 My name is Andrea with Foodimentary Adventures in Food. In my household, there's me, my husband, and our adorable three-year-old little boy. On our channel, you'll find simple and tasty dinner ideas using everyday ingredients. Hey guys, happy New Year! Today is Sunday, January 1st, and I'm trying out a new recipe today for Smothered Ribs. Of course, I'll make sure to leave the recipe in the description box. What I've got in my casserole dish here is pork ribs that I've cleaned and cut, season them with black pepper, thyme, and salt. This originally is a crock-pot recipe. You're supposed to cook it on high for four hours, but I am going to make mine in the oven 325 for three hours. So there's an alternative for oven directions and I'll make sure to, of course, leave that in the description box as well. So now it's time to start making the roux for that Smothered Sauce gravy. Okay, so I've got some oil in my pan here and now I'm adding in some flour. I'm going to give this a stir and let this get nice and brown. Okay, so my roux is nice and brown and now the recipe says to either add water or water or broth and I am using water and I'm adding in my better than bouillon and then it says just to let the mixture come to a boil. Okay, so my broth came to a boil. To that I'm adding in an onion, one large onion that I chopped up. I will say the broth, it was kind of too thin for me. So I made a cornstarch slurry and added that in and added some more salt and pepper to the gravy. Now I'm adding in some garlic and I'm going to give it another good stir and then I'm going to pour it over my ribs. So my ribs are almost finished cooking and I'm making some fried cabbage. So in my skillet I have four slices of thick cut bacon that I cooked up and I let that fat render. I took out some of the fat, the bacon fat and put it in a jar that I keep in the refrigerator and now all I'm doing is adding in my chopped cabbage. This I would say is a large head of cabbage and I'm just putting it in the pan and of course it'll wilt down when some of that water comes out. So my cabbage has cooked down a little bit. Now I'm just adding in some lourries and also some pepper and I'm going to give it a stir and just let it continue to cook down a bit. Okay so here's our dinner. I baked the ribs for three hours and they are tender and they have a great flavor. I am glad that I thickened up that gravy because I really do think it would have been too loose. So you may have to thicken your gravy if you like yours a little thicker. Here is the cabbage as well. The secret to the cabbage is not adding any water. That cabbage will make more than enough water for you and then I'm just serving it all over some white rice. One thing I did forget to mention is that today kicks off the January pantry challenge that I have or I do every single year so if you want to join in feel free. But anyway this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we will see y'all next time. So today is Monday January 2nd and I wanted to show you all some of the meal prep that I'm doing for the week. In my freezer I have a bunch of chicken so I decided to boil some up. I've got some legs in there and then I've also got some boneless skinless chicken breast and I am going to take the meat off the bones and chop up the chicken for casseroles that I'm going to be doing in the upcoming couple of weeks and I wanted to show you the meal plan. So I usually make five meals per week and the days that the meals are on will not necessarily be cooked on that date but it just helps me to kind of keep things organized. So yesterday was New Year's and that was my New Year's dinner and then I am also planning to make a chicken pot pie this week, tortellini, tomato soup, pizza braid and teriyaki meatballs. The chicken pot pie is probably what I'm going to use the majority of this chicken for but depending on how much I have left I'll probably be able to get another casserole or something like that out of it. But anyway we are going to be having leftovers from New Year's today for dinner and the next time I cook will be on Tuesday so I'll see you then. So for dinner tonight we are having tortellini soup with Italian sausage and spinach of course everything that I am using I already had on hand I have some frozen onions here that I'm going to be using using up that chicken broth that I saved from the other day when I boiled all that chicken it did congeal but that is fine that is normal using some crushed tomatoes some cheese tortellini that I had in the fridge garlic recipe calls for fresh basil I don't have any at all just going to be using this Italian seasoning had some hot Italian sausage in my freezer and then I have half a bag of spinach also in my freezer and the recipe only calls for two cups so that's plenty and all you do is just basically cook up the meat and add everything in I'll make sure to leave the recipe in the description box. Okay so my meat and my onions and garlic are all done I just added in my tomato sauce well actually I'm sorry it's not tomato sauce it's crushed tomatoes now I'm adding in that congealed chicken broth it'll liquefy and that's Harrison in the background if you hear anything and so I'm just going to let that chicken broth liquefy and then it says to let this simmer for about 20 minutes so my soup has been simmering away and now it's time for me to add in my spinach and my tortellini so here is the soup and it is pretty tasty very easy to make serving it with a garlic parmesan hamburger bun we had some in the freezer I mean not freezer the fridge that needed to be used so I just buttered them up and added some parmesan I was going to add garlic but I didn't and popped it in the air fryer and so this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we will see y'all next time so here is our dinner tonight I made the pizza braid I have made this on our channel before I'll make sure to link that video which has the recipe in the description box of course everything I already had on hand it's a thin crust refrigerated pizza I had cheese in the freezer it's mozzarella cheese I had pepperoni in the freezer and Italian sausage in the freezer and then we're just having some pizza sauce on the side I was going to have a side salad but I opened up the bag of lettuce and it had already gone bad so quick and easy dinner tonight and we will see y'all next time so for dinner tonight we are having a chicken pot pie in my freezer I have this pie crust from Trader Joe's never tried it before I've been I let it thaw out and also in my freezer I had some frozen broccoli this was actually fresh broccoli that I didn't get a chance to use and I just threw it in the freezer just like this have a potato that I'm going to chop up I'm going to use some of this frozen corn not all of it and then I'm going to use a can of cream of potato soup and then this is the chicken that I made earlier this week that I boiled and then I'm just going to season it with some season salt okay so here is the pot pie I took it out of the oven about 10 minutes ago I ended up baking it for an hour and 10 minutes and I cut a slice out and as you can see I didn't cut the entire bottom crust out I missed some but I wanted you all to see that crust and how golden brown it got so I mentioned to you guys and here it is on the plate that I was using the Trader Joe's pie crust for the first time I heard a lot of good things about it so I just wanted to show you let me try to focus here where are you oh here they are so um this is different than the Pillsbury crust in that it's a butter crust you can see that it has flour and then palm oil water and then butter so the crust is really flaky it definitely tastes um more homemade it's really light and flaky and it does taste like a homemade crust so it's pretty good very different than the Pillsbury refrigerated crust which I do still love but if you're looking for something more homemade this is definitely it um also I thought that the filling was a little bit dry so I ended up adding half a can of cream of chicken soup to it um as well so anyway this is what we're having for dinner tonight and we will see y'all next time so this is our final dinner of the week it is supposed to be teriyaki meatballs but um I didn't have the right teriyaki sauce so I had to use this Hawaiian barbecue sauce which Howard and I really like a lot um the meatballs that I am using are these chicken meatballs from Adels I found these on clearance a long time ago uh teriyaki and pineapple so I just cooked them in the oh they're fully cooked but I heated them in the skillet then I added that barbecue sauce having a side of leftover cabbage and then also made some chicken flavored rice so this is generic store brand um like rice errone so this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we will see y'all next time