Favorite Fall Family recipes:

 One pot Chili: 

I love to make chili on a cool fall or winter day. There is just something cozy about a nice hot bowl of soup that hits the spot perfectly when the temps go down.  I love that this is a recipe that I can keep all the ingredients on hand and have thrown together in less than 10 minutes. It makes for a  super simple meal that can be altered any way you'd like to appease picky eaters or allergies. 

Ingredients: 

1 can of corn (drained)

3-4 cans of chili beans

1 can of black beans (drained)

1 can of diced tomatoes with green chilies

1 can of garbanzo beans or great northern beans (drained)

1 can pinto beans (drained) 

1 medium bell pepper (any color you have)

1 medium red or sweet onion diced

 1 or 2 chicken breasts cooked and shredded

*Combine all ingredients in either an instant pot or slow cooker and mix well. Place lid on, turn the valve to sealing and set your IP to 5 minutes on manual. Do a quick release and serve. 

*Slow cooker- place lid on and set to desired cooking time: around 4 hours on high and up to 6 hours on low heat. 

*Top with shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream and fresh chopped chives or basil.  To complete your meal serve with corn bread, salad and these awesome corn chip dippers that are from Trader Joe's.

 * To make more soup add any other beans that you'd like, you can also increase the amount of veggies in the soup by adding any additional veggies that you'd like. You can swap out the chicken with ground beef, elk, steak, ham, bacon, sausage etc or any other meat option that you like or omit it all together for a vegetarian version. 

Double Decker Taco's:

This is another one of my families favorites and it is super quick and easy to prepare. We love to make these to snack on while we watch a football or basketball game or for family movie night. The best thing about these is that the possibilities of ingredients are endless and can be altered any way you want to include everyone's favorite toppings. 😀

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef, ground elk  cooked or 2 chicken breasts cooked and shredded

2 tomatoes diced (or more if your family loves tomatoes)

1 tub of sour cream

1 bag or carton of mixed salad greens, chopped or shredded 

1 jar of salsa

1 package of soft tortillas (we love the tortillas from Costco-that need to be cooked first so we heat them up on our griddle or on the stove and keep warm)

1 package of hard taco shells (our favorites are the blue corn organic shells by O Organics (in the hispanic/latin food aisle at Safeway) 

Several avocados sliced or diced

1 lb shredded cheese or a bag of shredded cheese 

1 can of refried beans (we prefer the organic black beans by O Organics)

*Heat your can of refried beans on your stove to the consistency that you prefer and set aside. 

*While your refried beans are warming prep all your toppings and heat your tortillas

*Set everything out and allow each member of the family to make their own  (I usually slather a generous amount of the refried beans onto a tortilla and tuck it around the hard taco shells 1st to make it easy & quick for the kids to load their double decker tacos) 

Enjoy!

*I didn't take any photos when I made this last week, will try to remember next time and upload some pics ;) 

Happy cooking,

~K