I don’t like to cook, but I love to feed my husband. This first year of marriage has brought with it many culinary adventures. Like the time I accidentally put Beef Stew Seasoning on my “taco” meat and sobbed in despair over my ruined tacos. Max is pushing for a reality show starring me called “Jenna Cooks!” because it would be full of drama. I march to the beat of my own drum in the kitchen.

Ever since I was little, I have preferred my pancakes as “Flip Overs.” You cook one side, flip it over like an omelet and leave the rest as raw batter. It is delicious and nothing you say will ever change how I feel about them. My dad will try to make them like this for me, but always cooks them too long and ruins them. I make them PERFECTLY.

Regardless of what I make or the level of its complexity (Spoiler alert, it is always simple), Max fauns over any food put in front of him. Whatever I make for dinner is the best thing he has ever tasted – I love him for that. It gives me a very false sense of confidence- like I belong in some sort of cooking competition with my incredible talent.

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Although my ego is inflated by my adoring husband’s dinner reviews, I would not call myself chef. I have, however, “mastered” a few simple meals that we have on rotation. We eat the same meals over and over until we are sick of them, take a break, and then throw them back in the rotation.

Since Max and I prefer to spend all of our carbs and calories on donuts and excessive amounts of desserts, we eat very healthy dinners. It makes us feel better about the ice cream. We keep it simple and kind of boring because calories are better spent on dessert…and also I can’t make fancy things yet.

Here are the meals we do on rotation: I don’t ever measure and throw things together with no rhyme or reason..another highlight of the potential show, “Jenna Cooks!”

1. Sweet Potato Hash -Sauteed Onions, chopped up sweet potatoes, ground turkey. Do some cooking of each. Seasoned and delicious. Eat with roasted veggies.
2. Meat Loaf– Max is the Meat Loaf King but I have made a few good loaves as well. We have about 16 loaf pans and one baking sheet. We sub the things like crushed up Ritz crackers with oatmeal and replace as many “unhealthy” things as we can. Served with a brown sugar, mustard, ketchup sauce. not healthy but AMAZING. I could bathe in it.
3. Taco Boats– like I said, I prefer to save my carbs for binge eating candy, so we lay off the tortilla a lot. Halve peppers and load up all the taco goodies into them and bake. Cover with cheese and non-fat plain Greek Yogurt and tons of salsa. Delicious.
4. Grilled Turkey Burgers (no bun…I’m not kidding…we eat a lot of dessert) with roasted veggie. Simple.
5. Rotel Chicken in the Crock Pot- dump a couple cans of Rotel diced tomatoes over chicken…cook for an amount of time. Shred, add black beans, a can of corn, seasoning and sometimes a little cream cheese or plain greek yogurt. On special occasions we eat over Chips…but usually over a salad. So good.
6. Buffalo Chicken “Dip” – This isn’t really a dip because it’s super thick…but you could add more yogurt and less chicken to make it a dip. Chicken, hot sauce, cream cheese, greek yogurt, cheese on top. Sounds unhealthy but it’s not so you can eat it all.
7. Breakfast For Dinner – My husband has a weird obsession with breakfast food. I’m aware I’m in the minority in saying it doesn’t do that much for me. I like pancakes, of course, I’m a living breathing human, but the concept of breakfast is whatever. Max loves it. Eggs, sausage, protein pancakes. I never saw true joy on his face until the first day we had breakfast for dinner.

   

   

Those are most of our “rotation” meals that we eat during the work week. The highest prep one is the Sweet Potato Hash because it involves chopping and multiple steps, which I usually try to avoid. The rest are pretty low maintenance. Summer just began and I will have some more free time on my hands to experiment, so maybe I’ll bravely try a few new recipes in the coming weeks. I’ll keep you posted.

I would love to know some of your “rotation” meals- we aren’t sick of ours yet…but it’s only been a year.

xo

Jenna