Baked Macaroni (Recipe forthcoming!)

7 Layer Taco Dip

Mexican Chicken (You do already have this in your monthly rotation, right?!  If not, let me know and I’ll write up the recipe for it too.)

Tacos

Meatloaf

Taco Soup

Beef and Bean Burritos

Cheddar Beer Chicken (the jury’s out on this one, thank you Pinterest!  I’ll let you know if it’s a keeper, but c’mon, beer, cheese, and bacon?  How could that go wrong?  Again, recipe forthcoming!)

Homemade Frozen Pizzas

Broiler Cheese Burgers

I used a fairly large chuck roast and this will serve my family of 7 for about 2 meals.

Ingredients

• Chuck Roast
• 1 Pound Dry Pinto Beans
• 1 White Onion (chopped)
• 2 Cans Rotel
• 1 Can Cream of Mushroom Soup
• 2 Cans of Water

Directions

Trim the fat from the chuck roast.

Put the chuck roast in the crockpot and then just dump all the other ingredients into the crockpot around and on top of the roast.

Cook on low 6 – 8 hours.  When the roast is tender and falling apart shred the roast with a fork and mix all the ingredients well.

This is just the right spiciness for the mild likers in my family and the others will add hot sauce to it.

That’s it!  Wrap in warm flour tortillas, serve with sour cream if you would like.  Enjoy!

This two week’s menu plan:

Barbecue Sandwiches and Baked Beans (thanks to Donny and Brooke! and my grillin’ hubby!)

Manicotti with Red Sauce and Corn (regular canned corn served as a side, cheapy jumbo shells filled with this manicotti filler and covered with spaghetti sauce from a can)

Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes, Lemon Pepper Chicken Salad, and Sour Dough Bread  (bread was on sale at Wal-Mart – I’ll warm it and butter it, regular green leaf and iceberg lettuce salad with boneless, skinless breasts baked in lemon juice and pepper chopped and placed on top of salad)

Taco Bowls

Hamburgers

Veggie Stromboli

Slow Cooker Caesar Chicken Sandwiches

Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps

Slow Cooker Breakfast Casserole (I tried the muffin cup sausage/egg/cheese recipe recently that I had “pinned” and I liked how quickly it cooked and how handheld they were for quick trips out of the house, but I like the idea that I can wake up to breakfast with this one!)

Pesto Chicken Jumbo Shells

Slow Cooker Potato Soup

Lunches and Snacks

Leftovers

Spaghetti

Tuna Fish with Crackers

Macaroni

Ham and Cheese Melts (toasty bread, ham warmed to crispy in the skillet with cheese melted on top, with lettuce and tomato – our all-time fav sandwiches)

Granola

Baked Parmesan Tomatoes

Popcorn

Chocolate Pudding

GoGurts (they now make Simply Yogurt ones – yay!  frozen, a quick cool healthy treat for the kiddos)

String Cheese

Sunflower Seeds

Dried Cranberries

Cereal

Ice Cream (totally counts as a snack!)

Cinnamon Oatmeal (not individual packs, the real cooked stuff)

Bruised Berry Pie (Matt’s creation from pie shells, blackberries, blueberries and a cobbler type filling)

Cinnamon Rolls with Icing (yes, I know there are no pictures anymore on this post, but if you read the directions I think you can get the gist of it – I use the biscuit cans that are tiny and very cheap)

Lots of fresh fruit and carrots for snacking

***

We’re still eating healthier, eating less, and losing weight.  Well, I’m not losing anymore weight – I’m at a weight that I want to stay at now.  And this will be the first time around that I bring the kids onto the complete healthy eating with us.  Until now I’ve been buying hot dogs and lots of frozen instant foods.  I knew it was wrong to get our bodies so much healthier and pour junk into the kids’ bodies, but I couldn’t get my nerve up to cook more and serve food that I wasn’t sure they’d eat.  But as we ate more and more real foods that were better for us and served them alongside macaroni and hot dogs and frozen pizza and deep fried chicken the more I noticed they wanted to try what we were eating.  Plus with the rising cost of groceries I could no longer buy two different meal plans.  So, here we go.  All together finally.  Eating healthier.  I’ll let you know if these recipes make my 30 day meal plan or not.  I hope they’re not all flops or we’re in trouble!!

Happy Eating!!

I will tell you, despite posting this recipe right now I’m still sticking to the new way of eating.  It’s just that groceries are low, the kids can stand to eat some fancy bread, and I had leftover applesauce, just not enough to divvy up between a bunch of kid-vultures.  So, this is the perfect fix for all that.  Oh, and I made my granola bars that same day too and I nearly fell smooth off my diet over that.  It happened to be on the same day as the last round of tornadoes that came through and that didn’t help my stressy snackingness.  But overall, I didn’t lose it eating it, I just had a few bites and then stepped proudly away.  And even though the numbers don’t matter, I am, for the record, down to 123.  And after all that diet discussion I will now give you a decidedly non-diet recipe.

I know I’m full of contradictions, but with this recipe I’ll also be full of sugar and spice and everything nice.  ;)

Apple Spice Bread

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup margarine
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice (I didn’t have allspice this time so I threw some nutmeg in it, be creative)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup applesauce (any kind – cinnamon, unsweetened, whatever you like or happen to have on hand)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray bread pan well and then flour the pan.

2.  In a large bowl, cream together the sugars and margarine.  Add vanilla and eggs, and beat until smooth.  Blend in cinnamon allspice (and/or nutmeg), baking powder, and baking soda.  Alternately add in a half cup of applesauce, one cup of flour, remaining applesauce, and remaining flour.  Stir until just blended together.  Pour batter into bread pan.

3.  Bake in preheated oven for 30-45 minutes.  Just check for doneness by inserting a butter knife into center.  When the knife pulls out clean, it’s ready.  Let sit for 5 minutes in pan and then flip loaf out onto cookie rack to cool.  Slice and enjoy!

*******

I usually double or even triple this recipe (like my Pumpkin Bread) so that I can freeze, share with others, or just have another loaf first thing in the morning.  And like the Pumpkin Bread, this is good fresh out of the oven (obviously) and reheated, or even just straight out of the fridge all cool and everything.  So, get to doublin’, triplin’, and handing these things out!

If you like this you might also like my other recipes, be sure to check them out!

To make these beauties..

Buy a box of yellow or white cake mix.

Gather the ingredients on the back of the box.  You can be normal and include the eggs or do like me and completely forget that you’re out of eggs until you’ve whipped all the children in your house into a colored cupcake wanting frenzy and then realize you’re flat out.  Then get a friend on Facebook to rescue you with egg substitutes like mayo and flax seed.  Flax seed have I not, but mayo, that’s an item I know well.

You should know, the mayo for us made them so soft that they collapsed and I was forced to ice this massive pile of rainbowness.  Oh the horrors.

Mix the mix with the you know.. mixer.

Then divide the batter into however many colors you want in your cupcakes.  I went easy and chose the four that come in the little food coloring boxes.

Color the batter that is now divided into the bowls.

Spray your cupcake pans.

Drip a little of one color into every cupcake holder.

Then drip on top of that another color.

And another.

And another.

I’m not a precise person.  I like precise, but I fail at that.  So I just slopped them in there all drippy messy like.

And baked them.

Cooled them.  Which was extremely difficult to do in this house.

Then iced and sprinkled them.

Then turn the children loose.

And prepare to clean the mess that follows!

It helps if you’re studying colors and the mixing thereof in your art lessons – just for background art, yo?

May you do the same soon!!