Cheap and Easy

Made ya look!

If you read my blog yesterday, you know that we are cutting out fast food for a month.  Now I have another problem.   Isn’t that always the case, when you solve one problem it always seems to create another.  Since I can no longer depend on the fast and cheap drive thru, what do I feed the family on those busy nights when cooking just isn’t an option?  One night every week we have two activities, with an hour between the two. Here’s the problem, I either feed the kids at 4:00, before we leave or 8:00pm when we get home. If we go home between the activities I only have 30min. to fix and shovel food into them before we have to jump back into the car.  Thankfully, this is an only 1 night a week thing.   If you are a parent you know that kids don’t eat in a hurry unless it’s ice cream or candy.  Which they would love for dinner but, defeats my purpose to raise healthy children.

I have given this a lot of thought today and I have come up with 3 options to choose from.

1.      1.   Picnic in the parking lot.  I pack a dinner and take it with us and eat in the parking lot.  This would mean that a hot meal would be out and I would be limited to what I could bring. Not to mention the MESS it would leave in the car. Not my favorite option.

2.      2.  Go out to eat at a nice sit down restaurant and order healthy food.  This is a tasty option but, not very economical.

3.      3.  Eat at home, quick!   If I made a crock-pot meal, then we could get home fill plates and eat. We just may be able to make it back into the car and to the second activity without being late. Did I mention I hate being late!

I found this website http://crockpotgirls.com/  it is called Crockn Girls. They are on Face book as well.  This is a great website for real life recipes. I love the food network but, I don't have time to do all that chopping and prep work.  These ladies make fixing dinner just a little bit easier. Easy is good!

Tonight I am going to try the crock pot Lasagna and tomorrow night the crock pot meat loaf.  They have lots of recipes on their site.  I am going to Crock pot it up at least twice a week. I think that just might make a difference in our crazy busy lives. I figure it will also save us some money too. 

Bless those Crockin Girls!!  

What is your go to meal when you are in a hurry?  I need ideas for new and healthy meals.