different and I’m certainly no expert. For me, I generally like to cook/eat healthy for 4-5 days out of the week and the rest of the days we eat out. Of course this varies and some weeks we eat out more but in general this what we like to stick to.
I’m a huge fan of detoxes every once in awhile and I’ve done them before but I highly recommend this “reboot” because the food is actually tasty! Also, I know that juice cleanses are pretty big now and I’ve considered them but knowing that I like to eat actual food, I think juice cleanses would just make me feel stabby and probably not fun to be around 🙂
Go to the Whole Living site for more details on the 3 day reboot and the recipes, which are very easy to follow and the best part is, that the first day you prep almost all of the food so that it makes it very easy to stick to the diet for the next two days. One tip: in the beet salad, they have you put the scallions in the first day which was delicious but I ended up hating it the 2nd and 3rd day because all I tasted were the scallions which as you know, is a very strong flavor. Next time I will only add them on the day that I eat the salad.
I loved the breakfast smoothie so much that I made it this week too! I just made a batch on Monday and then filled the rest into mason jars for the next few days. It’s so easy to grab and go in the morning! I also add in chia seeds which is an amazing little “superfood” that doesn’t add flavor to your food but it add tons of nutrients. Read here for the benefits of chia seeds. I started adding them into my foods for the fiber but I’ve noticed all the other benefits including more energy and help keeping me feel full between meals. I recommend making a chia gel to keep in your fridge which makes it easier to add to your drinks. They become softer as I don’t love the crunchiness of the raw seeds but I really like the texture of the chia gel in my drink, it’s like a healthy version of bubble tea!
I order Chia Seeds from Amazon, mainly because I’m an Amazon Prime member and I love the free 2 day shipping so I haven’t really shopped around but I think the price on Amazon is pretty good.
And because if you know me, I can’t not have baked goods in my life. These are for after the detox obviously but when I need something relatively healthy to munch on with my coffee or tea, I make these raisin bran muffins that are low fat! They are just as good as any of those muffins you can get at coffee shops but you won’t feel as guilty after eating them.
It uses raisin bran cereal (I get mine at Trader Joe’s), whole wheat flour, only a 1/4 cup of brown sugar for 6 muffins
and no butter at all! I do suggest to add about a 1/2 cup (or more) of raisins to the batter if the cereal you use is skimpy on the raisins. I love these muffins and they are really easy to make. Side note: I make them a little less healthy by adding turbinado sugar on top but the crunchy topping completes it. Trust me
on this. 🙂
Anyway, if you were thinking of doing something like this, I highly recommend the 3 day reboot. 3 days is nothing and is so worth how your body feels after you are done!
When I first started cooking, I used to be scared off from recipes that had more than 5 ingredients and 5 steps. I just felt like I couldn’t handle all of that and the few times that I tried, I was disappointed with the results so was discouraged from cooking at all. I don’t know when it kicked in but when I finally learned to adapt recipes to my and my husbands tastes and make them easier for me to prep and cook, was when I started to enjoy cooking. Nowadays, I not only need “easy recipes”, I need recipes that can be put together and be on the table pretty quickly since I work almost all day and night (owning your own business does that to you) so I don’t have a lot of time to devote to the kitchen daily.
I love soup for dinner and clam chowder is an indulgence that I like to get at restaurants (Seattle has some great clam chowder!) but I’ve never made it myself. I suddenly had a craving for it and decided, why not? I looked at a few recipes and then made this one using the general ingredients but keeping it to my taste and using canned clams to make my life easier. This recipe only took me about 30 minutes to make so is perfect for those of you like me that want delicious meals in a short amount of time!
Makes about 4 servings
Ingredients:
2-3 slices of bacon, diced
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp flour (I used whole wheat flour)
1-2 cans of canned clams
Reserve liquid from the canned clams + water up to 2 cups
6-8 small golden potatoes
1/2 tsp dried thyme or 1 tsp of fresh thyme if you have it
1 cup milk (I used non fat – use whatever you have)
1 cup of heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
Sourdough bread bowls (not necessary but so yummy!)
Note: most recipes call for bay leaf but I didn’t feel like paying $3 for a whole thing of leaves when I would only use a few so I left it out and it still tasted fine
My first thing is to prep all your ingredients. This means dicing the clams (if you bought them whole), bacon, onion and potatoes before putting anything on the stove and pulling out all the other ingredients on your kitchen counter. As I’ve learned through tons of cooking mishaps, when you aren’t prepared is when you get in trouble with cooking and burning things.
In your large pot cook your bacon until almost crisp. Add the diced onion and butter. After the butter is melted, add the flour slowly to the mixture and stir to blend. This will help thicken the chowder. While this mixture is cooking (you want the onions to be softened) pour the liquid from the canned clams into a large measuring cup and then fill with water until you get about 2 cups of water/clam liquid mixture. (I used 2 cans of clams so I had about 1 cup of clam liquid and 1 cup of water).
Add the clam liquid/water mixture, diced potatoes, thyme and milk to the mixture. Bring to a boil, continue to stir it as it boils. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 15-20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender, stirring occasionally.
Add clams and heavy cream and bring to a simmer. Cook for only a few minutes more (you just want to heat up the clams since they are already good to go) but don’t cook too long as you don’t want your clams to get tough.
Add salt and pepper to taste and you are done!
Scoop into your bread bowls and enjoy your yummy meal.
One note on the recipe: I used two cans of clams which turned out to be a tad bit clammy for us so next time I will only be using one can. Just to let you know in case you don’t want yours to be too clammy either. Everything else was perfect!
I got all of my ingredients from Trader Joe’s including the bread bowls and I will say that the bread bowls were just as good as any restaurant ones that I’ve tried.
Have a good weekend! I’ve got a busy one ahead but am glad it’s a 3 day weekend! If you are in the mood for some new jewelry come check out my jewelry line and save up to $25 off your order!
My favorite kinds of foods are usually breakfast foods but I rarely eat them at breakfast time. It usually turns into brunch or breakfast for dinner, which is one my favorite meals to make. I love the breakfast sandwich and I know it’s not the healthiest thing so I don’t cook it often but, when I do, hubs loves it! I often make it with english muffins but we decided to go all out and get croissants this time. Either way is good, but man, you can’t beat a flaky buttery croissant!
This is all done free style so don’t feel like you have to stick with these directions. Everyone has different tastes in sandwiches and so this is how I make it but it works with just about any other applicable sandwich ingredients that you love too (like ham instead of sausage, adding cheese, adding cooked peppers etc…)
To make the sandwich:
Cook the sausages in the pan – I get the sausages from the grocery store that are already shaped into patties.
I do 1.5 sausage patties per sandwich. Just slice the patties in half, it makes it easier to arrange on the croissant.
Set aside on paper towels to absorb the grease then start on the eggs
Cook the eggs to your liking – I usually do over easy if I want a runny yolk or sometimes I just let the entire egg cook through kind of like McDonald’s style if you know what I mean.
Warm up the croissants in the oven/toaster oven – Slice them in half first, easier to do than when they are hot. I wasn’t paying attention and burned mine slightly. Oops! Oh well, I don’t claim to be a perfect cook! 😉
Plate it! Bottom half/sausages/egg/top half.
Making the breakfast potatoes:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Slice your potatoes into quarters or small pieces – I used baby gold potatoes
In a bowl combine: (I don’t give measurements because I don’t know them myself, I just add in whatever looks good to me to cover all the potatoes)
olive oil
rosemary (fresh or dried)
salt and pepper
chipotle pepper powder (optional but I like them with a bit of a kick!)
Whisk the ingredients together in the bowl and then toss your potatoes into the bowl and cover them in the oil mixture.
Spray your baking sheet
Place the potatoes on the sheet in one single layer
Bake for30 minutes or longer, whenever you start seeing the edges turn brown.
At the half way point you can take the pan out of the oven and turn your potatoes although mine were so small so I didn’t bother.
I like them extra crispy so I also let them sit under the broiler for 2 minutes.
Put it all together and eat your delish sandwich! It’s perfect for any
time of day but I’ll tell you that it is kind of heavy so prepared to take a nap afterwards! 😉
Thank you everyone for the anniversary wishes! We had a low key dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant (Machiavelli for you Seattle-ites – if you haven’t been, you gotta go, it’s amazing!) and are going to celebrate a bit bigger a little bit later on. 🙂
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