dinner recipes

Today's quick and easy ideas for dinner:

Beans • create a Mexican-style pizza for this Easy Bisquick Pizza crust: use salsa for the sauce, add muenster or mozzarella cheese and top with pinto beans, black beans or white beans. Add sliced onions and chiles, if you like

Weekday recipes need to be quick and easy, in my book. If you're going to go to the work of preparing a home-cooked meal when you arrive home hungry and tired, the last thing you need is a long list of ingredients and instructions.

Use these quick and easy chicken recipe ideas to help you figure out what to make for dinner tonight. Some days all we need is some inspiration -- especially at mealtime.

We have both vegetarians and carnivores in our family; thus, our Thanksgiving feast will include both a turkey and a Tofurky. Although I've celebrated many vegetarian holidays, this will be the first one with this specialty (can't wait to try it!). And the turkey is courtesy of Eberly Poultry, where free-range poultry is the norm.

Oven roasting is one of the easiest and most delicious ways to make vegetables -- but it's not only for fall and winter veggies. Now that spring is finally here and asparagus season is on its way here in Pennsylvania, I dusted off my tried-and-true recipe for roasting asparagus.

This week we welcome a guest to QQM: Kelly McCumber Freihofer of Mexico, New York. Wife, mother of two daughters (one grown and one nearly grown), writer, farmer, and cook, she has written a weekly cooking column for their local paper for over five years, sharing the happenings from kitchen, family, and farm. She has also co-written a monthly cooking column for the nearby city paper, for nearly four years, with her sister Cindy Jones.

Make chutney today! Thanks to Monica Bhide, author of Modern Spice, for guest blogging on QQM. She also writes the wonderful blog, A Life of Spice, and shares two fabulous chutney recipes with us.

It's been one of those put-me-through-the-wringer times since my husband was in a serious car accident this past week. After pulling an all-nighter to drive home from Cincinnati and spending hours in surgery waiting rooms, I'm glad to say that all went well and he's now home recovering and healing. I'm going to be spending more time at home for awhile, helping with home-nursing duties and filling in all the little (and big) things that he can't do right now.