The Kels Cooks Alone

I've mentioned before that I have a very hard time adjusting to cooking/shopping alone when Mike is not around. For one thing, I'm not great at cooking meat or using the grill. Also: shopping at Costco has to be VERY intentional and can be overwhelming alone. I still have to go, though, because obviously I'm not going to buy anything less than a 6 month supply of paper towels...

Anyway, you guys don't need to worry about me because I've figured out some things that work for me. Although, thank you Auntie Deb for telling me in advance not to mix my brownies with the standing mixer because it may overmix them. 

*****If anyone has any awesome standing mixer or cast iron pan recipes, those are the things I want to start to utilize more!

Here is what I've been making/utilizing lately!

• Crockpot Soup: There is no rhyme or reason to this. I put a bunch of stuff in our slow cooker, press slow cook, and keep checking until it's done. My favorites lately are:
• chicken tortilla soup (I buy a rotisserie chicken and shred it to add in after)
• lentil soup (it takes about 4 hours in the slow cooker).
• Crockpot Steel cut oats: I made these in the slow cooker and made a gigantic mess...apparently because I pressurized them with the vent open? Anyway....after cleaning up the mess, they were still delicious. I think I always forget how delicious they are because they take so much work. If they didn't, I'd only eat steel cut oats. 
• Smoothies in our old new Vitamix!: We bought a refurbished vitamix and I like to make a smoothie in the morning and drink it on the way to work. Here are my favorites as of late:
• green smoothie: vanilla protein powder + frozen spinach + frozen (ripe!) bananas + flax + almond milk
• chocolate banana: chocolate protein powder (I use shakeology) + frozen bananas + cinnamon + flax + almond milk
• Crockpot Meatz: I put some kind of frozen meat in the crockpot, add a sauce (coconut curry sauce lately) and 1-2 cans of diced tomatoes, then I press a button and keep checking until it's done. This has worked once, but I may have overcooked the meat. Oh well.
• Spiralized Veggies! We got a veggie spiralizer not too long ago and my two favorite thigns ot use it for are:
• zoodles! spiralize a zucchini, cook in pan with olive oil till soft, top with sauce!
• sweet potato hash browns! I do the same thing with a sweet potato (watch because they like to burn) and top with ketchup!

And here's what I've been up to lately!

A scholarship award dinner for two of my students who got a scholarship recently!!

Sweet potato hash browns + veggie burger topped with egg!

Auntie time over the weekend!

Every time.