Recipe #3: Chicken Potato Tacos!

3/4 Cup of Water

6 TBSP Potato Dices

2 TBSP Chopped Chicken

1 TBSP Mixed Bell Peppers

2 TBSP Chopped Onions

2 TBSP Sweet Corn

1 TBSP Green Peas

1 TBSP Carrot Dices

1 TBSP Shredded Cheddar Cheese (Rehydrated)

1/2 TSP Chef Choice Seasoning

1 TSP of Garlic Powder

2 Whole Wheat Tortillas!

Hi Everyone!

Today’s recipe is Chicken Potato Tacos! This meal is quite filling and comes in at $2.80 and about 8 minutes to make! The cost is a bit higher because I purchased whole-wheat tortillas, so if you’re feeling a little less spendy, or just want to add more filling, you can reduce the cost quite a bit!

This is probably a better time than ever to share that all of the Thrive ingredients are non-GMO, including the corn! This meal is a very clean meal to eat and is quite healthy. You can even make it vegetarian and just add more vegetables instead of the chicken. I honestly just threw together my favorite vegetables I had on my shelf, so have fun and experiment a little!

Ingredients:

3/4 Cup Water
6 TBSP Potato Dices (FD)
2 TBSP Chopped Chicken (FD)
2 TBSP Chopped Onions (FD)
2 TBSP [non-GMO!] Sweet Corn (FD)
1 TBSP Mixed Bell Peppers (FD)
1 TBSP Green Peas (FD)
1 TBSP Carrot Dices (FD)
1 TBSP Shredded Cheddar Cheese (FD) Rehydrated
1 TSP Garlic Powder
1/2 TSP Chef Choice All Purpose Seasoning Blend (FD)
2 Whole Wheat Tortillas!

Here are instructions for Rehydrating the Cheddar Cheese, which is a separate process from the meal. Let’s get started!

Step #1 Put all the ingredients (except the cheese and tortillas) in a bowl.

Adding tortillas to the bowl is HIGHLY discouraged as no one wants soggy tortillas.

Step #2 Add water to the bowl of dry ingredients and stir until all the water is incorporated.

If your tortillas are in here when youre pouring the water, you done goofed.

Step #3 Let the ingredients rehydrate for about 3 minutes.

I know 3 minutes can feel like A LONG TIME when you’re hungry, but you’ll thank me later.

Keep stirring them, but don’t go TOO crazy here. We don’t want any shenanigans to happen.

Step #4 While ingredients are rehydrating, heat a small pan on medium heat.

Step #5 When the 3 minutes are over, your pan should be hot and your taco filling should be the right texture!

Step #6 Put all of the taco filling in the pan and fry it for 3 minutes. Move around the ingredients while in the pan so they don’t burn!

It should look all warm and delicious afterwards.

Step #7 Put filling into 2 delicious tortillas and add some cheese.

Step #8 Just eat the dang things instead of folding it all pretty like I obviously didn’t do. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

 

When you fold them up, do they become burritos? Life’s hardest questions…

Recipe #2: Strawberry Mango Smoothie!

3/4 Cup of Water

1 Cup of Ice

1 Banana!

1/2 Cup of Strawberries

1/2 Cup of Mangoes

1 1/2 TBSP of Simply Peach Drink

3 TBSP of Instant Milk

Today’s recipe is a Strawberry-Mango-Banana Smoothie! This makes for a great breakfast, take about 2-3 minutes and costs only $1.63! The recipe below is for 2, so just cut the ingredients in half if you want to make it yourself. Or just make a mondo smoothie. Because there’s nothing wrong with a mondo smoothie.

From now on, to designate if the ingredient is freeze-dried or not, I’m going to use the symbol “(FD)” so to not make it confusing! If you want to use fresh ingredients, sub out the 3 TBSP Instant Milk for 1 Cup of regular milk and cut the water!

Ingredients:

3/4 Cup Cold Water
1 Cup of Ice
1 Banana
1/2 Cup Sliced Strawberries (FD)
1/2 Cup Mangoes (FD)
3 TBSP Instant Milk (FD)
1 1/2 TBSP Simply Peach Drink Mix

Step #1 Put all the ingredients into the blender.

Vitamix blenders rock, but if you have a magic bullet, you’ll definitely want to cut the recipe in half!

Step #2 Blend it all up till it’s nice ‘n thick.

Usually you just blend for 60 seconds, but this computer smoothie blends in perpetuity.

That’s it! You’re ready for a delicious smoothie experience!

Now I can formally enjoy my day with an awkward selfie.

Awkward Morning Smoothie selfies are the ONLY kind of selfies I take.

Tomorrow, I will share more of my convention experience. What kind of smoothies do you make?

THRIVE Life Convention Part 1!

Hi everyone!

So as you may have heard, I flew to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit THRIVE Life headquarters and to go to their annual convention! It was an incredible experience and I met a lot of wonderful people and learned many great things! I feel this is going to get pretty lengthy, so I am going to divvy this up into 2 or 3 posts.

I flew in on Wednesday last week. The view from the plane flying over Utah was absolutely beautiful! I got into downtown kind of late and Wednesday was pretty uneventful, but I had to mention it simply because this picture of a huge Mormon church at night is just gorgeous.

View from the plane was just gorgeous!

A picture of a Mormon church at night. The arcitecture is impressive!

The convention really started to kick off on Thursday morning. I met up with my family and then took a tour of the THRIVE Life headquarters! Its a very impressive facility with wonderfully kind employees. The factory where they can all the THRIVE foods is actually connected to the office itself! I really wanted to take pictures of the factory, but we were not allow to due to it being proprietary information, but I got a number of great pictures of the office part. The office was exceptionally well designed and it was great to see pictures of all the history of the company as well as the official THRIVE kitchen.

A picture of the office from the outside!

Our tour bus!

Inside the main office.

Picture of the company’s history.

The official THRIVE kitchen!

Where the execs. get business done!

The factory really was the highlight of the tour. It was a massive plant that had rows and rows of different materials and products. Their standards of processes are incredibly high – they have a USDA staffer on site to measure the quality of their productions and they consistently rate 97-98% on quality standards which was impressive. They even had gluten-free rooms where they put the freeze-dried materials into the cans to ensure that the foods weren’t cross contaminated! They had an in-house kitchen where they test the culinary application of all the foods from each batch to further ensure quality. It was overall a really cool process to see that was unfortunately obscured by my inability to take pictures.

A picture of people in the store!

The logo on the wall. Pretty snazy!

They ended the tour with a stop at their in-house store where we could purchase products and sample everything they had to offer. The store layout was really unique and had a retro, 50s-style theme to it. I ended up picking up a can of THRIVE Cherries (which are wonderful btw) and sampled an infinite amount of yogurt bites. They gave us a small bag of free cookies and we went off on our way.

Outline of the current project!

A pile of just some of the blankets donated!

Some of the other charity efforts they’re involved in!

A banner outside the convention center!

It was awesome to see first hand some of the charitable work that our company has been doing. There was a baby blanket drive for children in Kenya and we collected over 1400 blankets! It was spectacular to see the executives working first hand with the people preparing these blankets.

This Friday, I’ll share with you some of the product reveals as well as other fun activities I did on my trip! I am super tired right now and have been working hard so I had to cut this short!

 

Recipe #1: Thrive Alfredo!

2 2/3 Cups Water

1 Cup of Your Favorite Pasta

1/4 Cup Mushrooms

1/4 Cup Green Beans

6 TBSP Broccoli

3 TBSP Sour Cream Powder

3 TBSP Bechamel Sauce

1/4 Cup Monteray Jack Cheese

2 TBSP Butter Powder – Dang Can Openers…

1 TSP Chef Choice Seasoning

2 TSP Garlic Powder

Sorry the posting delay! I was traveling to THRIVE Life’s headquarters and haven’t been able to post. I am going to blog about my experience soon as it was incredible! The first recipe for this blog is none other than THRIVE Alfredo!

For those of you who don’t know, THRIVE foods are individual ingredients that are flash-frozen, are non-GMO and have no additives and preservatives. The moisture and oxygen are taken out of the foods and vacuum sealed into a can so they don’t spoil quickly. You just add water and they get back to their original state! This allows for easier cooking as well as having healthy, all natural foods at your disposal.

Our first dish that I’ll be demoing is a wonderful dish that costs only $2.30 per person to make and about 10 minutes to make. It works well as a great lunch or dinner! I’ve taken pictures for you to follow along. You can sub-out many of these ingredients for fresh and it’ll work great just reduce the water a little. The recipe I’ve charted out is for 2, but you can scale it up or down depending on your needs!

Ingredients for 2! (Scale it in half for 1 person!)

2 2/3 Cups Water
1 Cup Noodles – (I Used Fettuccine Noodles but you can use THRIVE Egg Noodles)
1/4 Cup Green Beans
1/4 Cup Mushrooms
6 TBSP Broccoli
3 TBSP Bechamel Sauce
3 TBSP Sour Cream
2 TBSP Butter Powder
4 TBSP Monterrey Cheese
1 TSP Chef Choice
2 TSP Garlic Powder

Step #1 Add your water to a stove top pan!

Pans not as blurry in real life.

Step #2 Turn the stove top on to medium heat!

Kick it up to high if you’re impatient, but remember to bring it back to medium!

Step #3 Put the noodles into pan with the water!

Because life is too short to boil water in a different pot.

Step #4 Put the dry ingredients in the pan!

Put the dry ingredients in a seperate bowl.

And then put it in the pan!

Step #5 Whisk the ingredients thoroughly!

Protip: Don’t use a whisk with Fettuccine Noodles. Use a spoon. They DEFINITELY get stuck in the whisk.

Step #6 Once it starts boiling, set a timer for 8-10 minutes!

Once the pan starts boiling…

Set the timer for 8-10 Minutes!

Step #7 Continue to whisk as it boils!

If all the clumps aren’t out yet, this is a good time to get them all out. Push them against the side of the pan helps!

Step #8 Your Alfredo is done if it looks like this! The sauce should be somewhat thick!

The recipe says for 2, but I won’t tell anyone if you eat the whole pan yourself.

Top it with some chives and it should be ready to eat!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It’s Girlfriend Approved! So you know it must be good!

10 minutes and a few bucks for free brownie points seems like a pretty great deal to me.

That’s it! I’ll be talking about my THRIVE convention trip on Wednesday! (I swear!)

Trip to the University of Portland!

Hey Everyone! Thanks for all the support for the On Thrive Facebook page! We reached 60 likes just a few days. If you aren’t currently connected, you can like our Facebook page to get regular updates!

As I mentioned in my first post, I went on a small retreat the University of Portland for Alpha Kappa Psi’s, Spring Officer Training Camp, or SOTC for short! As a former Vice President of Finance, I went to SOTC last year and had a wonderful time and just had to come back! It was a whole lot of fun and I gained a lot of great knowledge and met some wonderful people. The campus is absolutely gorgeous. There was lots of beautiful, old-style architecture on campus that was absolutely stunning. I was able to snap a picture to share with you all of one of the buildings on campus that was particularly impressive!

A group of brothers on their way to the next SOTC panel.

A snapshot of the University of Portland’s campus! It’s absolutely beautiful!

There were different panels throughout the day on subjects ranging from running effective and productive meetings to talking about launching a small business. One of my favorite panels was the small business panel where we got to chat with some big names in the Portland Craft Brewing Scene! I forgot to snap a picture of the panel, but they gave good insight about what it truly takes to get a business off the ground and spoke from great experience. There was one guy at the panel that had been in the craft brewing industry since 1984 and it was great to hear about all the risks and challenges associated with getting a business off the ground that was quite relatable.

Photo of Alexander T. Sultan’s panel on effective meetings. Photo credit to WWU Alpha Kappa Psi – Omega Beta Facebook Page.

One of the presentation slides! Statistics on research on what makes a meeting effective! You can click to enlarge the slide.

There was a lot of great networking opportunities at the conference and I met tons of wonderful brothers from all across the Pacific Northwest! Everyone I had met was so nice and we were able to chat over an absolutely delicious banquet. I shared my experience working with THRIVE and talked about my blog with many of the brothers and many of them seemed very interested. I even had the opportunity to meet with and talk to the current acting president of Alpha Kappa Psi, Alexander T. Sultan!

A picture of the banquet hall. All the SOTC participants met here to eat and network with other chapters!

Photo of [left] Alexander T. Sultan, President of Alpha Kappa Psi president and [right] myself, S. Everett Abbott!

It was nice being able to establish a greater level of connection with the brothers in our current chapter as well. We had a group of about 15 people that all went and it was nice to all stay under one room and be able to chat and get to know each other better. I had a nice Voodoo Donuts and Mexican food cart adventure with Brothers Brynna and Bette. I am new to blogging and haven’t got in the habit of taking pictures, so I just have a picture of our group all together!

Picture of our entire group that went to SOTC! Photo Credit again to the Omega Beta Facebook Page!

Overall, I had a great time and a wonderful experience. The University of Portland was impressive and I look forward to coming back to the Oregon chapters in the future! If you are interested in hearing more about our chapter and who we are, you can check out the Omega Beta chapter’s Facebook page!

Stay tuned this Wednesday as I will be posting our first, official On Thrive recipe!

Hello World! Welcome to my Blog!

Hi Everyone!

You are probably wondering what “On THRIVE” is. On THRIVE is a Blog and Facebook project that is dedicated to helping people, particularly college students, eat better and save money. I love to cook and I have been using THRIVE products for the past 2 years of my college career. They’ve helped me cut back on my grocery budget, spend less time cooking, and eat better all in the same process.

On THRIVE is more than just talking about how I use THRIVE foods. As a college student and a brother of a business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, I generally have the opportunity to travel and sometimes get into some crazy adventures. I also work from home have interesting stories that I feel are worth sharing.

In the end, On THRIVE is a blog about my life… On THRIVE! I plan on writing about my stories and recipes every Mon. Wed. And Friday. Stay tuned Monday for my first post about my trip to Portland!