Dinner is served! Turkey Chili with Black Beans and Sweet Potatoes

Just in time for the "cold spell" that's landed in Houston, we've cooked up our latest What's for Dinner? Wednesday meal: Turkey Chili with Black Beans and Sweet Potatoes. Use your crock pot and spend less than 10 minutes on dinner. Our recommendation? Throw all your ingredients in your crock pot in the morning and set it to 8 hrs on low and come home to the delicious smell of your dinner.  Short on time? You can also cook this chili up in 4 hrs with a high setting.  Get the full recipe here.

Has the weather cooled down in your neck of the woods? What's your favorite cool weather food?  Share your thoughts with us by posting a comment below: 

What's for Dinner? Wednesday

Lunes, Martes, Miercoles! We're practicing our Spanish this Wednesday and getting ready to cook one of our favorite recipes because it's What's for Dinner? Wednesday!  Today we are busy as bees and using our crock pot again to make Black Bean and Sweet Potato Turkey Chili. We hope you can join us!

Gather these ingredients:

1 small yellow onion

2 cloves garlic

1 14.5 oz can tomatoes

1 15 oz can black beans

2 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 lb lean ground turkey

1 bay leaf

3/4 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp each of oregano, ground pepper,  and cayenne pepper

pinch of sea salt

2 tbsp chili powder

1.5 cup water

How to make it (Hint: so easy!)

Step One: Get out your crock pot (if you don't have one, buy one already! it has been a real life-changer for us).

Step Two: Find a can opener and get out your tomatoes and black beans and add them to the pot. Prep your sweet potatoes, garlic, and onion, and add them before covering your veggies with your turkey, spices, and water.

Step Three: Cover your crock pot and set it to cook on low for eight hours or four hours on high if you're really pressed for time.

Step Four: Check in on your dinner for a taste test about 20 minutes before it's time to serve and adjust your spices if necessary.  Then give it a stir.

Step Five:  Serve your delicious fall-inspired chili! 

Are you going to try this recipe? Let us know your thoughts by posting a comment in the space below:

Dinner is served! Multi-Talented Meatballs

Hope your Wednesday was amazing. We just got into a little fight with Paint trying to edit the above picture of our latest meal, but all is good now (because we won)!  Tonight we made Italian Meatballs in our slow cooker.  We say they're multi-talented meatballs, because you can use them for so many meals and meal variations.  We're kinda obsessed with this pita bread we discovered at Central Market, so we enjoyed a meatball-stuffed sandwich tonight, however, these meatballs would also do your favorite pasta proud. 

Did you try this meal? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below:

What's for dinner? Wednesday

You may find it hard to believe, but it's already Wednesday thanks to Labor Day being the start of the week.  That means it's What's for Dinner? Wednesday! This week we're breaking out our crock pots to make some Italian Meatballs.  Slow cook your way to delicious, healthy, and multi-talented packs of protein goodness with this recipe.  Before you start, be sure to heed this warning from our favorite "chef," The Zesty Guy:  "You know, once you go Italian, you'll never go back (click if you're a visual learner to watch the video)!" Warning heeded? Awesome! Let's get this party started!

Here are your ingredients: (Want them ahead of time next week? Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our weekly newsletter)

• 2  lbs lean, ground turkey
• 1.5 tbsp garlic powder
• 1.5 tbsp onion powder
• 1.5 tablespoon Italian Seasoning (equal parts thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, basil)
• 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms (omit if you'd like yours to be more dense)
• 2 cups unsalted tomato sauce
• 2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

How to set it up:

Step One: Find a bowl that can hold your turkey and spices.  Add your turkey and spices to the bowl! Don't have Italian Seasoning on hand? Neither did we.  Just mix together the herbs noted above (and if you need thyme, please come over...we have hundreds of containers of it for some odd reason).

Step Two:  You never would have figured out this one on your own, but we have you covered.  Using a dough scoop or your hands, form the meat + spice mixture into meatballs.  You can pick the size.  We made a little over 30 smaller meatballs.  As you shape them, put them in your crock pot.

Step Three:  Get your tomato sauce and pour it over your meatballs.  Top the whole thing off with your Parmesan cheese.

Step Four: Cover your crock pot and tell it to "get low, get low, get low."  You'll probably also need to set it to "Low" heat unless you have a rapping, high tech model (in which case we'd love it if you could share a video).  We haven't upgraded to this model yet, but find singing while we cook makes our food a lot tastier.  Let that baby run for 4 hours trying to stir occasionally (we made this once without stirring and it still tasted delish, but don't tell the crock pot police).

Step Five:  Enjoy your Italian Meatballs over pasta, in a sandwich, or however else you like to eat your meat.  We are addicted to making these as a sandwich with pita bread. If you have extra meatballs, you can always freeze them for another time.  Yay! Life just became easier!

Are you going to try this recipe? Let us know what you think by posting in the comments below: