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Prone to Wander

Jalapeño Popper Twice-Baked Potatoes

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Why not combine two of your all-time favorite party foods and make these perfectly cheesy and irresistibly savory Jalapeño Popper Twice-Baked Potatoes?

Why not combine two of your all-time favorite party foods and make these perfectly cheesy and irresistibly savory Jalapeño Popper Twice-Baked Potatoes?

Are you ever awed by your own brilliance?

I’m not, at least usually, but one exception would be these Jalapeño Popper Twice-Baked Potatoes. I can’t remember what led to that stroke of culinary genius, but I remember standing in front of the refrigerator, both doors open, and thinking, “I should make jalapeño popper twice-baked potatoes!”

And so I did.

Why not combine two of your all-time favorite party foods and make these perfectly cheesy and irresistibly savory Jalapeño Popper Twice-Baked Potatoes?

I poppered these puppies up in a few different ways. First, I added diced jalapeños to the potato filling. I tossed in some cream cheese, too. Lastly, I topped each potato half with a mixture of Parmesan and bread crumbs to give the whole dish that golden crunch you expect from good jalapeño poppers.

I know I’m not the first person to combine these two particular food favorites, but damn is it a good combo.

Why not combine two of your all-time favorite party foods and make these perfectly cheesy and irresistibly savory Jalapeño Popper Twice-Baked Potatoes?

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Instant Pot Mashed Red Potatoes

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Be the dinnertime hero by whipping up these Instant Pot Mashed Red Potatoes: the creamy, quick, flavorful version of everybody’s favorite side dish.

Be the dinnertime hero by whipping up these Instant Pot Mashed Red Potatoes: the creamy, quick, flavorful version of everybody’s favorite side dish.

I had my wisdom teeth removed (I only had three) the summer before my junior year of college. I was living in an apartment with friends, taking a summer class and feeling very much like a grown-up. Since I was 3000 miles away from my family, J drove me to the oral surgeon’s office on the big day.

The only thing I remember about being in the office is coming to when surgery was over. I was in that haze between sleep and wakefulness, but I remember clearly hearing the conversation between two nurses. Then one of them said to me, “Abby, you need to keep your eyes open.” And I replied, “I thought they were.”

You might also like: Oven-Roasted Potatoes with Bacon and Cheese

We stopped on the way home for a chocolate milkshake, but it kept running out of my mouth, so we went through the KFC drive-thru for an order of mashed potatoes. If I had any love for that place before our visit (spoiler alert: I didn’t; there was no love.), those bland, watery mashed potatoes would have squashed it. Luckily, my mouth was still numb enough that I could choke them down.

Which brings us to these Instant Pot Mashed Red Potatoes. Y’all, those nasty fast food “potatoes” don’t even deserve to share a name with this recipe. These guys are perfectly chunky in the best sort of rustic way. They’re creamy without being bland, flavorful without losing their potato-ness.

Basically, they’re everything mashed potatoes should be and you need to make them now.

Be the dinnertime hero by whipping up these Instant Pot Mashed Red Potatoes: the creamy, quick, flavorful version of everybody’s favorite side dish.

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Hashbrown Crust Breakfast Pizza

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With a crispy crust, tender veggies, fluffy scrambled eggs, and plenty of melted cheese, this Hashbrown Crust Breakfast Pizza is perfect any time of day.

With a crispy crust, tender veggies, fluffy scrambled eggs, and plenty of melted cheese, this Hashbrown Crust Breakfast Pizza is perfect any time of day.

I first shared this Hashbrown Crust Breakfast Pizza on my friend Kayla’s blog. She’s since refocused to share about all things Disney, so she gave me the go-ahead to share this recipe here.

It’s no secret that I love breakfast foods (see here or here), and I also love pizza (here and here). Combining the two was a natural step, and the results were everything I’d hoped they would be. In fact, this breakfast pizza is so outstanding, it even made it to a Buzzfeed post.

With a crispy crust, tender veggies, fluffy scrambled eggs, and plenty of melted cheese, this Hashbrown Crust Breakfast Pizza is perfect any time of day.

So what’s all the hype about? To start, you toss pre-made hashbrowns with melted butter and bake to form a crispy crust. The crust is topped with tender veggies and fluffy scrambled eggs (plus any other toppings you can dream up), sprinkled with plenty of shredded cheese, and baked until the whole thing is one delightful dish of crispy, melty, whole family-pleasing goodness.

With a crispy crust, tender veggies, fluffy scrambled eggs, and plenty of melted cheese, this Hashbrown Crust Breakfast Pizza is perfect any time of day.

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Oven Roasted Potatoes with Bacon and Cheese

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Oven roasted potatoes with bacon and cheese are the perfect quick, easy, and delightfully delicious side dish for any time of day.

Oven roasted potatoes with bacon and cheese are the perfect quick, easy, and delightfully delicious side dish for any time of day.

I started writing this post a few months ago, sometime around the start of my third trimester of pregnancy. I craved carbs something fierce- even more fierce than usual- while I was pregnant with Q, and many nights I couldn’t think of a good excuse not to make some sort of potato dish and call it supper.

I ate Parmesan garlic roasted potatoes more than a few times, along with home fries. I had these oven roasted potatoes with bacon and cheese plenty of times, too.

The recipe is surprisingly quick and easy to make. Because the potatoes are cooked in a skillet still hot from frying the bacon, they cook quickly and develop that coveted softness on the side while becoming crisp on the outside. After the potatoes are cooked through, they’re sprinkled with crumbled bacon and cheddar cheese and returned to the oven to let everything melt together.

I often eat them just as they’re pictured, but they’re also great served with salsa, green onions, or diced avocado.

Oven roasted potatoes with bacon and cheese are the perfect quick, easy, and delightfully delicious side dish for any time of day.

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Potato Crust Sausage Quiche

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With a unique and crunchy potato crust, this sausage quiche is easy enough for a weeknight meal and fancy enough to impress just about anyone.

With a unique and crunchy potato crust, this sausage quiche is easy enough for a weeknight meal and fancy enough to impress just about anyone.

For the longest time, I assumed quiches were way too fancy for my taste and for my cooking abilities. One day I realized they’re mostly just a really big omelette, minus the complicated flipping part. They’ve been a staple at our table ever since.

Like a lot of the “breakfast” recipes I share, we usually enjoy this sausage quiche for supper. It’s super easy to make, especially when I use shredded hash browns and sausage from the freezer (I typically cook a pound of sausage at a time and freeze the half I don’t use). The cook time is longer than most dinner recipes I make, but the hands-on time is minimal.

With a unique and crunchy potato crust, this sausage quiche is easy enough for a weeknight meal and fancy enough to impress just about anyone.

One of my favorite things about this recipe is that it’s totally customizable to the tastes of the people you’re feeding. My husband doesn’t care for most vegetables, so it’s easy for me to include veggies only on my half. Of course, you could leave out the veggies entirely, or skip the sausage and double up on the vegetables.

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Ann’s Ham and Potatoes

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With just three ingredients, Ann’s ham and potatoes is a filling, crowd-pleasing, comforting meal that tastes like it took twice as long to make.

I was a pretty picky eater when I was younger. Like, really picky. So picky that my stepmom had me make a list of foods I’d eat and tape it to the inside of a cabinet.

With just three ingredients, Ann's ham and potatoes is a filling, crowd-pleasing, comforting meal that tastes like it took twice as long to make.

It was entirely an issue of declaring that I didn’t like something even though I’d never tried it. I don’t remember why I was so afraid to venture out and try new foods, but I was, so I didn’t. Even with my picky palate, her ham and potatoes was one of my favorite things to eat.

Confession: my range of foods might have expanded exponentially in the last 10 or 15 years, but this dish still ranks right up there as one of my favorites. Part of the allure is that peaceful feeling you get when you revisit a childhood classic. This recipe reminds me of simpler times and evenings with family.

While this meal might not evoke those same feelings for you, it’s still pretty much guaranteed to be a hit. The potatoes are cut thinly so they cook through and get soft. The ham is layered on top of the potatoes, ensuring the juices drip down and flavor the potatoes. Each potato-and-ham layer is topped with cheese that gets perfectly melted and gooey. Add a touch of salt and pepper and you’re done.

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Home Fries

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A breakfast favorite, home fries are potato chunks cooked in a little bit of oil and plenty of seasoned salt. This yummy classic couldn’t be easier.

A breakfast favorite, home fries are potato chunks cooked in a little bit of oil and plenty of seasoned salt. This yummy classic couldn't be easier.

It’s no secret that potatoes are one of my great loves. In fact, I was almost embarrassed when I realized three or four of the posts I had planned for January feature potatoes. Almost embarrassed. But not quite because, judging by the popularity of most of my potato-related posts, I’m not the only one who loves them.

Really, what’s not to love? They’re versatile and inexpensive, easy to prepare and not too bad for you (unlike a lot of the things we like to add to them). Sure, this recipe calls for oil, but it’s a pretty small amount; it’s not like we’re deep frying anything. Life is all about perspective, right?

My mom has been making these potatoes for as long as I can remember. They’re a much-requested food for my siblings and I at our birthday dinners, typically paired with her to-die-for homemade chicken strips. I only make them myself on occasion, even though every time I think, “these are so easy. I should make them more often.” The way the exterior develops that crispy crunch while the inside remains soft and fluffy is just mouthwatering.

To be honest, I often make the recipe with only one potato and enjoy these little nuggets as a meal all by themselves. Other times I serve them as a side with supper, to accompany chicken or burgers. Home fries are also perfect for breakfast or, one of our family’s favorites, breakfast-for-dinner. You can serve them with eggs cooked just the way you like, a little bit of salsa and some shredded cheese, and you’ve got a hearty, restaurant-worthy meal.

There’s really no wrong way to serve home fries. Just like the cooking process, the presentation is pretty hard to mess up.

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How to Make Frozen Fries Taste Good

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How to make frozen fries taste good: with a couple ingredients and few minutes of work, you can transform bland frozen fries into a side dish even grown-ups will want to eat.

How to make frozen fries taste good: with a couple ingredients and few minutes of work, you can transform bland frozen fries into a side dish even grown-ups will want to eat.

One of our favorite easy weeknight meals- heavy emphasis on the easy– is grilled sandwiches. Somehow, you can take an ordinary sandwich with ordinary bread and ordinary toppings, slather the outside with butter, toss it in a skillet to toast both sides, and suddenly everyone thinks you’ve made a creative meal.

One of the bigger challenges with that scenario, though- because we all know there’s nothing challenging about the sandwich-making process- is what to serve the sandwich with. Many of our preferred side dishes, even the easy ones, require more work than I’m usually willing to put in on a grilled sandwich kind of night. On those nights, I often turn to frozen fries.

We almost always have a bag of these guys in our freezer. We don’t eat them more than once every several weeks, but they’re just too easy to not have on hand. J doesn’t much care how they’re prepared, or what, if any, extra love goes into them, but I do. I just can’t quite get on board with the throw-on-a-baking-sheet-and-call-it-good version, even when the theme of the evening is easy.

My mom taught me this insanely clever trick for making frozen fries taste good. I don’t know that you could call this a recipe, but I’m putting it out there for those who prefer to have precise instructions to follow. My go-to seasoning for frozen fries is seasoned salt (because I love potatoes + Lawry’s), but I also enjoy any combination of garlic, Parmesan cheese, and Italian seasoning. You could really spice things up by trying chili powder, cumin, or paprika.

How to make frozen fries taste good: with a couple ingredients and few minutes of work, you can transform bland frozen fries into a side dish even grown-ups will want to eat.

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Potato Nachos

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Potato nachos are just as awesome as they sound: thinly-sliced potatoes are cooked until tender, topped with bacon and cheese, and baked until hot and melted. Perfect game day or any day.

Potato nachos are just as awesome as they sound: thinly-sliced potatoes are cooked until tender, topped with bacon and cheese, and baked until hot and melted.

 

This recipe is as straightforward as it is delicious. You start with large baking potatoes and slice them pretty thinly. You boil them, to allow them to cook through quickly. You know, so you can get to the good stuff.

After boiling, draining, and drying your potato slices, it’s just a matter of adding whatever toppings your heart desires- I usually do cheese, bacon, and jalapeños- and sticking the whole affair in the oven to get cozy.

Potato nachos are a pretty dangerous dish, in my opinion. Back in the day, I was a stay-at-home mom. It was a small block of time, sandwiched between my days as a banker and my current career as a teacher. During that time, I wasn’t limited to a 25 minute lunch break the way I am now. I had all of nap time to dream up and prepare recipes.

We almost always have potatoes around, and I love them in any form. I especially love a good oven-baked potato with crispy skin and plenty of butter and salt. Waiting an hour or more for a potato to bake in the oven didn’t interest me, though, so I made a couple of changes to speed things up and this recipe was born.

I used to make it for lunch, but it would be a perfect game day snack or appetizer, or a side for just about any dinner you make. Potato nachos are easy, they come together quickly, and they’re easily changed to fit the preferences of several different people. It would be no problem at all to allow your family members or your guests to customize their own portions. Include toppings like shredded chicken, onions, or fresh salsa and you can call it a meal.

Potato nachos are just as awesome as they sound: thinly-sliced potatoes are cooked until tender, topped with bacon and cheese, and baked until hot and melted. Perfect game day or any day.

 

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Easy Weeknight Sausage and Potato Skillet

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Hearty sausage and potatoes come together with the vegetables of your choice to make an easy, crowd-pleasing weeknight meal. Plus, you’ve got to check out the mouthwatering breakfast-for-dinner recipe you can make with this leftover sausage and potato skillet.

Hearty sausage and potatoes come together with the vegetables of your choice to make an easy, crowd-pleasing weeknight meal. Plus, you've got to check out the mouthwatering breakfast-for-dinner recipe you can make with this leftover sausage and potato skillet.

When I’m looking for or brainstorming easy dinner recipes to make for my family, there are few different things that will make me stop and take notice. First and foremost, I’m always on the lookout for easy weeknight meals. I don’t want complicated ingredients or dozens of steps. Sure, there are times I enjoy more involved recipes, but weeknights aren’t one of those times.

If a recipe can be made using one pot only, I’ll definitely give it a second look. I hate making a twenty minute meal and then spending just as long on clean-up. If the process can be streamlined by using the fewest pots and utensils, I’m much more likely to consider trying it.

Lastly, I love when leftovers lend themselves to a recipe redo. For example, I almost use leftover chicken and salsa from easy weeknight chicken tacos to make nachos or quesadillas. The ingredients may be similar, but the flavors and textures are different enough to feel like a new meal. What I especially love about this recipe is how a hearty dinner becomes an easy, filling breakfast.

As you might can imagine, this sausage and potato skillet recipe checked off all the above boxes for me. It’s ready in less than 30 minutes, and it requires only one pot. You could easily speed up the prep process by using two skillets and cooking the sausage and potatoes at the same time, but I prefer to use the cooking time of one ingredient to prep the next.

Hearty sausage and potatoes come together with the vegetables of your choice to make an easy, crowd-pleasing weeknight meal. Plus, you've got to check out the mouthwatering breakfast-for-dinner recipe you can make with this leftover sausage and potato skillet.

The round two sausage and potato skillet recipe is super simple. Just add salsa, a little shredded cheese, and a fried egg to a serving of the original recipe and you’re good to go! This would obviously make a quick and filling breakfast, but it’d also me a crowd-pleasing way to serve these leftovers for supper. Basically, when you take a recipe that was delicious to begin with, add the trifecta of cheese, salsa, and an oozing egg, you can’t go wrong.

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