This grilled apple and Swiss cheese sandwich is a delicious sweet and savory take on grilled cheese!

I love taking a quick and easy lunchtime option and changing it up to make it more interesting and more flavorful! My kids and I eat grilled cheese for lunch a few times a week, and recently I’ve begun experimenting with different flavor combinations. My current favorite is this grilled apple and swiss cheese sandwich!

You are going to love this sandwich. It makes the most of seasonal apples, and really gives the grilled cheese a hint of sweetness. I love the sweet and savory combination and I think you will too.

When the ingredient list is this small, you need to use good ingredients. I used local apples fresh from the farm, and Sargento® Sliced Cheese. None of the fake cheese for this sandwich! Sargento cheese is cut directly from blocks of real, natural cheese, ensuring its quality and flavor. (By the way, did you know that pasteurized process cheese food is only required to contain 51% real cheese?? )

Feel free to experiment with the type of apple and type of cheese – I’ve tried a few different combinations and they are all good! Plus, Sargento has 23 different varieties of cheese to try! Yum 🙂

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How good does this pasta look? This corn, bacon, and Parmesan pasta is a perfect late summer meal! It is quick and easy to throw together last minute, but it tastes like you spent a lot longer working over the stove. Penne pasta is the base (or whatever kind of pasta you prefer), but there are plenty of delicious add-ins: bacon, fresh summer sweet corn, basil, and fresh Parmesan. You will love how fresh and light this pasta tastes, but it’s also filling enough to be a meal on its own. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did – I’ve already made it multiple times in the last few weeks! I’m guessing it will be on regular rotation in our house. Enjoy! 🙂

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I’m always looking for new ways to serve pasta for dinner, and this easy beef mostaccioli is a new favorite.

One of my friends actually brought this dish to us after Levi was born. My parents were visiting that week and the whole family loved this meal.

Since it was such a hit with everybody, I knew I had to get the recipe and try it myself. This recipe is so quick and easy to make, and it’s a natural kid favorite.

It has a slightly different taste than normal baked pasta recipes, which means it’s just different enough to feel like you’re eating something new.  I like the higher ratio of meat to pasta in this recipe as well – it makes me feel like my kids are actually eating meat and not just cheese covered pasta. 🙂

Also, this is apparently a great meal to take to a family who has just had a new baby! We loved it and I’m sure you will too. 🙂

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How good do these barbecue chicken tacos look?? We love tacos in our house and could easily eat them once a week. I love trying new and unique taco recipes, and this barbecue chicken version is definitely a new favorite. It’s a crock pot recipe, which makes this meal extremely easy to throw together. The barbecue chicken is delicious, but the toppings really make these tacos stand out. The seasoned corn, cheddar cheese, and crispy fried onions are definitely an integral part, so don’t skip them. These tacos have become a meal plan staple in our house and hopefully they will in your house as well. 🙂

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How good does this cornbread taco pizza look?? This is such a fun and unique way to eat tacos, and it’s completely delicious and easy to make! The base of the pizza is cornbread, which goes perfectly with all of the yummy taco flavors. Just prepare according to package instructions (I used a box of Jiffy cornbread mix, but you can use your own cornbread recipe if you want) and form into a pizza shape on the pan. Bake the crust then top it with whatever taco toppings you want! It’s that easy. 🙂 We went simple and just did seasoned ground beef, cheese, lettuce, and tomato. This is the perfect meal to feed a crowd, and everyone loves it – kids included! I got this recipe from my sister-in-law who says she often makes it when she has big groups of people over to her house. It’s such a fun way to eat tacos, and seriously so good. I hope you try it and let me know what you think!

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You are going to love this pizza spaghetti bake! This quick and easy meal combines two of my favorite meals, spaghetti and pizza, into one delicious casserole. It doesn’t get better than that!

The spaghetti is covered in sauce and flavored with pizza seasonings, and then topped with lots of gooey melty cheese and spicy pepperoni. Yum!! This is a meal that is sure to please even the pickiest eaters, and it is so simple to make.

This pizza spaghetti bake is definitely a kid friendly meal, and our 3 year old asks for it regularly. I love that I can make an easy homemade meal for dinner that causes absolutely no complaints! 🙂

It’s a nice twist on more traditional favorites, and definitely an easy one to add to your menu rotation. Plus it’s one of those meals where you can always keep the ingredients on hand to make it last minute if you need to. Even better, you can get your prep area cleaned up and even make a quick vegetable side dish while the spaghetti is in the oven!

I’m pretty sure almost everyone likes spaghetti, and the same goes for pizza. So why not combine them? This is comfort food for sure. 🙂

We love this pizza spaghetti bake and I’m guessing you will too.

Looking for another great casserole recipe?  I’d highly recommend also adding this Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole to your dinner plans!

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I took a break from all things Christmas and Christmas cookies to bring you this quick, easy, and healthy dinner recipe! This cheesy penne bake with chicken sausage is perfect for busy weeknights when you want something on the table quick, but you also want to feel good about what you’re eating. Over the past month I’ve been participating in a healthy eating accountability group with my friends. (Yes, while making and posting the 12 days of Christmas treats – terrible idea!) I made this recipe during our challenge to eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, and this helped me meet my goal for two days! Plus Zeke loved it, which makes it a definite success. 🙂

This pasta bake is chock full of veggies and chicken sausage, which means it’s not only healthy, but also filling. And of course it has plenty of cheese to add a little more protein, plus plenty of deliciousness. 🙂 Feel free to change up the type or amount of vegetables to suite your personal tastes. I used my favorites, but this recipe is easily customizeable. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

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You are going to love this chicken bacon ranch pizza! This is such an easy meal to make, and so incredibly delicious. Doesn’t it just look warm and cheesy and wonderful? I love meals that satisfy both the “quick and easy” requirement and also the “dinner will not cause a tantrum” requirement. 🙂 If you follow me on Instagram, you know that we have had an incredibly busy fall. The kids and I (and Mike when he’s not at work) have made it our goal to attend as many fun fall activities as humanly possible – we’ve been apple picking (twice), taken a hay ride to a pumpkin patch, gotten cider and donuts multiple times, and enjoyed a few different corn mazes. We are definitely lucky to live in West Michigan and have so many fun places close by!

All that outside time keeps Zeke incredibly entertained while we’re there, but by the time we get home in the early evening, he is cranky and hungry. And I still have to cook dinner if I want us all to eat together as a family (and I do!). That is why I love easy dinners like this chicken bacon ranch pizza. I found this recipe on the Hidden Valley® Original Ranch® Pinterest board for easy meal ideas. I immediately bookmarked it and made it on our next busy outside day. I already had pizza dough in the freezer, which means that start to finish this pizza took 20 minutes to make. And it is so good! I love that it is a unique spin on pizza, but still a flavor that everyone in the family loves. I wondered if Zeke would protest since this isn’t his usual favorite pizza, but I was pleasantly surprised when he ate every bite I put on his plate with zero complaints! The thing that makes this pizza so easy is that there is no complicated white sauce –  just a thin layer of buttermilk ranch dressing. Add in some chicken, bacon, tomatoes, and two different types of cheese, and you’re left with a pizza that is on the table in 20 minutes and makes everyone happy. 🙂

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I am currently obsessed with chopped salads. I just love that everything is bite sized and you get a little taste of all the toppings in every bite. When the nice people at the United Dairy Industry of Michigan asked me to create a chopped chicken taco salad I immediately said yes.  I could just picture the fresh sweet corn, creamy avocado, cilantro dressing,  etc. And thankfully the end result turned out to be just as good as I was imagining. 🙂

We LOVED this salad. I started with fresh green leaf lettuce and covered it with all sorts of toppings. You can mix and match whatever toppings you wanted, but I used black beans, corn, avocado, tomatoes, shredded Mexican cheese, tortilla strips, and of course chicken. I seasoned the chicken with taco seasoning before I cooked it, and it was absolutely delicious. It had a very mild Mexican flavor that paired perfectly with the salad. Zeke agreed and gobbled up piece after piece as I was building the salad. 🙂

The best part, though, is the cilantro lime dressing! It’s made with plenty of lime juice and cilantro, plus a little added taco seasoning to give it an extra kick. It was so good that I was dipping anything and everything into it – carrot sticks, peppers, tortilla chips, etc. 🙂 And I love that it’s made with Greek yogurt and buttermilk so that it’s actually fairly healthy and full of protein!

All in all this salad was completely delicious. You should know by now that I love recipes that are flexible and can be adjusted according to personal preference, and this is definitely one of those recipes. I have no doubt that you will love it too!

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