Did you know you can find Plated Meal Kits at the Grocery Store?

Recently, I was enjoying the option of being able to skip a trip to the grocery store by ordering my groceries online.  Seriously, what a treat!  As I was ordering I saw that my local Jewel carries Plated meals, and thought I'd give it a try.  If you are like me, you like to try new recipes and are happy for the convenience of getting a box containing everything you need along with detailed instructions.   Yesterday I made the Gnocchi Pomodoro.  I had one slight hiccup with my meal prep.  The yellow squash in the meal kit was not fresh. Lucky for me, I had garden fresh zucchini ready to use.  If I hadn't, I would have contacted Plated to see if I could get a replacement meal because the yellow squash shouldn't have had brown slimy spots. 

You get a bi-fold in the kit showing the included ingredients and step-by-step instructions with pictures.

Here is my good looking zucchini 

The instructions were easy to follow and the meal came together quickly.  The kit included a small amount of sugar to add to sauce, I chose not to use it as the sauce had  a nice rich flavor.

 I love a skillet filled with a colorful meal and this meal definitely fit that criteria.

Behold!  The finished product.  The meal claims to be for two people but I got three decent sized servings. If you threw in one more squash or zucchini or some mushrooms, you could feel a family of four from this kit.

Will I buy more from Plated?  Yes, but in the future I'll be sure to buy it when I am at the store and can see the meal and judge the freshness of the produce. (FWIW this isn't an ad, I paid for the meal and just felt like writing about it.)

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How's the book going?

Thanks for asking!  I spent a few days thinking I should start back at the beginning of my book and read through what I have written and work on finding continuity errors. I sort of started on this work, but now I'm back in the frame of mind that I should just keep on writing until I get to the end and then begin to work through what I have written to do major editing and revising.

 I did spend some time make a detailed floor plan of my main character's condo- not really necessary- what I should be doing is make a map of the town where my book takes place so I have that to refer to when I am placing people and places.

Have a great day!
xoxo

MMMmmm meal pics...

Temps have been dropping down into the 50s at night. So although,  it's still August, I went ahead and made some chili last night for Miss Anna.  Anna has been feeling pretty nervous and anxious about her new school, so if a little chili for dinner puts a smile on her face...well then.

 

Here is 1 pound of ground turkey with 3 tbsps of our Wahoo! Chili Mix. Yes that is my Pampered Chef mixer thingy; it's great for mashing up stuff.  Oh! I also added 1 tbsp of Garlic Garlic.

Next I added tomatoes and beans.  Anna loves beans especially butter beans, so I always add a can of butter beans to our chili.  I went with a small can of diced tomatoes but later on I found that it needed more tomato-ness, so I chopped up 2 fresh tomatoes and added them.  Why fresh tomatoes?  Because they were getting ready to go bad, so I was glad to get them used up. In a perfect world I think I would have just used the 28oz can of diced tomatoes that is sitting in my cabinet.

In addition to the tomatoes and the beans I like to add some fresh vegetables. What vegetables?  That is determined by what I have in the refrigerator.  Last night,  I went with one diced green pepper and 3 stalks of celery chopped.

Celery, my old cutting board, and the very dated kitchen cabinets in our kitchen.

Look at those pretty colors! Then I added about 1/2 cup chicken broth and let it all simmer for 20ish minutes.

And here we have Anna's Chili.  With Wahoo! Chili, it's an amazingly easy dish to make.  I should have just had Anna make dinner.  Chili is also pretty forgiving, you don't need to worry too much about the ingredient measurements.