cooking – College Cooking with Celia

My Fave Easy Dinner: Sweet Potatoes

I absolutely love sweet potatoes. Not in sweet potato casserole with all the marshmallows and brown sugar, I like my sweet potatoes with lots of salt and savory spices. I’m a big fan of just improvising in the kitchen, and with some inspiration from a Buzzfeed article, I came up with this super easy recipe.

The best part about this recipe is how versatile it is. It’s vegetarian, but if you want to add meat you can! Or take out the egg and cheese to make it vegan! Or throw in other vegetables based on what you have in the kitchen. These are my favorite kinds of recipes because you can never get bored of them. Plus, this recipe makes two to three servings, which gives you lunch for the next day! We’re all about easy meal prep here.

You want your sweet potatoes to be diced pretty small so they cook quickly

Easy Sweet Potato Dinner Bowl

Cook time:

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients

1 large or 2 small onions, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes, diced

1 15 ounce can of beans (black, kidney, or pinto are best)

Salt

Red pepper flakes

1/2 cup uncooked rice (I prefer brown)

2 eggs

Cheese of your choice (cheddar or Colby jack are my favorites), shredded

Instructions

Sweet Potato Bowl

In about 2 tablespoons of olive oil on medium high heat, sauté the onion and garlic until translucent and soft, and season with about 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and red pepper flakes.
Add the diced sweet potato to the onion mixture with another 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and red pepper flakes, turn the heat down to medium, and cook the potatoes until they’re soft.
While the potatoes are cooking, cook 1/2 cup of uncooked rice according to the package directions
Once the sweet potatoes are soft, pour in the can of beans (undrained), add more salt to taste, and cook about 7 minutes until the mixture becomes thick.

Soft or Hard Boiled Eggs

Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil
Add in both eggs and cook to desired consistency (6 minutes for soft boiled, 8 minutes for hardboiled)
Transfer both eggs to a bowl of ice water to halt the cooking process and peel when ready to eat.

Serve rice with 1/3-1/2 of the sweet potato and bean mixture, top with one egg and as much shredded cheese as you’d like!

Improvisation: Sausage Pasta

One of my favorite things to do is improvise dinner based on what I have in the fridge. It’s liberating to not have to follow a recipe and do whatever I want, and this dinner I made the other day was SO good. Seriously.

I know most people don’t know where to start when it comes to improvising dinner, so I’m gonna share my thought process every time. Past that, it really just takes practice and learning what tastes good to you. I always look through my fridge and first find some protein source (meat, beans, tofu, egg, etc), figure out what vegetable I have, and then decide on some carb (rice, pasta, potatoes). Which these three categories you could make a rice bowl, an improvised pasta sauce, or eat chicken and potatoes like my easy chicken recipe from last week.

I promise, improvising dinner can be really easy, you just have to be a little creative! And use plenty of salt.

So this recipe I made last week was a total improvisation. My roommate and I had Italian sausages in the freezer that we wanted to cook, so I knew those would be my starting point. I also had some leftover plain pasta from the weekend, so that was step two. I decided to use a bell pepper, and onion, and some cherry tomatoes (they were starting to get soft so I figured I’d better cook them) to improvise a pasta sauce! With plenty of cheese at the end, it was amazing. And made enough for lunch the next day!

Feel free to make this recipe as is, or put whatever else you want in it! Any meat or vegetables work, and that’s the beauty of improvisation 🙂

Sausage Pasta

Cook time: about 30 minutes

Serves: 2

Ingredients

2 Italian sausages

1 bell pepper, diced

1 onion, diced

About 1- 1 1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes, halved

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Salt

Red pepper flakes

Pepper

About 1-1 1/2 cups of cooked pasta

Cheese, shredded (mozzarella, parmesan, etc)

Instructions

In a medium pan on medium low heat, in about 1 tablespoon of olive oil, cook the sausages until done, about 15 minutes. Make sure to turn periodically so all sides cook.
Remove the sausages from the pan and cut into chunks.
In the sausage pan, in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, cook the onions, peppers, tomatoes, and garlic. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes and cooke until onions are translucent, peppers are soft, and tomatoes have burst.
Add the chunks of sausage and the pasta and cook until everything is combined and warmed through
Top with desired amount of cheese, and serve.

Easy Breakfast Taco

I love breakfast. I very strongly believe that there is no problem that can’t be solved by breakfast food. One of my favorite easy breakfasts to make, especially during the school year, is this simple breakfast taco.

The beauty of the breakfast taco is its ease and its versatility. Most recently, I made my breakfast taco with avocado, tomatoes, egg, and cheese. But you can add anything you want! Breakfast meats, potatoes, beans, peppers, onions; it all depends on what you have in your fridge.

Below is the recipe for the tacos I made most recently, but feel free to add or take away anything! And let me know below what your go-to breakfast is at the moment!

Easy Breakfast Taco

Cook time: About 15 minutes

Serves: 1-2 (I usually only eat one but it depends on your appetite in the morning)

Ingredients

1/4 avocado

2 eggs

1/2 cup cheese, shredded (cheddar or Colby jack are ideal)

2 small corn or flour tortillas

6 cherry tomatoes, halved

Butter

Instructions

In about one tablespoon butter, crack both eggs, season with salt and pepper, and cook on medium heat to desired doneness (I prefer over medium).
While the eggs are cooking, sprinkle 1/4 cup cheese on each tortilla and microwave about 40 seconds to melt.
Slice the avocado into 6 segments.
Place 3 slices of avocado and 6 tomato halves on each cheesy tortilla, and season with salt and pepper.
Place one egg on each tortilla and serve.

Easy Weeknight Chicken

Chicken is one of my favorite easy dinners, especially during the week. Between classes and research and band practices it can be really difficult to find the time to make things at home, cue spending too much money on takeout (or mooching off of freshmen with meal plans). And we can try to meal prep but sometimes you just run out of time. Which is exactly when I make a dish like this.

When I go grocery shopping, flash frozen chicken tenderloins are my go to. They’re small and frozen individually, so you can just keep a bag of them in the freezer. And you can cook them while they’re still frozen in about 15 minutes! Plus you can really easily double this recipe to make lunch for the next day, a win-win.

This past week I made this exact dinner, but you can make the chicken with pasta or rice, and with any vegetable you like. And I’m sure this chicken will resurface with other recipes later on, but here’s what I made most recently!

Easy Weeknight Chicken

Cook time: about 20 minutes

Serves: 1 (or double really easily!)

Ingredients

2 individually frozen chicken tenderloins (the unbreaded ones)

Chicken grilling seasoning (this stuff is great because it’s easy and versatile, but you can also use salt and pepper and any other spices you have on hand)

1/2 a large potato, diced

1/2 a red bell pepper

Instructions

In a pan over medium heat, sauté the chicken tenderloins in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Season the top side with the chicken seasoning (or whatever spices you want to use)
Add the diced potatoes to the pan and season with the chicken seasoning and about a teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
After about 7 minutes, flip the chicken over and season the other side.
Cook chicken until cooked through (about 7 more minutes) and stir the potatoes, allowing them to cook until soft and slightly browned.
Slice the half a red pepper (I love them raw, what’s easier than that?)
Serve the chicken and potatoes and peppers!

Mama’s Italian Wedding Soup

I am the biggest soup fan. I love cold weather and being cozy, so soup goes along with that perfectly. Canned soups are always a go to because they’re easy, but homemade soup is even better. And surprisingly easy!

My mom makes this Italian wedding soup for us at home and it is SO good. It’s hearty, it’s got some spice to it, it’s wicked easy, and it’s delicious.

Pro tip- this recipe makes a lot, so you can put a bunch of it in a Tupperware in the freezer and save it for later! Which is great when you get back to your apartment after winter break and actually have zero food.

Pro tip number 2- for the minced garlic, don’t buy a jar of pre-minced garlic; it’s way more expensive than buying whole garlic and mincing it (chopping it into tiny pieces) yourself.

Mama’s Italian Wedding Soup

Cook time: approximately 35 minutes

Serves: 12

Ingredients

1 cup yellow onion, diced

1 cup celery, diced

1 cup carrot, diced

1 cup ham, diced

1 tablespoon garlic, minced

6 cups chicken broth

2 teaspoons dried oregano

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes

1 bay leaf (if you don’t have this that’s okay! I didn’t and it still tasted great)

30 uncooked cocktail sized meatballs

1 (15 ounce) can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups (or more if you’d like) of whole spinach leaves

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (a few tablespoons of dried works also!)

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

On medium high heat and in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, cook the onion, celery, carrot, ham, and garlic until the onion is translucent and everything is soft.
Add the chicken broth, oregano, red pepper flakes, and bay leaf and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Drop in the meatballs and cook for 7 minutes.
Stir in the beans, spinach, and parsley and cook until the spinach is wilted and the soup is simmering again.
While the soup is simmering, combine the beaten eggs and parmesan cheese. Take the soup off the heat and add in the egg mixture.
Top with extra parmesan cheese and serve, or freeze and enjoy later!

The Journey Begins

Hi everyone! I’m Cecelia, a stressed out college kid in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m 19, and a self-declared band nerd and book lover who loves the stars, mountains, and being in the kitchen. It’s my happy place and where I find myself when I’m overwhelmed by studying organic chemistry and writing lab reports.

I grew up helping both my parents cook, so it’s something that comes naturally to me. But, I know not everyone feels excitement at the prospect of making up something for dinner using whatever happens to be in the fridge. So I decided to share my love for cooking (along with a sprinkling of what little life advice I have at the age of 19) to help out any other college kids out there who may be overwhelmed about cooking, growing up, organic chemistry, and everything in between.

So come along for the ride! And before you know it, you’ll be making homemade pasta sauce and remembering to take out the trash like a pro.