I posted a photo of dinner on Instagram and Facebook and a couple folks asked for the recipe, so here you go.

This was compiled from several other recipes and seems to be super popular, so you may have seen it before — or some version of it. I think my Momma once gave me a pot roast recipe that used brown gravy and dressing mix, so I probably owe some credit to her for planting this in my head. Thanks, Momma!

Easy Crockpot Pot Roast:

Ingredients:
– Beef shoulder roast (or some other pot roast worthy cut of beef). Mine was 2.5 pounds, so you might adjust the ingredients as necessary (and cooking time) dependent upon your roast. FYI — I may have made a pot roast one other time and it wasn’t that great, so I am intimidated when it comes to going to the ol’ grocery store and picking out a cut of meat. Fortunately Publix stuck a big orange sticker on this one that said “for POT ROAST.” Thanks, Publix. It cost about $12.
– Three baking potatoes
– One medium sweet onion
– Four large carrots, peeled
– A packet of brown gravy mix

– A packet of Good Seasonings italian dressing mix

– A packet of Ranch Dressing mix. (NOTE – this is the powdered mix. For the love of cooking, do not squirt ranch dressing in your crockpot).

– 2 cups of water

Directions:
– Put the meat in the bottom of your crockpot.
– Whisk together the three seasoning packets with the two cups of water in a separate bowl. Pour over meat.

– Turn crockpot on low and cook for 4 hours.
– After those four hours, chop potatoes, onion and celery into sizeable chunks and toss them in the crockpot.
– Lift the meat up with some tongs and let the veggies get on the bottom of the crockpot — put the meat back in on top. While you’ve got the top off go ahead and spoon some of delicious gravy on top of the meat.
– Cook on HIGH for 3 more hours.
– Remove meat, chop it up and toss back in with your veggies. Be a redneck and serve it straight outta the crockpot. EAT!

If you want to get real crazy, you could pour some of the juice out and make some gravy with it — but I won’t pretend to know how to do that.

Now, this cook time seemed to work out pretty well for me. The potatoes could have been a teency bit softer, but I didn’t want them in there the whole time because they would have disolved. So, you can adjust the veggie add-in time according to how your like yours. This cook time above kept the meat tender and the veggies just soft enough, but still with consistency.

Enjoy!

XOXO,
Jenn

BOOM. That’s what this dish will do to your taste buds.

And, I’m proud to say I made this one up all by my little self.

I’m totally into these “stuffed chicken” recipes where I stuff the inside of the chicken breast with some kind of cheese, herbs, veggies or whatever tickles my fancy.

This one was a real winner and we already had all the ingredients at home – big bonus.

Herbed Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken in Honey Ginger Marinade
Serves 2

Ingredients:

Two large chicken breasts

½ cup goat cheese

One tsp of dried rosemary

One tsp or dried thyme

Two big squeezes of the honey bear (about 2 healthy TBS of honey)

One TBS of rice wine vinegar (or rice vinegar)

One TBS of soy sauce

One tsp minced garlic

Drizzle (two swirls of the bowl) of extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp of ground ginger (more to taste)

Salt and Pepper

Directions:
Cut a pocket in your chicken breasts. On a cutting board, with the breast laying flat, start cutting at one end like you’re going to butterfly and lay it open. But just cut a pocket in it and don’t go all the way from end to end.

In a bowl, combine the goat cheese, dried rosemary and thyme in a bowl and use a fork to break apart cheese and combine with the herbs.

Stuff half of this mixture in each chicken breast. Close flap down over cheese as best you can. You don’t want to overfill, or it will ooze out on the grill.

This looks really gross — I understand.

Combine honey, vinegar, EVOO, ginger, garlic and soy sauce. Just taste this marinade, y’all. And if you like more ginger or more honey, etc. just tweak it to your taste.

Sprinkle chicken with a little bit of salt and pepper on each side, then throw on a medium/high grill. Note — we put aluminum foil down on the grill so the chicken wouldn’t stick and so what little cheese did ooze out didn’t muck up the grill.

As the chicken cooks, baste each side with the marinade every few minutes. Be sure you turn the chicken halfway through cooking and do the other side, as well.

So, maybe it’s not really a marinade, but whatever. Baste baste baste.

Cook until done (will vary for different grills, but about 20ish minutes).

Enjoy, chickenheads!

XOXO,
Jenn

Y’all. This recipe will give your tastebuds a what for. It takes like three bites for them to realize what the heck is going on. It.is.awesome.

I adapted this recipe from a fellow Nashville blogger, Annakate. You can see her original recipe here, and I’ll give you my version with the changes, below.

Sweet, Spicy Watermelon Feta Salad
This recipe serves 3 – adjust accordingly.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup hot chili sauce (I used sriracha)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 1/4 teaspoons honey
1/4 cup light tasting olive oil (regular would probably be fine, but I like light tasting for dressings)
3 ½ cups cubed seedless watermelon
1/3 cup feta cheese
Salt to taste
chopped fresh mint and basil

Directions:
Combine chili sauce, rice vinegar and honey in a bowl and slowly mix in olive oil while you whisk. Right before you’re ready to serve, pour any liquid off watermelon and toss it in the bowl to combine with your chili mixture.

Plate, then top with crumbled feta cheese and fresh herbs. Sprinkle with salt.

Seriously y’all. This is really easy and it was the bomb as a summer side dish. Thanks so much to Annakate for the recipe! If you didn’t click on her recipe, she added tomatoes and didn’t use cheese. Those were the two big changes. Earlier in the summer I made a feta, watermelon and basil salad, so I couldn’t resist adding feta to this – and Rog doesn’t care for tomatoes, so this version of the recipe was born.

We served it alongside a stuffed chicken breast — like this recipe I posted recently. The only changes were I used sweet onion instead of purple and I used fresh rosemary and basil on the inside, since I had them. We baked it instead of grilling. Just as delicious.

Our temporary roommate who is staying with us this month while she does a medical rotation at Vandy brought me fresh rosemary, basil and mint from her mama’s garden. I was thrilled to use all of them in last night’s dinner!

Nom nom.

Then, I practiced my gymnastics routine and went to bed.

XOXO,
Jenn

I get so bored with chicken and just can’t hardly stomach a plain old baked chicken breast. But we have a huge bag of frozen chicken from Costco, and it must be eaten. So, last night I whipped up this little recipe on the fly and it was pretty dang good. Feast your eyes and bellies on this:

Feta, Rosemary and Onion Stuffed Chicken Breasts
Serves 2

 Ingredients:
Two chicken breasts
¼ cup finely chopped purple onion
1/3 cup feta cheese
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
Seasoned Salt
Italian seasoning
Olive oil

Directions:
Cut a little pocket in your chicken breasts. I sort of started butterflying them, but didn’t go all the way from end to end, so it made more of a pocket.

Mix onion, feta, garlic, rosemary and thyme together in a small bowl – drizzle with a little olive oil and stir together. The olive oil will help keep the chicken breast moist from the inside out.

Stuff mixture inside chicken breast.

Close up  — maybe seal with a toothpick or two if it’s stuffed full.

Drizzle the top of the chicken breasts with a little more olive oil and a dash of seasoned salt and Italian seasoning.

Grill until done – flipping once. Our grill was medium/high and took about 7 or 8 minutes per side.

You could also bake these – but we grilled them. I’d suggest baking at 375 in a glass baking dish for about 20 minutes depending on how big the chicken breasts are.

Enjoy!

XOXO,
Jenn