I have two adult daughters, both of whom live in Austin. I try to visit as often as I can. It always seems like our visits revolve around food… generally Tex Mex kind of food, because that’s what they eat, more often than not. When they first moved there, it was the design your own burritos at a place called FreeBirds. Later, it was Texas beef brisket barbecue at Rudy’s and other places. We’ve also had good Texas steak at a few different locations.

But lately, what my girls have adopted as a regular habit is what they call breakfast tacos. We have something similar here in Boise that we call breakfast burritos, but the Texas variety is definitely better! The place they go to the most makes their own tortillas and are they ever good… and fresh, of course.

So anyway, I was thrilled recently when one of my readers added a recipe for egg tacos on the site. Perfect!

This version is a bit different, but it could still form the basis of something wonderful. If you want to check it out for yourself, go to the Egg Tacos recipe page on my main site. After you get there, you may want to look at our other egg recipes or even share one of your own very special recipes. Either way, I’m happy to have you!

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…

This Greek Chicken Rice Casserole recipe is a riff on an old standby family recipe that my entire extended family loves. The traditional version is very American. I decided to play around with different flavor profiles to add some ethnic flair to this tried and true recipe… in order to make it a bit more current.

One result was this Greek food-inspired version of MacNaughton Chicken Rice Casserole. It adds in some black olives and feta cheese and substitutes a wheat thin topping for potato chips. Plus, it has oregano, the original Greek spice, of course!

You can make the recipe healthier by using skinless, boneless chicken breasts, brown rice, and substituting Greek yogurt for at least some of the mayonnaise.  And low fat, low salt cream soup would help, as would using your own veggie broth, rather than bouillon or canned broth.

However, you mix it though, this is one delicious and flavorful recipe. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Here’s where you’ll find it:

Greek Chicken Rice Casserole

Other pages you might enjoy on the Thrown Together Meals site include:

• Easy chicken recipes for dinner
• Make ahead casserole recipes
• Kathi’s test kitchen, where I test recipes from famous cookbooks, other foodie websites and more

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!

Threw together a new dinner meal the other night. Had some frozen chicken breasts, was in the mood for rice and as I stood in my kitchen, thinking “What to make? What to make?”, I felt an inspiration for “Island Chicken”.

What’s that, you ask? Well, to me, it was fresh, tropical flavors. All of my meals include lots of veggies, because I’m very into healthy eating. And I had gotten a great deal on red, yellow and orange bell peppers at the store last weekend. So this seemed a great way to use them!

You can see the recipe on my Thrown-Together-Meals.com website. My family (and I) loved this meal!

We love our pork chops at our house! Usually I just make my go-to standard pork chop recipe, using cream of mushroom soup, but this week, I decided to mix it up a bit with a different flavor profile and also aiming at a more healthy dinner recipe too, since I’m currently focused on losing weight while still enjoying good food.

So, here is this week’s pork chop recipe, Italian-style. Hope you like it as much as we did! To view this recipe, got to our main site, Thrown-Together-Meals.com at our Italian-seasoned pork chop recipe page. You can also find more great pork recipes or share one of your own special recipes. Enjoy!

OK… once again, I got off track on publishing a new recipe every week. I’m trying to get this done, perhaps the second part of 2010 is when it will really happen!

So, here is my latest thrown together meal recipe, a turkey kielbasa recipe and couscous recipe rolled into one… I hope you enjoy it as much as my family and me did.

To view this recipe, with instructions and possible variations, see this page. You can also find more great sausage recipes or share your own special recipes here.

Enjoy!

I love the taste of kielbasa sausage and since it’s already cooked, it is so easy to incorporate into a fast meal you can have on the table in minutes. Growing up, my mom used to make a dish called spam and potatoes when we would go camping. This is kind of a take off on that favorite childhood memory.

For variations on this recipe, see this page. You can also find more great sausage recipes or share one of your own special recipes with our readers.

Hope you enjoy this!

This recipe came in through my monthly recipe contest submission page. It’s a delicious way to use some of that leftover turkey from your Thanksgiving or other holiday meals. I tried it and it’s great! Hope you enjoy it…

For variations on this recipe, see this page. You can also find more great turkey recipes or share one of your own special recipes.