Cozy & Easy Meals for the Fall

Every fall, it’s the same crazy, hectic mess. I love it, but while I get ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas, imminent school parties, my daughter being out of school for the holidays, and all sorts of other craziness, I need easy meals while life goes on among the crazy. No, correct that, I need Cozy & Easy Meals for the Fall, because, adding to all my personal crazy is the crazy-cold!

• One of my favorite recipes is shepherd pie, the easy kind, not the kind in my mom’s old recipe book. With just a few people at the table, we cut the recipe down, or we just save the leftovers for the next evening. It’s a great way to warm-up after a day on the go.

• My daughter’s favorite is our homemade hot-pockets, really just a hot-dog wrapped in dough with some spaghetti sauce, or leftover bacon with cheese and scrambled egg (we like these for dinner if there were leftovers at breakfast).

• One we can both agree on, though, is Stouffer’s Macaroni & Cheese. It’s preservative-free, and has freshly made pasta and real aged cheddar cheese. It’s a creamy, delicious meal that I don’t have to fuss much with. Just pop it in the oven (I don’t even have to boil water), then when the magic beep happens, serve. Of all the ideas I have, this is, hand’s down, the easiest of them to “cook”. I really don’t have to do anything (which I kind-of love).

• Another cozy and easy meal my daughter and I both get into is my recipe for Slow-Cooker Taco Soup. It’s always good, easy to throw together, and basically is a super-reliable meal we’ll both enjoy. ‘Nuff said.

• To top-off all these fabulous meals, I usually throw-together a loaf of Lazy Woman Bread, but really, sometimes, I just make a loaf of plain white bread in the bread-maker and go on.

I really need more ideas, though! Take this weekend for example. On Sunday evening, I had a ton going on. We just got back from a little mini-vacation, we were getting ready for school on Monday, and then, like a freight-train, I realized we were almost out of time to make dinner! Good ‘ole Stouffer’s mac-n-cheese was there for me, though. I was able to continue getting the daughter ready for school, keep unpacking, and make dinner all at the same time (talk about multi-tasking!).

No one went hungry that night (just kidding, we never go hungry!), I didn’t blow a gasket about being too rushed-around, and dinner tasted great. Not only that, but a couple of my daughter’s friends came by to visit and while they were here, we re-warmed some of the mac-n-cheese for them!  We ended up eating every bite. And on top of that, we chowed-down on a couple of Nestle’s Drumsticks in Peppermint, for the holiday season, of course! I don’t know, there’s just something about eating an ice cream cone when it’s below 40 outside…it’s like an oxymoron of fun!

Speaking of fun, I thought it would be hilarious to show how fast the mac-n-cheese went at my house. Check out my video!

http://instagram.com/p/ve0bwFNS7Y/?modal=true

Maybe it’s wrong, but I’m going to go ahead and plan on running by WalMart sometime this week to pick up another party-sized Stouffer’s Macaroni & Cheese and Nestle Drumstick Peppermint Cones, just in case I have another debacle next weekend.

Special thanks for sponsoring this post goes to #Feast4All #CollectiveBias

You can check out more of their awesome Fall Flavors from Stouffers and WalMart by visiting their Pintrest Board here: