Lauren @ My Passion Journey {Guest Post}

Hi! I'm Lauren and I blog over at My Passion Journey. I write about things that inspire me to live life to it's fullest and follow my dreams. Part of living life to it's fullest is staying healthy- that means I've been making an effort to eat at restaurants less and to eat healthy, fresh food at home more. I've figured out that pretty much anything I make at home is going to be healthier than what I would order at a restaurant- plus it's so much easier to edit out unhealthy ingredients and control portion sizes. Thus, I my recent venture into the Kitchen. Now, if you have followed my blog at all you already know that I am no "Betty Homemaker" when it comes to life in the kitchen. I become very easily overwhelmed by unfamiliar ingredients, the amount of ingredients, and the number of steps in the cooking process. I would sometimes be so discouraged by how complicated some recipes are that I give up all together and just order a pizza- not the healthy meal I had in mind. So I've figured out that if I want to thrive in the kitchen, I am going to have to figure out how to make recipes work for me. That's right- the recipes work for me. I don't work for the recipe. I've decided that the recipe is not my boss, it's my guide. And what do I do if I don't like where the guide is taking me? Well, it's quite simple- I cheat. Yup. I cheat. We all know cheating is bad, but let me show you what I mean. You might find out that cheating works well for you too! Last week I decided to make Italian Wedding Soup- it's actually one of Stephanie's own recipes! My first cheat was on the onions. I hate cutting onions. It takes a long time, my hands smell bad, it makes me cry, and they never even look right. So I picked up this little goodie from Trader Joe's! What a lifesaver!

The recipe for the meatballs called for garlic. I really have never worked with garlic before. If a recipe calls for garlic I normally just sprinkle some garlic powder on it- so this next cheat was actually a step-up for me. Premium Peeled Garlic! It's a small cheat, but for me this pre-packaged garlic was less intimidating than a fresh clove of garlic.

I ended up not needing to use the garlic cheat, because I found my biggest cheat of all- Frozen Meatballs! I know the soup didn't come out as well as it could have with Stephanie's homemade meatballs, but without these frozen meatballs the soup wouldn't have been made at all! Sadly, the idea of making my own meatballs was a bit too much for this novice chef. These served their purpose and were actually very, very yummy. 

And here's the finished product! It looked good, smelled good, tasted good and got two thumbs up from my husband.

So if you're anything like me and feeling a little overwhelmed in kitchen (or maybe you're just short on time) just remind yourself of my little mantra: The recipe works for you. You don't work for the recipe. And when all else fails- Cheat!

Check out Stephanie's lovely 'Savory' Sponsor: