One pot kielbasa and rice with peas

This easy one pot kielbasa and rice with peas is a family friendly weeknight dinner that's ready in less than 30 minutes. 

You know I'm all about quick and easy, real-food dinners that anyone can make, right? (I mean, if you don't know that by now, after six years, I must be doing something wrong!!)

I've pretty much got the mother of all them this week.

Easy One Pot Weeknight Dinner

This one-pot dinner made with kielbasa, rice and peas is so crazy easy and so crazy yummy that you will quickly make it a weekly regular, I can almost promise. Plus, it's a complete meal, made in less than 30 minutes in one skillet -- what's not to love?

Creamy slow cooker pork and vegetables

Creamy slow cooker pork and vegetables: easy weeknight comfort food that will make your whole house smell as good as dinner tastes.

Do you remember that Carly Simon song, "Anticipation"? The one used in the popular Heinz ketchup commercial when I was growing up? The one that evoked the feeling of not being able to wait to taste something? (Although ketchup -- really? I could wait, no problem, really.)

That song will be running through your head all day long as you smell this creamy slow cooker pork and vegetables dinner cooking. I speak from experience.

Slow Cooker Comfort Food

And it wasn't just me. The first time I made this slow cooker recipe, a pair of HVAC guys were working upstairs in our house, installing a new air conditioning system. At the end of the day, one of the guys said to me, "Well, we have a little problem."

I begin freaking out. You know, because I'm always so calm when problems arise (snort). "What's wrong?"

He replied, "We really don't mind working hard all day. But you made it really, really hard today since you've made us smell something that delicious all day long!"

Easy tomato and sausage ragu

Why settle for jarred pasta sauce when you can make this easy tomato and sausage ragu with mushrooms and fresh herbs instead? 

Can you believe I was nearly 30 years old before I discovered the awesome glory of sausage?

[Seriously -- if you a regular reader of the Ninj, pick yourself up off the floor, as you know I tend to add sausage or bacon to nearly everything. Are you new? Go ahead, search on "sausage" or "bacon" in the search box. I'll wait ... get it now?]

Growing up, sausage to me meant an oily, hot sausage-and-pepper grinder (hero, hoagie, sub, whatever) -- and those just grossed me out (they still do). Therefore, in my mind I didn't like sausage. Period.

While Mr. Ninj and I were dating, he would occasionally cook for me (ah, those were the days!), and once he made some pasta dish that involve browning sausage as the first step.

This is so pathetic to admit now, but I watched in utter amazement as he CUT THE CASING OFF and added just the ground meat to the pan to brown. Whhhhaaaaattt???? Crumbled sausage? Sausage that isn't in a log shape or drowning in soggy pepper juice? Pure genius!

It's been fast ride straight down the pork hill from that day. All the way to this easy, way-better-than-jarred tomato and sausage ragu.

Easy slow cooker jambalaya

Enjoy this easy jambalaya, delivering all the spicy Creole flavor you love but made effortlessly in your slow cooker.

Did I ever tell you that I lived in New Orleans for a while? (Yeah, like you're surprised anymore by the number of places The Ninj has lived...)

Let's just say it was a nice place to visit. :-)

But the food. Oh my gosh, the food. It's the only place I've ever lived where I gained more than 10 pounds really, really quickly. Because the food. Oh my gosh, the food.

In fact, I had never even eaten jambalaya until I lived in New Orleans. And I certainly had no idea the awesomeness that I was missing! Jambalaya is now one of my all-time favorite comfort foods -- and not just because of the smoked sausage.

Yet, as with long-cooking rice dishes like risotto, I never really made jambalaya a lot at home because it was too time-consuming.

Not so anymore, thanks to the slow cooker.

Slow cooker chicken corn chowder

This healthy chicken corn chowder is made effortlessly in the slow cooker -- an easy and satisfying weeknight comfort food dinner.

I'm back with another slow cooker recipe.

Seriously: I've been on a slow cooker tear lately -- largely because I am single-handedly painting the interior of our new house (I know, I'm insane. Or just cheap. Or both). As you would guess, this is more than a bit time-consuming and tiring. By the time I finish up for the day, the last thing I want to think about is making dinner.

And you know how I feel about take out. Well, I might consider it if there was any place other than Domino's in my new 'hood that delivered to a house beyond walking distance from the local university... but there's not.

So I've been focusing on making the easiest weeknight dinners possible. Which is why I'm working my slow cooker overtime. Especially with no-prep-required slow cooker recipes, like this skinny chicken corn chowder.

Healthy slow cooker cashew chicken tacos

Whip up these easy, healthy cashew chicken tacos in the slow cooker as a weeknight dinner or a crowd-pleasing party appetizer.

I know: another slow cooker recipe. But really, can you blame me? They're so good and so freakin' easy -- it almost feels like having someone make dinner for me for a change.

Almost.

And this slow cooker cashew chicken taco recipe is no exception to the so-good-so-easy theme. Simply blend up a five-ingredient sauce, pour it over chicken in the slow cooker and -- SHAZAM -- a few hours later, you've got tacos!

It's a pretty perfect healthy and easy weeknight dinner recipe. Plus, if you use corn tortillas instead of flour ones, it's a gluten-free dinner recipe, too.

Nutty vegetarian lasagna

Introduce more meatless meals into your weekly menu, starting with this nutty vegetarian lasagna, loaded with Brussels sprouts and kale.

Have you seen the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans that were all over the news lately? The new guidelines tell us, basically, to consume less meat and sugar and eat more veggies. What a shocker, right?

But, if you're a meatasaurus like I am, or if you have a picky eater in the house, it can be hard to introduce veggie-packed, meatless meals into the menu mix.

Good news: One easy and delicious place to start is this nutty vegetarian lasagna, loaded with good-for-you veggies like Brussels sprouts, mushrooms and kale with a nutty twist from pureed cashews. Yes, cashews -- in your lasagna!

If you're a lasagna purist, you might be skeptical. I promise you that this nutty vegetarian lasagna in no way misses the mark for comfort-food heartiness or flavor. Even I-Never-Met-A-Vegetable-I-Liked Mr. Ninj gave it two thumbs up -- and had two helpings.

Easiest slow cooker chicken tikka masala

You're going to love this healthy recipe for making amazing chicken tikka masala effortlessly in your slow cooker.

Regular readers know I'm more than a little obsessed with slow cooker meals -- heck, with making anything in my slow cooker. And not simply the usual soup or chili but also the unexpected: oatmeal, cake, bread pudding -- nothing is off limits.

It's largely because I am all about recipes that are not only healthy and delicious but also easy or even downright effortless.

Which is why it drives me absolutely bananas when I see slow cooker recipes that require pre-crock stovetop preparation. What is up with that? The whole point of the slow cooker, for me, is to make meal prep easier, not add extra steps.

I just don't get it. Why put the effort back into something effortless?

Skinny taco soup

This skinny taco soup has all the flavor and crunch of a loaded taco but in a healthy, easy-to-make, comfort-food soup.

Does anyone make soup in the summer? Or is it just a cold-weather comfort-food thing? Which it definitely is for me.

And I particularly love a good, hearty soup -- not quite as thick as a stew but still filling enough to be an entire meal unto itself.

This skinny taco soup is just such a soup. It's got all flavors of a taco -- spicy chilis, browned turkey, crunchy tortillas and sharp cheddar cheese --  in an easy-to-make soup. Plus there's a whole load of good-for-you beans and veggies thrown in to make it a healthy weeknight meal.

Butternut mac and cheese

Butternut mac and cheese is a hearty, meatless dish that even the pickiest eater will love; so good, they'll never suspect it's healthy!

This recipe originally appeared in 2013 on the Kitchen Apparel blog, as part of a blog swap. Since that blog is no longer active, Sandra, its owner, graciously gave permission for me to repost it here at Yankee Kitchen Ninja. We'll miss Sandra's gorgeous photography and healthy recipes but wish her much luck and success in her new endeavors.

As part of the blog swap, given that we planned it for October, we considered making something with pumpkin. Then, as now, we realized that we were already completely sick of pumpkin (and assumed you probably were, too) so instead opened our topic up to all fall squash.

And, out of “all fall squash”, we both ended up making a pasta dish using butternut squash.

But come on, who can blame us? It's the squash that, with a little butter and maple syrup, can nearly taste like candy.

(Not quite like candy, I realize. But more like candy than, say, a paper bag though, right? Bear with me, I tend to be dramatic when it comes to trying to get you to make a recipe I like.)

Sandra's recipe (which I'm happy will live on as part of Yankee Kitchen Ninja!) was a gorgeous, delicious pasta with butternut squash, broccoli and cranberry beans. I urge you to try it. But I also urge you to try this butternut mac and cheese recipe -- it's freakin' awesome, and only partly due to the fact that Mr. Ninj actually ate it.

Little back story: Mr. Ninj is not a fan of vegetables and claims that it's not often the taste but the texture that turns him off (he is genuinely afraid of asparagus in any form). It's sort of like having a 3-year-old picky eater, to which I'm sure many of you can relate. So when he saw the roasted butternut squash sitting on the kitchen counter as I pulled this dish together, he freaked. I assured him that, because it was being incorporated into the cheesy sauce, he'd never even know it was there.

I was lying, of course -- but, holy smokes, it turned out to be true!

Fresh plum breakfast cake

Fresh plum breakfast cake -- a not-too-sweet treat, perfect for showcasing end-of-summer juicy ripe red plums.

I found some gorgeous, juicy, ripe red plums at a local farm market recently and my brain immediately jumped to plum cake. A plum cake that you could eat for breakfast.

When I was really small, we had an Italian prune plum tree in the backyard of our house in New York. Now, mind you,  I barely even remember this house (we moved when I was three) but the plums factored in heavily. In fact, I have only three total memories of the place:

1. Dancing in my next-door BFF Nancy's rec room basement to a real jukebox that played my favorite song at the time -- Elton John's "Crocodile Rock"
2. Being heartbroken when I got sick all over my favorite stuffed elephant pillow (it was blue and I called it "Nelliephant") and it had to be thrown away
3. Pulling little purple prune plums off the tree in the backyard, rinsing them under the spigot on the back of the house and eating them, still warm from the sun

Seriously. Those are my only take-aways from that house.

But those plums! My mom used to turn them into this amazing, dense plum cake that I loved -- largely because it wasn't too sweet and, after we'd had it for dessert the first evening, she would often let us have a piece for breakfast, too. Because fruit is good for you, I guess.

Unfortunately, my mom was out of town recently when I scored my red plums so I didn't have access to her recipe. And I wasn't sure I wanted to mess with a classic by trying to use the juicier red plum instead of the prune plum, so I turned to my favorite, reliable baking source -- Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours -- for an alternative.

Lightened Ukrainian mac and cheese

Ukrainian mac and cheese: a rich and cheesy comfort food pasta dish -- with bacon! -- that's lightened, guilt-free and easy enough for a busy weeknight. 

I'm not even going to get into, yet again, how much of a pasta addict I am. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually more of a comfort food addict -- and most of my favorite comfort foods are pasta dishes?

Either way, I've got an amazing double whammy for you today. Ukrainian mac and cheese, which is comfort food pasta that I'm completely cray cray about right now.

And there's bacon in it.

Yep, the food world may be scoffing at bacon, calling it "so over", but, for the true bacon fan, BACON WILL NEVER BE OVER. (Can I get an amen or a hellz yeah?!)

But never fear: This Ukranian mac and cheese is also a lightened recipe, so you don't have to feel guilty about digging into all the rich, cheesey goodness.

And speaking of cheesiness, the only cheese in this mac and cheese is cottage cheese, giving it less of an ooey-gooey cheesiness and more of a rich and creamy cheesiness.

Why Ukrainian? Well, the recipe I adapted it from calls for lokshyna, which are Ukrainian egg noodles. Given that I have no bloody idea where I'd find something like that, I simply used whole-wheat egg noodles but kept the Ukrainian nomenclature as a nod to its origins.

Booyah: We're getting all international over here, aren't we?

Carrot and turkey pasta

Enjoy this easy, healthy pasta recipe that features lots of good-for-you carrots, lean ground turkey and dried plums. 

I'm pretty psyched about this carrot and turkey pasta, peeps. Read that sentence again and you'll know why. Carrots. As the main ingredient in a pasta dish.

And -- wait for it -- it doesn't suck.

So much so that it got two thumbs up from Mr. Ninj, and regular readers know that's like having your picky three-year-old eater declare that she is a devoted fan of lentils salads.

Now that you're already reeling from the fact that a carrot-based pasta is awesome, let me turn it up to eleven: There are also prunes in this pasta dish.

Whoops, sorry, I meant dried plums. Apparently prunes got a bad rep as prunes and have now been reinvented as dried plums. The plum formerly known as a prune.

Whatevs. I still love prunes. I mean dried plums.

And I've got 'em in this pasta, adding a little touch of natural sweetness.

Light mac and cheese with greens: gluten-free or not

Enjoy this lightened yet rich and creamy mac and cheese, loaded with good-for-you collard greens, two ways: gluten-free or not.

Eating lighter and adding veggies to your diet doesn't have to mean giving up the foods you love. Case in point: mac and cheese.

Regular readers know I'm pretty much addicted to pasta. Even though I know the carb-loading is doing nothing for my waistline, I'm powerless against the pull of cheesy, filling comfort food (seriously: I may need a support group). To make my addiction slightly less bad for me, I've been embracing healthier styles of pasta, like whole wheat pasta and brown rice pastas.

The good thing about brown rice pasta is that it's also gluten-free, which I know is an important recipe element to many of you. So, whenever I can, I like to share recipes that can be made gluten-free if needed but don't exclude those who don't eat gluten-free.

You've got a love a pasta recipe where everybody wins. So you're definitely going to love this win-win lightened mac and cheese with collard greens.

Collard greens, I hate to say, are terribly misunderstood. If you're one of those people who has only ever tried them braised (I think praising them for their "liquor" is rubbish), with the life cooked out of them so that they're a nasty, sickly green color, I won't blame you if you say you hate them. I hate them cooked that way, too.

But you've got to give them another try. Hey, I used to claim to hate pork chops, too, because the only way I ever ate them was the way my mother cooked them: dried out to the point of being inedible unless immersed in a side of applesauce because 1970s cooks worried that pinkish, juicy pork would give us worms ... or worse.

Turkey cordon bleu pasta

Use your holiday leftovers in this recipe for deconstructed turkey (or chicken) cordon bleu pasta: quick and easy to make, lighter than you'd think.

As I promised last week, I'm continuing my Thanksgiving leftovers posts this week, despite the fact that Thanksgiving hasn't even arrived yet, because I love using up the leftovers almost as much as preparing the holiday feast. So much so that a reader suggested I make two turkeys this year.

An excellent suggestion!

Since there are only so many turkey sandwiches that you can eat before you get sick of the stuff, I like to change it up with different kinds of dishes, such as last week's turkey, apple and fennel bread salad (I'm still eating it regularly, people -- it's that good). Another great one? Today's turkey cordon bleu pasta.

Yes, pasta! You know, because nearly all my favorite comfort foods are pasta, I swear.

Now, this is not quite the same as the chicken cordon bleu you might be envisioning -- there's no pounding, no stuffing, no breading, no layering and nothing at all French-ish (even though traditional Chicken Cordon Bleu, I'm told, is all-American and has nothing to do with France or the similarly named culinary institute -- go figure). So it's more of a deconstructed chicken cordon bleu. But with turkey. And pasta.

Simple apple and herb stuffing muffins

Bake these sweet-and-savory apple and herb stuffing muffins in tins for cute individual portions with lots of toasty edges. A healthy, easy holiday recipe!

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I hope you haven't finalized your menu. Because I've got a new ADORBS take on stuffing for you. Or dressing, if you call it that. I've never understood the big debate over stuffing versus dressing: potato potahto, oyster erster, whatevs.

Now, I suppose these stuffing muffins aren't so new to everyone. I believe they were a big Rachel Ray-Ray thing a few years back (I can just hear her saying "stuffin' muffin" because it's rhyme-y). But they're new to me so I'm excited to talk about them.

Every year for Thanksgiving, my menu is made up of some old favorites that will likely never change (deep-fried turkey, a healthy-ish sweet potato casserole) but I also like to include at least one new dish, just so it doesn't get too predictable and boring.

This year, it's stuffing muffins. I mean, come on, how could I not want these on my table? They are just too freakin' adorable, with their individual-sized crunchy little selves.

If you're like me and you like the crunchy edges of the stuffing the best, you're going to go cray-cray for these stuffing muffins because they are all about the crunchy edges. The whole darned thing is practically one big crunchy edge!

Healthy butternut and sausage chili mac

A healthy new twist on the classic chili mac dinner with butternut squash, sausage and kale, served Cincinnati-chili-style over pasta.

Now that we've put the pumpkinpalooza frenzy behind us for another year, it's time to talk about other delicious fall flavors. Like butternut squash. Fortunately for Mr. Ninj and the rest of you that have "texture issues" with squash (insert eye roll here), butternut squash pairs extraordinarily well with sausage.

And bacon. But that's a whole different post. Today we're focusing on butternut with sausage.

I'm calling this dish "chili mac" because it's a bit hard to classify: too hearty to be simply pasta with sauce yet not saucy enough to be chili. I'm also describing it as "Cincinnati chili style", so I hope you're familiar with Cincinnati's slightly offbeat way of eating chili served over spaghetti.

What I can tell you without any waffling is that this chili mac is pure fall awesomeness, thanks in large part to the sweet, seasonal butternut squash, which, in my opinion, is so much better than its cousin the pumpkin. Such a shame that the pumpkin gets the lion's share of the love and props. I bet a butternut-spice latte would be just as awesome. (Note to self: Next year, create a butternut-spice latte.)

I have seriously fallen in love with this chili mac -- I can't stop making it and, when I do, I can't stop eating it. Have you ever made a dish that gets you really excited for leftovers the next day? This is one of those dishes.

Slow cooker chicken noodle stew

Break out your slow cooker for this super easy chicken noodle stew, a hearty, filling meal with all the comfort-food qualities of homemade chicken noodle soup. 

When the weather starts turning chillier, I love to make soup -- especially in my slow cooker. Oh heck, let's be honest: I love to make anything and everything in my slow cooker because, frankly, I'm pretty lazy.

Yes, I am! Obviously, I love to cook or we wouldn't be chatting like this every week. But getting a homemade dinner on the table every night is sometimes just a royal pain in the ass, even for a food blogger. And that, my friends, is why I love, nay worship my slow cooker -- so much so that I now own two of them.

Back to the soup. While a hot bowl of soup is always warming and welcome for dinner, occasionally it's just not hearty enough to stand alone as a full meal for me. So if you don't want to have to also whip up some grilled cheese or a salad to accompany your soup, take my advice: Turn it into stew.

Pumpkin Gorgonzola pasta

Enjoy all the best flavors of fall in this hearty but lightened pasta, with a rich and creamy pumpkin gorgonzola cheese sauce.

Now that it's October, I give all of us official permission to start talking about pumpkin recipes.

Granted, I'm probably the only food blogger on the planet that hasn't been posting pumpkin recipes since Labor Day, but I'm loyal to produce seasonality.

I don't mean to malign the poor pumpkin; I love it, I really do. Well, except for pumpkin pie -- but that's just because I'm a pie crust hater. And pumpkin spice freakin' lattes -- but that's just because they are all over the place like a really bad rash. How about a butternut latte, Starbucks? Or a kale-scented candle, Yankee Candle people? I'd buy either one of those in a heartbeat.

Anyhoo, we're talking pumpkin. More specifically, we're talking pumpkin pasta. Even more specifically, pumpkin pasta with a rich, creamy Gorgonzola cheese sauce.

Awwwwwwwww yeah.

This pasta recipe is an oldie-but-a-goodie around Casa de Ninj. It's a Cooking Light recipe that I have been making for 10 years.

(ERMERGAHD, 10 years!)

It's a recipe I like to make not only because it is aw-aw-awesome but also because it reminds me of how far I have come since I really started cooking. Which, frankly, wasn't until about 2000, when I got married -- and realized that if I didn't step up and do the cooking, we'd be eating non-stop takeout Chinese from the Busy Bee, which was Mr. Ninj's favorite (in fact, he just refers to all Chinese restaurants now as "The Busy Bee").

Peruvian pasta bolognese

Spicy Peruvian-style pasta bolognese is hearty, cool-weather comfort food with a garlicky ginger kick.

I was asked in an interview recently what my favorite comfort foods are. Hmmm, let's see: well, there's pasta, pasta and ... oh wait, yes ... more pasta.

(I can't help it. I'm Italian. On both sides of my family.)

And I'm talking real pasta. Even though I'm a largely healthy (or healthier) food blogger, don't get me started on the "veggie pasta" spiralizer craze. Long strands of zucchini are no more pasta than slabs of fried eggplant are bacon. Sorry, I'm just not buyin' it.

But I do realize that regular pasta-based carbo-loading isn't the best if you're not a long-distance runner; therefore, I've been experimenting lately with healthier pasta varieties, such as whole wheat or quinoa pastas.  I have to because I don't think there's any way that I could ever voluntarily limit my pasta intake. 

Sometimes, however, a recipe is so good that it simply requires old-fashioned semolina pasta and nothing else. This Peruvian bolognese is one such recipe.

The recipe is based on a Peruvian dish called tallarin saltado, a noodle stir-fry made with beef or chicken, onions, a few tomatoes, ginger and other spices. This version takes the same flavors but melds them into a spicy bolognese-style sauce using pork sausage ... with no stir-frying required.