Smothered Pork Sausage in the Crockpot

This week my kids have swim lessons and it is right in the beginning of the evening! Which means dinnertime and dinner prep time is interrupted! Crockpot meals are a must every night!

Here is my recipe from last night:

1-2 lbs Uncooked Pork Sausage
3-4 onions
1 bell pepper (optional)
Salt & Pepper
Seasoning of choice (I use Cavendar's, you could use Tony's)

Place uncooked sausage in crockpot
smother with onions & bell peppers
Let cook for 3-4 hours on high
Season with salt, pepper & seasoning of choice

Serve over potatoes or rice!

OH SO GOOD!!

Kiss the Dinner rush GOOD-BYE!

One thing that is SO important about exclusively (atleast almost) eating at home is to have a PLAN!

You even need a plan for when you plan fails!

Any good mama can get lost in playing with there kids or folding laundry mountain, look up and realize it is 30 minutes until dinner!!! and the chicken is NOT thawed out!

You need to have atleast 2 or 3 go to recipes. Go ahead and excuse yourself, these recipes do NOT have to be as healthy as your normal meals. They will probably be more healthy than McD's and OH so much cheaper!

I wanted to share 2 of our favorites

Taco style lentils & rice

&

Hillbilly Enchiladas (yes these are high fat - deal with it!)

You don't have to use my suggestions but decide on 2 last minute meals and always have them in stock. Another favorite is Bacon & Eggs OR Pancakes & Sausage

Homemade Wrinkle Releaser

Here is a GREAT recipe for homemade wrinkle releaser!

Seeing as I hate to iron and I love Downy's wrinkle releaser, but it is too expensive for my blood, I have been using this equal substitute (in my opinion).

2 caps full of fabric softener (I often get this free through coupons & sales at Kroger)

&
fill the remainder of the Downy Wrinkle Releaser Bottle full of water and shake

Spray away!!

If I can get the fabric softener for under $1, then each bottle of wrinkle releaser now costs me $.0625!!!

Homemade Granola - Do this Tonight!

Today I was looking for a snack to soothe some stress and quite frankly, I did not have ANYTHING worth mentioning. Then I remembered that a friend from Sunday School had told me she made her own granola and how easy it was.

SOOOO......I googled this recipe and got to work (click here).

It was fantastic. You can add any nut, dried fruit, or even coconut & chocolate chips (after the mix has cooled) that you have laying around.

Do this SOON!! I will probably be making 2 batches one time per week. This will allow for several snacks/breakfasts of yogurt and granola, and some in a bag for a traveling snack.

Love ya!
Ash-

Homemade Yogurt and Fruit - A healthy affordable snack

I LOVE homemade yogurt.....it is so creamy and so much better than store bought. Honestly, just like everything else, if you get on a schedule for making it, it is easy and routine.

I make mine every Thursday afternoon, that way we will have a fresh batch every Friday evening to enjoy. It is so easy and I am reposting the link to the instructions below. I make a half gallon of yogurt and dont forget to save 1/2 cup or so as your yogurt starter for next week!

Dont delay, try it today! Once this was just one of those things I "wanted" to do and now it is part of our life......I highly encourage you to enjoy creamy homemade yogurt this week!

Add the following items to your grocery list:
Milk (I prefer whole fat)

Your favorite yogurt - I use vanilla store brand pint.

Frozen fruit (optional)

Then I use the following from my cupboard:

Vanilla Extract

Natural Sugar

Cane syrup or Maple syrup

Recipe for Homemade Crockpot Yogurt here

Here are some photos of my babies enjoying their nighttime snack today:

Abi totally skipped the yogurt and made herself ramen noodles!! CHEATER!

I just wanna eat this face up.....

Turkey Stew

I am excited to report that my first 3 days of my new goal have gone exceptionally well. (except we did spend $17 today on McDonald's chicken nuggets and a newspaper)(we stayed in town too long and the kids were starving and we ALL know that hungry kids make stressed out parents!)

1. I cooked the BBQ sanwiches and it was edible. Note to self: next time you are turning any beef into pulled beef (beef falling apart in BBQ sauce) start the crockpot in the morning when you make breakfast. My sandwiches were like sliced beef bbq...not my style.

2. The Turkey Stew was surprisingly FANTASTIC! What I did was put the turkey bones with meat intentionally left on (you dont have to carve it so closely to get all the meat off) into a crockpot Saturday night. Sunday morning very early (too early if you ask me) I was awoken by a delicious smell in my house....it was the turkey simmering in water and spices. I added the leftover roasted potatoes and half a bag of frozen (gasp) mixed veggies. *remember I am on a budget now and that means I HAVE to use those bags of frozen stuff/or canned stuff that has been hiding out waiting for its expiration date to be tossed into the trash.

I walked in the door from church with an optimistic attitude and the stuff was GREAT! We put a roasted red potato in each bowl, mashed it, covered it with the veggies & turkey and added some of the broth. It was really good. So there was a free meal from leftover Christmas turkey.

***I forgot to mention that Billy did pull the turkey out of the crock, deboned it, and put the edible meat back in all before I got out of bed this morn. He know I hate that part.....awe.....

2 poor man meals down, 5 more to go!!