What’s for dinner? It’s the million dollar question moms face every night. Meal planning is not my specialty. I usually end up scrambling to figure out what to feed my hungry brood at the last minute. To add to my frustration, my daughter always wants to help cook, but without a good plan, it’s hard to find something for her to do. So when I heard about Winn-Dixie’s partnership with Chef Curtis Stone to provide quick, affordable and healthy meals for busy families, I jumped at the chance to try one. Each month, using fresh and seasonal ingredients, Chef Curtis shows you how to create delicious meals for under $10.
I went to the Winn-Dixie website and saw that one of the featured recipes was Tomato and Corn Succotash with Grilled Chicken Drumsticks. Since my daughter loves chicken legs, I knew that was the recipe to try, and I enlisted my favorite sous chef to help. I printed out the recipe and armed with our $10 we headed to Winn-Dixie to do some shopping.
The first thing I noticed when we got to Winn-Dixie was that everything for our recipe was already signed with the Cooking with Curtis logo. This made shopping easy and quick, perfect for the busy mom trying to shop with kids. We gathered up our supplies, and I decided to double the amount of veggies in the recipe and add a few extra pieces of chicken so I’d have some leftovers for lunch the next day. With the extra ingredients, I only spent $18 on the ingredients for my Chef Curtis meal. I’m sure if I had stuck with the exact portions listed I would have been right at $10.
We headed home and got to work preparing our meal. My daughter was so excited to help me cook. She was in charge of prepping the veggies, including husking the corn and snapping the green beans. I love not being rushed to get dinner done at the last minute, and since the recipe was simple and all laid out for me, I was happy to have her help. Prep for this meal took a mere 15-20 minutes even with a 5-year-old helping me. If I had done it all myself, it could have been even quicker.
We grilled up our drumsticks and veggies in a snap; total cook time was under 30 minutes. The result? Our Cooking with Curtis meal was a hit! Everyone from my husband to the kids loved it. Now, I’m not going to lie, this meal was different than something I would usually cook for my family so I was very unsure about how it would be received. My kids can be picky eaters when they want to be. Because of this I decided to serve the corn on the cob, and not cut off as part of the succotash. As a mom, you sometimes have to alter a recipe for the path of least veggie resistance. I knew that everyone would eat the corn on the cob, and I wasn’t really sure if they would eat the zucchini and green bean mixture, so I figured I was better off getting one vegetable in them than none. It turns out they loved the zucchini and green beans so next time (and I will be making this again) I will add the corn.
Each month, using fresh and seasonal ingredients, Chef Curtis shows you how to create delicious meals that will help you eat well for less. Recipe cards will be available in-store and online so you can build your own recipe collection and soon have the family coming back for more. For the month of October, Chef Curtis is featuring apples as the seasonal hero ingredient. The featured recipe is Seared Pork Chops with Roasted Apples and Sweet Potatoes. I know we can’t wait to try it out! Visit the Winn-Dixie site for all the Cooking with Curtis meals and start cooking with your family today.
Thank you Winn-Dixie for sponsoring this post. All opinions (and cooking pictures) are my own.
