Recipes for a College Student

One of the many struggles that I have is figuring out what to cook for dinner each night. Thankfully right now my boyfriend and I live with my cousin and her husband so we split the nights to figure out what we are doing for dinner. Coming from a small family my mom didn't have tons of recipes that she cooked from. I would say she probably had about 5 main things she could cook and that was about it. Although I know how to cook, when I first moved out of my parent's house, I didn't know how to cook an enormous amount of dinners. And I don't know about you but I get sick of the same things every week. So, I began searching recipes on Pinterest and have had a lot of success with the recipes I found. If you are like me I don't have a lot of knowledge about adding seasons and spices so I normally chose recipes that don't have a lot of ingredients and needs for spices.

I recommend writing down on little pieces of paper every meal that you know how to cook or want to attempt to cook and throw them in a bucket of some sort. That way when you have no idea what to cook you can just grab one of the pieces of paper out of the bucket and it will jog your memory of what choices you have for dinner. I started this project but haven't yet finished it. I absolutely hate waiting till the last minute to figure out what we are going to cook but it is also hard to figure out what we are going to cook and buy all of it at once, at the beginning of the week. Our lives right now are very hectic and a lot of times things come up at the last minute or friends will call us the day of and ask us to join them for dinner.

Although I still do not have an abundance of recipes for dinner, (I'll get there one day) I have come across a couple of recipes in the last couple of years that have been really good. I want to share these with you so that maybe you can add to your dinner menu. So here they are and I will provide the links to the recipes (they aren't my recipes, I got them off of Pinterest, so I want to give credit to the people that own these recipes):

Dinners:
1. Chicken Casserole- One of my mom's recipes, see below
2. Chicken with Green Beans and potatoes
3. Enchilada Pasta - my favorite!
4. Lasagna - I don't have a link for this, normally I just get Stouffers
5. Taco Soup
6. Steamed Shrimp- my secret for this one is that you can go to Publix or Kroger and go to the seafood section and ask them to steam some shrimp for you! You can pick a seasoning and it takes about 15 minutes and then I just get two sides to go with it. It's so quick and easy! Normally I get about 1 pound for two people
7. Grilled Chicken - I pair this one with two sides, such as green beans and mac & cheese and cook the chicken on the George Foreman Grill. I use Mrs. Dash seasoning.
8. Tilapia- We found this amazing seasoning from Whole Foods

Breakfast:
1. Breakfast Casserole

Appetizers:
1. Jalapeno poppers- For this one I just take crescent roles and lay them out and then add a little bit of cream cheese, some chopped up bacon, and jalapenos. Then I bake them in the oven for 15 minutes at 350
2. Buffalo Chicken Dip


Chicken Casserole Recipe:

4 chicken breast

2 cans of cream of chicken

2 cans of cream of mushroom

White Rice

Wash chicken breast. Place in pot with water, salt and butter. Boil slow and low about 1 hour. Tear apart chicken in casserole dish. Heat up cream of chicken and mushroom with butter, if thick, then add some of the broth from the chicken. STIR! Will burn on bottom. Pour over chicken in dish. Place in oven on 350 degrees for about 30 mins. Cook the rice and serve as a side!

Hope you enjoyed my recipes for a college student!