Tag Archives: slow cooker

The Busy Mom’s Fall Menu and Planning PRINTABLE!

SO, it’s here. School has started. Time for routine, time for a new schedule, time to get.this.train.moving.

Every year, I make a different printable to motivate my houseful of—ummm—eager helpers.

This year, I’ve switched things up a bit by including three smaller sections on my printable planner. I’ve also added a space for you to assign laundry to different people on different days. As our kids get older, I’ve given them their own days to do their own laundry. If your kids are little, it might be a place for you to assign a room or something like “bedding” on a particular day. Do what works for you. Be creative! Stress down.

Also, while the menu thing is a big deal—try not to overcomplicate it. There’s a line there… just one—because that’s all you need to write the word “spaghetti” or “chili” or “cereal.” Here’s the thing: just knowing that you’ve got what you need in the fridge and have a plan in place will save you tons of time and emotional energy.

Hey. The life you save might be your own! Honestly! When I I have a meal plan, my life is a whole lot less stress-filled. I use my crockpot religiously, too. 🙂 Just in case you’re wondering.

You can do this, busy moms! Feel the rush of routine. And then, buckle up! We’re off to a new school year!

Download your Menu/Shopping/Laundry printable here!

In case you missed it, here’s my complete menu printable from last year, too!

BONUS: THE BUSY MOM’S CHORE CHART!

Yep. I’m “that mom.”

Onward, brave mother!

Frugal Family Meals: 1 Chicken, 3 Meals

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With a growing family of 6, it is always a challenge to make a meal stretch further than one sitting. I usually try to eke a leftover lunch or two out of one dinner, or we take leftovers from the week and have a day of eating from the fridge. It’s always interesting to see the combinations we can come up with when all we have to eat are leftovers!

One of the easiest ways to make a meal last is using a whole chicken. You would be amazed at how much meat there is on one bird! We typically buy a 3-pack of chickens from Costco (just the regular ones, though depending on your location, the organic birds are often available, and bigger!) once a month or so and make them stretch quite easily. It’s not only a frugal way to eat, but also very tasty.

These are 3 of our favourite ways to use 1 chicken for 3 meals.

Roast Chicken and Vegetables

A simple roast chicken in a Dutch oven is so mouth wateringly delicious and comes together in under 2 hours.

chopped carrots, celery, onion
halved or diced potatoes
whole garlic cloves, chopped garlic cloves
olive oil
Dutch Kip Kruiden chicken spice mix

Prepare your whole chicken by making sure the goody bag often stuffed inside is removed (unless you like eating that stuff :D). Wash the chicken (skin on – keeps the moisture in!) and pat dry with a paper towel.

Place a few garlic cloves, about 1/2 cup chopped carrots, celery and onion inside the chicken. Rub inside and out with olive oil. Sprinkle all sides with Dutch Kip Kruiden chicken spice rub (SO DELICIOUS!) or salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme. Make a few slits in the skin and rub some spice under the skin.

Place some of the chopped veggies on the bottom of the Dutch oven. Place chicken on top, then fill remaining space with the remaining veggies. Drizzle with olive oil.

Cover and cook the chicken at 425 degrees for 1 – 1/2 hours.

Curried Chicken Salad

This recipe is very similar to the leftover Turkey Salad – only this time you’re using chicken!

Chop up 4 cups of leftover chicken into pieces, add 1 chopped celery rib, 1/2 cup cranberries (optional), 1/2 – 3/4 cup mayo, salt, pepper and curry (to taste). Mix together and serve.

Chicken Stock = MULTIPLE Meal Options!

1 chicken makes about 2 1/2 quarts of chicken stock – that’s more than enough to make a hearty chicken soup or lentil stew.

Place remaining chicken bones – fat, tendons and all the liquid and drippings from the roast chicken – in your crock pot. Add some chopped onion and garlic. Cover to about an inch from the top with filtered water and add 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar.

Place crock pot on low for 12-15 hours (the longer the better! Sometimes I even do 20 hours, though others do only 8). Drain off the liquid, saving the chicken parts for a second batch.

Cover again with water (if the amount of chicken has decreased to fill the crock pot less than half, reduce the amount of water) and cook again on low for 12-15 hours.

Store chicken stock in the fridge to make chicken zoodle soup (substitute wheat noodles for zucchini noodles), lentil stew, or freeze in ice cube trays for future use. If you make your stock without onion and garlic, you can even add a cube to your morning smoothie for an extra healthy boost.

What are your favourite ways to stretch a meal?

Slow-Cooker Italian Beef Soup

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**This post contains affiliate links of our favorite things. At no additional cost to you, thank you for supporting The Busy Mom!**

What you need

1 lb ground beef (I have also used cut up leftovers from a beef roast)
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion
2 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano
1 package frozen mixed vegetables
2-3 potatoes, cubed
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
4 cups beef broth (again, I use this from leftover beef roast. If you don’t have that, my favorite is Knorr homestyle concentrated stock)
1 tsp basil
1 tsp parsley
1 cup shell pasta

What to do:

Brown hamburger in a skillet. Mince garlic and dice onion and add those into the hamburger. Cook until hamburger is browned. (If you’re using leftovers, you get to skip this part with the hamburger).
Add all ingredients to crockpot, except pasta.
Cook on low 6-8 hours, adding in pasta for the last 20 minutes and cooking on high.
Note: if you like a “soupier” soup, you can add more broth.

Our whole family loves this soup! I serve it with my as-good-as-Olive-Garden breadsticks.

{Easy} Slow Cooker Rotisserie-Style Chicken

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The coming of fall usually means the end of the more laid back schedule of the summer. It means school schedules, sports schedules, extra curricular schedules, and fun fall events like pumpkin patches and hayrides. It’s a fun time, but sometimes hard for a busy mom to plan for frugal, healthy, meals around all the craziness.

Today I’m going to share with you one of my favorite meals. It’s easy, frugal, and delicious. It’s also incredibly versatile. And, it will make your house smell amazing!

{Easy} Slow Cooker Rotisserie-Style Chicken

Ingredients
-1 whole chicken, 3-4 lbs.
-1 recipe herb-butter rub (I have included a choice of recipes below)

Easy Herb-Butter
1/2 packet lipton’s recipe secrets, Savory Herb with Garlic*
4 tbsp. butter, softened

Combine all ingredients.

*I have also used Grill Mates garlic, herb, wine dry marinade mix, and Weber Garlic & Herb dry marinade mix.

Fresh Herb-Butter
4 tbsp. butter, softened
1 tbsp. fresh rosemary
1 tbsp. fresh parsley
1 tbsp. fresh basil
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper.

Combine all ingredients.

Instructions:

1. In the bottom of slow cooker, place balled up aluminum foil. (This will keep chicken elevated above juices. If you’d like to make more of a one-pot meal, you can cover the bottom with carrots and potatoes for the same purpose).

2. Rinse chicken and pat dry, placing it on top of the aluminum foil balls. DO NOT ADD WATER. This is very important in giving your chicken that rotisserie-style taste and texture. The chicken releases plenty of juices.

3. Cover chicken liberally with herb-butter rub.

4. For best results, cook on high for 3-4 hours, until chicken is cooked thoroughly, exact time will vary based on size of chicken. You can also cook on low 6-8 hours.

I hope your family enjoys this as much as mine does!

More Tips

Reserve chicken drippings and juice to make your own chicken stock for basically free, and much better than storebought! All you need to do is remove all chicken from bones. Replace all bones and any extra skin back into slow-cooker with the drippings and juice. Add water to fill slow-cooker, and cook on low overnight. If desired, you can add more spices for flavoring, and more vegetables like carrots, peppers, onions, celery, etc. for nutrients and flavor. Allow to cool and then store in freezer-safe containers in the freezer until needed.

Leftover Ideas

One of the things I love most about this meal is that it’s so versatile for leftovers. I love it when I can cook one thing and use it for different meals that my family loves, so that it’s easy on me without feeling like we’re eating leftovers all week. This meal is perfect for that.

-Add some chicken together with pasta, california vegetable blend, and alfredo sauce for a baked chicken alfredo.
-Chicken & dumplings using your leftover chicken and homemade chicken stock
-Chicken pot-pie casserole
-Chicken salad sandwiches

You can even freeze the extra chicken for a quick meal any time.

What are some of your favorite ways to use up leftover chicken?

Organizing Your Meals {Blog Hop}

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meals

I used to dread dinnertime. For me, around 4pm is the hour that I want to throw in the towel and just quit being a mom. Unfortunately, it’s also the time my kids start asking for dinner. Why do they want dinner every.single.night? So, like all good moms, I check Facebook and see all the great dinners that all those “other” moms are making for their families. And then, I feel inadequate. Can you relate?

Lucky for my family, I’ve become a huge fan of slow cooking. I use it all summer, too, for things like pulled pork and slow cooked mac-n-cheese. I’m not much for menu planning but I will say this: when I do it, I’m so glad! It makes my life so much easier! Menus really only take about half and hour to put together, and VOILA! Your brain is free to do other things, like remember to take the toddler to the bathroom on the hour.

So, here are my three top tips for organizing your meals:

Have a plan.
Use your slow cooker.
Enlist your children to help. (See my chores post from yesterday.)

A few of my favorite recipes for slow cooked meals are:

Chalupa
Chicken Curry (Made Simple!)
15 Bean Soup (pressure cooker version)
Split Pea Soup

LUNCH:

If your kids are home for lunch like mine are, keep simple things around to make simple, healthy lunches. We almost always have leftover dinner for lunch, so I like to make sure we have extra at dinnertime. Here are some ideas for easy lunches:

Quesadillas
Sandwiches
Grilled cheese and canned tomato soup
Leftovers!
Mini-pizzas on english muffins (a favorite at our house)
Anything pre-made from Costco (our kids like corn-dogs, which are not very healthy but great in a hurry)

Try making a menu and see if it makes a difference in your stress level. Need a menu planner? Download mine if you’d like and remember, keep it simple! Find a few meals that you enjoy making and use them frequently if you’d like. If you can make it and the family enjoys it, who cares if every Tuesday is TACO TUESDAY?

Download your free printable menu below—be patient, it might take a minute to load 🙂

You’ve Got This,

Read all of the posts “Organizing Your Spiritual Life Posts” on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

Crock Pot Chicken Curry Made Simple

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In our house, we love music. My husband was a professional musician for the first seventeen years of our marriage. We still spend a lot of time listening to and playing music. What does that have to do with curry? Well, we match our meal to our music, that’s what! So guess what we listen to when we’re eating curry?

Indian music!

If you’re looking for something to eat with your Indian music, give this yummy slow cooker recipe a try. I’m totally in love with my crock pot, by the way. Crock pots are a busy moms best friend. Mine is an 8 quart cooker and is great for our large family. If you haven’t tried curry in your crock pot, give this a try. By 3pm, your house will smell amazing and you’ll be inspired, no doubt, to turn up the music.

Enjoy!

Put carrots and frozen chicken into the bottom of the crock pot.

In your food processor, add onion, garlic, bell peppers and jalapeño. Start with the veggies—until you get a mixture that looks like this:

Now, go ahead and add all that other stuff.

Blend it all together—it will look like a thick soup. That’s okay. You’re going to love it.

Serve over quinoa or basmati rice. {yum.}

Here’s the short version:

Ingredients

4-6 boneless chicken breast, cut into bit-sized pieces
5-8 large carrots (more carrots = less chicken = $ savings)
1 whole onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 bell peppers, seeded and quartered (less if you’re not a bell pepper person)
1 small can of tomato paste
1-2 cans of coconut milk
2 tsp sea salt
3 T sugar
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 T red curry paste
1 jalapeño

Make it simple

Place chicken breasts (could be frozen) and carrots in bottom of lightly greased pot
Blend vegetables in food processor
Add remaining ingredients to food processor and blend well
Pour mixture over chicken and carrots
Cook on low for 6 hours
Serve over quinoa or basmati rice, cooked in chicken broth

Serves 8

Happy Curry-ing! Let me know how it turns out.

Fast, Healthy, YUMMY – {15 Bean Soup}

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All ingredients except the optional ham hock and pork shoulder.

I’m a soupie. Is that a word? Well nevermind. It should be.

I’m finally getting around to posting my favorite bean soup recipe.

Why?

Because I was late yesterday, that’s why. You know, school, dishes, laundry, toddler—broken down car. These things can make a girl go half-crazy in the dinner making department.

{enter pressure cooker}

“Welcome, highly-favored kitchen appliance!”

Electric pressure cookers save time and money!

I.love.my.pressure.cooker. Period. And it got me out of a jam last night. At 4:4o I arrived home from the mechanic shop, tired and frustrated. {yes, you heard me right.} I looked in my pantry. BEHOLD! A bag of beans. Fifteen different kinds of beans to be exact. Dinner! By 4:55 I had all the ingredients in my pressure cooker and by 6:15 we were eating yummy, healthy soup.

YES it works in a crock pot too. Just put this same recipe in your slow cooker and give it 6-8 hours on low.

The magic is found in the spices so here you are:

15 Bean Soup

9 cups chicken broth
15 bean soup mix (1 lb) – this mix is in most grocery stores. It’s about $3.20/bag.
1 large onion, diced
1 can diced tomatoes
4 stalks diced celery
2 bay leaves
2 tsp diced garlic (from a jar is fine)
1 T thyme and rosemary
1.5 T parsely
1 tsp ham base if you don’t have a ham hock, or leave it out. It’s good with or without.
Black pepper to taste
Alternative:
If you’re in the mood for a more meaty bean soup, add about a pound of pork shoulder, diced into bite-sized pieces. I didn’t use it this time. When using ham base, I LOVE Penzey’s. Here’s a picture … a little goes a long way!

Directions:

Place all this stuff in your pressure cooker. Set it to “soup” and set your timer for 35 minutes. When it’s done, allow the pressure to go down on it’s own. This will add about 15 more minutes to your total time.

When you’re ready to serve, take out the ham hock and the bay leaves. Voila! No more waiting all day for your beans to cook. Pressure cooking is a busy moms best friend. Give it a try!

Heidi St. John

Speaking the Truth in Love