Meal Planning; Our Favorites

        It's always a difficult switch to go from college eating to homemade food all of the time. For Zach and I, it wasn't that bad since we already did more cooking at home than most people our age, but we still had to come up with a plan to avoid eating out so often. I would say that we were eating out around 5 or 6 times a week before we starting meal planning for the week. Not only was this bad for us, but it was getting expensive and we weren't even realizing it until we looked at Mint at the end of the month (a budget website). So when we moved in together, we knew that we needed to come up with a better system.

       

      I was at Goodwill one day when I found a big crock-pot cookbook, and that is where everything started to come together. This along with many Pinterest posts is where we got all of our recipes. We planned out the week of dinners, went grocery shopping, put together all of the meals, and put them in the freezer. We knew what days we we were having what and would take it out the night before, put it in the crock-pot before class, and dinner would be ready when we both got home from class. Not only was it super simple, it made the apartment smell great and we saved so much money by not eating out.

      This week we put our meal plan together, and there are always a couple of favorites that we try to incorporate. Since we are making them at home, we can substitute healthy ingredients to make the meals something that fits into my healthy lifestyle. So these are the two that we are having this week, and they are Zach tested and approved!

1.) Chicken Tacos        

 Ingredients

1 packet of taco seasoning or homeade seasoning

2 lbs of the cheapest chicken meat

1 can of pico of your choosing

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup water

For preparation of the tacos after:

whole wheat tortillas

shredded cheese

1 diced onion

Directions

1.) Put seasoning on the bottom of the crockpot and put chicken on top of this.

2.) Cover chicken in pico (or salsa)

3.) Pour the water and olive oil on top, do not stir.

5.) Cook on high for 6 hours

6.) shred and de-bone chicken on a seperate plate, then return to the crockpot.

7.) Serve on tortillas with cheese.

2.) Easy Pulled Pork     

Ingredients

4 lbs or pork butt roast

2 yellow onions, sliced

Dry rub:

3 tbsps chili powder

1 tsps coriander

2 tsps cumin

2 tsps onion powder

1 tbsp dried parsley

1/4 tsp chipotle powder

2 tsps sea salt

Directions:

1.) Rub all of the dry rub ingredients onto the pork.

2.) Lay onions on the bottom of the crock pot, and place the roast on top, and the rest of the onions on top

3.) Cook the roast on High for 5-6 hours and then turn to Low for 3-4. NO LIQUID NECESSARY

These are the favorites that we included in our meal plan this week, and they are always dinners that we both look forward to! There are also usually a lot of leftovers so that we can have them for lunch and other dinners all week!

Have a great week everyone!