Need Summertime Recipes

Ok the heat kills me too! but i've been cooking alot with my crock pot! I know it's usually a winter thing! but i'll just put chicken breasts, or even a whole chicken in the pot in the morning cover it with either BBQ sause or some italian dressing and cook in on high for 3 hours and then stir it up and then put on low until dinner, my family loves it! and i don't have to even think about it! I also will do a pot roast and after it's cooked i'll use 2 forks and shread the meat a bit, and we have it with rice, on sandwichs, with salad! there are so many options! Good luck!

I know exactly what you mean!!!

Salads are always good in the summer. Grill some chicken breasts or flank steaks and serve them on the salad for extra protein. They're both good (warm or cold) on salad.

You can use your grill to cook almost anything. Like I mentioned above: chicken, steak, ribs, fish, veggies, potatoes, fruit, etc. Then serve them along with a pasta, potato, green or fruit salad.

Or if you don't mind heating up the oven once during the week, cook a bunch of meat one night and freeze or refrigerate it for use throughout the week. Here's a link to a show that's all about cooking something once and rolling it over into another meal: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_rm/0,2757,FOOD_23676...

Check out foodnetwork.com for all kinds of recipes. Here's a link to their "No cook" meals. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/et_sl_no_cook_menus/0,197...

Hope this helps.
Have fun!

Go to food network or Rachael Ray
She has some great recipes that are quick and easy. She has that complete focus on 30 minute meals..

Yummy salads and fun outside grilling too.

I like salads with tortilla roll-up deli sandwiches

I take a flour tortilla spread with pesto, spinach leafs, favorite lunch meat, and sprouts - roll up and eat serve with some fruit.

You could use cheese, any other kind of vegetables, mayo honey mustard. What ever you like. Yummy and easy!

Hope that helps!
C.
www.AHomeCareer.com

Hi K.~
I stick to sandwiches during the summer months. Tuna is a nice cold sandwich and serve it with chips. I know you can't live off it, but it's nice when you just don't feel like cooking. I've even had nights of cereal. I know that sound so bad, but it's hot and I don't want to be over a stove. I'll be excited to see what responses you get. Maybe they can give me extra ideas as well!

C.
Proud mother of 2 boys and 1 on the way!
Debt free for free, ask me!

Hi K.!

This is one of my favorite summer recipes -- the only cooking it involves is the pasta.

You'll need:

1 16 oz package fresh tortellini, cooked to package directions
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
2 jars artichoke hearts
2 crowns fresh broccoli, cut up
1 8 oz tub pesto
1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Mix it all in a bowl and serve. Yep, it's that easy!

Enjoy!

In the summer I grill almost every night! Once a week I get a package of drumsticks and marinate them (or just squeeze some lemon juice on them) then we have leftovers for lunch or the next night. You can even make a simple pizza and grill it. To help even more with clean up I use the non-stick aluminum foil poke holes in it (I do this to get the heat through faster) Then when the cooking is done I can just throw away the foil. You can also buy those pre-cooked rotissere chickens and make a chicken saladThis is a great recipes: 3/4 c mayo, 2T white wine vinegar, 1T soy sauce, 2t minced onion, 1/2 t curry powder, 1/4 c chopped celery, 1/2 c grapes, 1/2 c water chestnuts, 1/2 c pecans. We also have a lot of pasta salads because you can mixx with chicken , olives or whatever you want. I also make tortillini pasta salads. You can make a dressing, or my kids love the salad spritzers. The websites are all really good too.

Another website I really, really use a lot:

www.allrecipes.com

They not only have virtually any recipe you can think of, but all the recipes are rated by people who try them. You can do a search for cold salads or summer meals, and all kinds of stuff will come up.

Another good resource for fast and cool: Kraft Food and Family. Don't know the website for it, but it you Google it, it should find it for you.

We use the BBQ a lot. We aren't big on red meat so we do chicken, salmon, shrimp, kabobs... whatever really. Then I prepare potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salads, green salads and have those on hand on the refridgerator to easily serve up along side our BBQ. We also love baked beans... we buy the package of bush's baked beans from costco and thats another easy side dish. During the summer I almost always have watermelon and fresh fruit and veggies on hand too.

I will also make varieties of green salads --

Cobb salad, chicken ceasar salad, shrimp louie salad, taco salad, Waldorf salad..... there are probably hundreds more, but these is what I commonly do. You can serve this as a side or we normally eat just this for dinner with some garlic bread or something else light on the side.

I noticed people mentioned a lot of tuna salad ideas. An alternative to this is chicken salad. Its really good with celery and red onion. You can throw it in a piece of lettuce for a wrap, serve it on a crossiant or even 2 slices of bread.

Enjoy your summer!!

Hi.

go to www.google.com - type in no cook meals - it brought up about 15 websites of recipes that require no cooking.

goodluck!

HI K., some of our favorites are tuna salad and all you do is mix 1-2 cans of tuna depending on the size of your family, plus 1-2 big spoonfuls of mayo(I'm talking just a large spoon from your silverware set) then 1-2 big spoonfuls of mustard and 1-2 spoonfuls of relish to taste and some salt and pepper to taste. You can also add 6 or so hard boiled eggs that have been chopped and you can cook those in advance in the morning and they'll keep in the fridge for a good long time. Not exactly sure how long but I just found some left over from Easter and they were still good!

I also love going to Foodnetwork.com and getting recipies from them. One I just tried and the kids loved was Chicken Salad and I got the recipie from there. When you do a search it will come up with all kinds of different chicken salad arrangements but the one I used was simply called Chicken Salad.

you can also do Sub sandwhiches homemade the way you like it, pasta salads straight from the box and add some tuna or crab meat or shrimp or chicken or hotdogs. I like cooking pasta salads in the morning so they can chill in the fridge all day, I like them cold.

An easy fruit salad is 1 can of Pineapple Tidbits with the juice, 1 can of mandarin oranges with the juice and 1 to 2 bananas sliced up all stirred together in a bowl. You can add more or less depending on the size your family needs.

Some good cold veggies are 1-2cans of sweet peas, 1-2 cans of chopped carrots, then a big spoonful of mayo with salt and pepper to taste.

Have burritos or tacos the only thing you have to cook is the meat which you don't have to add just use the bean sauce you can find with the taco shells at the store.

If you still want to use the grill you can cook almost anything on it. Beer can chicken is really good and you can find the recipie for that at the foodnetwork.com site as well as on the beer can stand which you should be able to find at Walmart or Target in the Grilling section. Wrap the grills in foil and you can throw anything on there, chicken, veggies, fish, pork chops, the sky's the limit for what you can do with your grill.

I hope this helps. Good luck and stay cool!