Steven Helmer Publications

  Marriage isn't always just about romance. Sometimes, it's making dinner for two and paying attention to your partner's specific dietary restrictions. In my wife's case, some stomach issues have resulted in her doctor putting her on a temporary diet that excludes gluten and a fairly long list of other foods. She started that diet this week, so I did what I could to help her with this chicken skillet dinner. Full disclosure, I didn't see mushrooms in the "no" category on her list until it was too late but other than that, this was almost completely dietary compliant.  Ingredients: 1 pound of diced skinless chicken breast 1 pound gluten-free rotini rice pasta Fresh carrots, zucchini, red sweet peppers and mushrooms 2 cans of gluten-free condensed cream of chicken soup. I started out by making the pasta first, so I could strain and rinse it as per the instructions. After that, I fried the chicken and vegetables together until they were almost fully cooked be...

With school back in session and both of us working again, my wife and I still need to get ourselves back into a routine when it comes to planning dinner. As a result of this, we needed to figure something out at the last second and neither of us was in the mood to thaw something from the freezer. Since the kids had already eaten at their grandmother's, I decided to just pick up something at the store. After walking around for several minutes, I ended up with this in the cart. The primary reason I picked this particular frozen skillet dinner ($6.99) versus several other choices was because it had the least amount of steps. Frozen dinners are meant to be convenient. If we have to go through a long process and prepare certain things separately (as is the case with a surprisingly large number of skillet dinners) then we might as well just make something from scratch. This dinner, in comparison, only had three steps and none of them were overly complicated. Preparing the dinner proved t...

The first half of our week was a bit hectic, with everything from the normal skate/dance lessons to a school concert . And, because of that, I kept my eyes open for food items that were easy to make for dinner. When I first saw this particular product at one of our local grocery stores, I had to think it over for a while. This is because, while it looked good (and convenient), one bag was almost $10. This seemed to be a bit on the pricey side, to me at least, even though it was advertised as a family-sized meal (which is always a matter of opinion). However, after having it last night, I do think it was a decent purchase. While I'm still undecided if it was really worth the money (mostly because I could have made my own for around the same price), this product did have some things going for it. One of the big ones was it was as convenient as I hoped it would be. Making this skillet lasagna was easy. All I had to do was poor the contents in the skillet and cook it for abo...

My youngest daughter had dance last night and, since my wife was with her, I ended up making dinner for us. I've been in the mood for lasagna. But, I didn't have time to make one in the oven so I decided to make skillet lasagna instead. This is actually something I used to make much more often when my wife was still working in the evening. It's easy to make and I can get about 8 servings for less than $10 (especially when I already have hamburger in my freezer). Here's what you'll need: 1 pound of hamburger 1 or 2 jars of pasta sauce (1 jar for every 1/2 pound of lasagna) 1/2 pound or 1 pound of lasagna pasta (one pound makes about 8 large servings) 1 can of mushrooms low-fat ricotta cheese Instructions:  Brown the hamburger and drain Boil the lasagna pasta until it is almost fully cooked but still a little firm. After this is done, combine the lasagna, hamburger and the rest of the ingredients in a large-enough...