What better springtime recipe than some fresh tasting fish and seafood like my Tilapia Shrimp Scampi? This recipe evolved from the fact that I wanted to make shrimp scampi, but didn’t have enough shrimp left to make a whole meal for 4 people. So I incorporated a few pieces of tilapia I also had on hand and voila!

This has actually become one of the most popular pages found on my main Thrown-Together-Meals.com website from search engine traffic. Seems quite a few people are actually searching for tilapia shrimp scampi! Who knew?

The recipe has traditional flavors of scampi, including lemon juice, wine, butter and garlic.  I have usually served it with steamed white or brown  rice and a steamed broccoli and zucchini mixture. But it’d also be good with angel hair pasta and asparagus, if you want it to be more spring-y.

To get this Tilapia Shrimp Scampi recipe, just click the link. You can also find other fish and seafood recipes on the main site… or share your own recipe there. Or… if you know of a great fish/seafood cookbook, tell me about it here.

I hope you enjoy this! … And feel free to “hop” on over to Recipe Lion to see other contributions to their March Spring Blog Hop, won’t you:

This is a recipe from Kathi’s Test Kitchen, where I test various recipes from other chefs, foodie blogs, cookbooks and cooking shows. Sometimes, I change them up a bit; sometimes I make them exactly as written. Then I evaluate the recipe against a variety of rating factors. This week, I made Aarti Sequeira’s (Aarti Party) Chicken Tikka Masala, along with the cauliflower recipe from traditional Indian fare called Aloo Gobi.

I loved them! If you like Indian food, you’re going to love how accessible and easy Aarti makes it. I’ve tried quite a few of her recipes, but this is one of my favorites so far. I think I could eat it every day.

I didn’t have as great luck making Aarti’s Simple Basmati Rice recipe, but that may have been because I substituted brown Basmati rice for the regular white variety. Brown rice doesn’t have quite the same consistency. I happen to like it better, but that’s just me.

The chicken though, along with the cauliflower side dish, were so scrumptious.

To read my whole review, visit this Chicken Tikka Masala page on my main site.

With this week’s recipe, I paired flank steak with whole wheat orzo and asparagus and gave them all an Asian spice treatment. It wasn’t one of my greatest successes ever, but hubby seemed to like it.

I paired my flank steak with a marinade I found at one of my favorite recipes sites, AllRecipes.com. I should have let the flavor develop a little longer by  marinating the steak overnight, but never one to plan… I waited too long for that. I gave it about an hour, which is probably why it didn’t turn out as great as all the reviews led me to believe it would.

If you’d like to view my Asian flank steak recipe, click here. Or, you can also view other beef recipes, more Chinese recipes or even share your own favorite flank steak recipe with me. It’s all good…

There is nothing like soup on a cold winter night… so I recently created this hearty and healthy soup made with turkey kielbasa, garbanzo beans and lots of other healthy ingredients.

I made this soup in my slow cooker, but you could just as easily make it in a large kettle on top of your stove. Just be sure you simmer it for an hour or so to develop the flavors completely. It’s a great way to use up older veggies that won’t last much longer too!

This kielbasa bean soup would be great served with some crusty French bread or even cheese quesadillas.

To view the complete recipe, visit our main Thrown-Together-Meals.com website and explore our Kielbasa Bean Soup page. If you like that recipe, you might also want to take a look at our other soup recipes, sausage recipes or even contribute one of your own recipes. I love to see what other people cook too!

I hope you enjoy this one as much as hubby and I did…

Our easy hamburger goulash recipe is a super healthy recipe made with plenty of vegetables and big flavor.

I grew up during the 1960s on casseroles. They’re a great way to stretch your dollar and also make a delicious meal. To this day, I still love a good casserole. Talk about hearty! My mom’s standard goulash recipe incorporated macaroni, ground meat and tomatoes.

But I’m a more adventurous cook, so I often make an Italian goulash with ground turkey. This time around, though, I decided to use up some frozen macaroni and ground beef I had on hand. And, since I am addicted to vegetables and eating healthy these days, I also had to use as many fresh veggies in it as I could too.

The result was my latest thrown together meal creation… Easy Hamburger Goulash Stuffed with Veggies! You can view it by clicking on the link.

You may also want to check out our other ground beef recipes, ground turkey recipes or casserole recipes. And… if the spirit moves you… you can share your own recipes with us too! We’d love to try them.

Enjoy!

This black bean and lentil soup is a spicy southwestern soup recipe thrown together with what I had on hand in the house one night… Delish!

During these cold months of winter, nothing goes better for dinner than a warm, hearty soup recipe. This one fits the bill there…

“OK… black beans, tomatoes and ground turkey on hand… what to make? How about my signature quick chili? Great! Oops… I’m missing all the rest of the ingredients… rethink that plan…”

This is the conversation I had with myself one evening recently, when I drifted into the kitchen after a long day at the computer to make dinner. I love my chili, but I had to come up with a different thrown together soup recipe when I realized I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand to make the traditional chili.

A few veggies, some spices and a canister of lentils later, I had a flavorful pot of soup going. You’ll find the full recipe and detailed cooking instructions on my main recipe site, Thrown Together Meals…

Black Bean and Lentil Soup

I hope you enjoy!

I love chili! I grew up on it, but my mom made it the old-fashioned way, with dried beans that had to be soaked overnight, fatty ground beef and large chunks of tomatoes. Much as I loved it (and made it that way myself for years), once I became a single, working mom, I had to come up with an alternative if I wanted to keep eating chili.

So, I developed this easy vegetarian chili recipe. I went vegetarian because my girls became finicky about eating beef during their teen years and neither white chili nor ground turkey were too mainstream in the early 90s… at least not that I was aware of. So I developed this recipe that has lots of protein, but it comes from TVP and beans, rather than from beef.

These days, I often make this recipe using ground turkey because I cook now for my hubby and mother, both of whom like meat, but if you want to stick with the vegetarian version, you certainly can.

You’ll find my Easy Vegetarian Chili recipe here on my Thrown-Together-Meals.com website, along with some suggested variations. It’s certainly not the only vegetarian chili recipe out there, but it is uniquely mine and it’s fast and easy, not to mention healthy! Hope you enjoy…

When I went to London to visit my daughter who was studying abroad a few years ago, she took me to a London pub the first night to try out quintessential pub food. I decided to try Bangers and Mash, as it sounded interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the mixture of onions, sausage, mashed potatoes and gravy.

Several years later, I discovered a similar Americanized version in a Rachael Ray cookbook. Being one of her 30-minute meals, it’s fast and easy to make, using easily found ingredients. My recipe is strongly inspired by hers, but I go it one better and make my mashed potatoes from instant potato flakes. I like them just as well, and they’re definitely faster.

If you want to make the recipe even more British-traditional, add in some peas to your sausage, onion and gravy mixture. That way, you get in your green vegetables too!

You’ll find my Bangers and Mash recipe here, on my main Thrown-Together-Meals.com website. If you love sausage as much as I do, then take a look too at my easy sausage recipes… or feel free to share one of your own favorite recipes here.

For stick-to-the-ribs heartiness, you just can’t beat Bangers and Mash! Enjoy…

Do you like lasagna as much as I do? Mmm… hearty goodness, Italian-style! But let’s face it… traditional lasagna isn’t necessarily the healthiest meal around, no matter how great it tastes. In fact, my mom, never known for her tact, said to me yesterday afternoon when she heard I was making lasagna… “Wow… I’m surprised you’re making that… it’s not very healthy!”

My response was that THIS lasagna recipe was going to be healthy… and low fat. It was also thrown together, since I made it by using up foods I had on hand, without a set recipe. I’d had some ground chicken in the freezer for a while, along with some eggplant, so I thought why not combine them for a new take on lasagna?

You’ll find this delicious Chicken Veggie Lasagna recipe here… I hope you enjoy it! We sure did!

I’m always looking for new quick & easy & delicious dinner recipes too, so please feel free to share your favorite recipes, won’t you?

Or, if you have a favorite cookbook, I’d love to have you share a cookbook review with my other visitors too…

In fact, on that note, did you see my latest Rachael Ray cookbook review? This time it was her Just in Time Cookbook. Find out what I said about Rachael’s Just in Time offering right now…

That should keep you busy until next week!

I love fish! And tilapia is one of my favorite fishes… no bones to speak of in the fillets, tender, no strong fish taste and it takes on the flavors you cook it in wonderfully. And you can get some great deals on it at the grocery store. Recently, I’ve been buying a big bag of frozen tilapia fillets, so I always have some ready in the freezer any time I get the urge for a little fish. Fish is healthy for you too.

So last night, I threw together this easy fish recipe using tilapia and other ingredients I happened to have on hand. The result was Ginger Lime Tilapia. Sort of an Asian flavor profile, I guess you’d say. We just thought it tasted good!

You’ll find the Ginger Lime Tilapia recipe here on the main site. I think the key to its great flavor was using fresh ginger, cilantro and basil. You can buy a hunk of ginger and then freeze it, to keep indefinitely. Just take it out and grate it frozen right into your meal as needed. That way, you won’t end up throwing out the spoiled ginger root like I always did till I learned the freezing trick.

As for the herbs, most grocery stores these days stock fresh cilantro. You can buy a bunch for under a dollar and it’ll keep for about 2 weeks. If you use cilantro as much as I do, you’ll probably pretty much use it up in that time, but if you do have to throw any out, since it was so cheap, it’s not too hard to take. Or, you can shred some up in a food processor with a little water and then freeze it in portion sizes for future use. Not quite the same, but still better than dried.

And basil plants are easy to come by in season. Buy one and keep it on your kitchen windowsill or counter. Then, just pick off a few leaves any time you want some basil flavoring in a dish. The smells of fresh basil and cilantro are enough to make me swoon!