Wordless Wednesday: A Repeat Easy One Pot Meal

Pot Roast: A "Comfort Food" Easy One Pot Meal

Confession: this is not what we are having for dinner tonight. It's what I wish we were having! I could not even wrap my mind around getting dinner ready tonight in the beanpot.

So this is what I found for you, instead...

A pot roast recipe from Everyday Food.

Hopefully, I will get myself back in gear and come up with a beanpot recipe to try in the next few days and when I do, I'll take pics and come show all of you!

See you Thursday!!

Jeanine

Easy One Pot Meal: Beans in the Beanpot

We had a wonderful dinner on Tuesday night, with baked beans and bacon!! In fact, there were no leftovers and we had planned to leave some.

Here's the Recipe

Ingredients

Two cans of baked beans
4-6 tbsp. of maple syrup
1 tbsp. of brown sugar (I use cane)
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
1 tbsp. of dijon mustard
6-8 slices of cooked bacon

Instructions

Stir all the ingredients together (I would add the bacon after everything else has been blended and then, stir again)
Bake on low in the crockpot or 250 degrees in the beanpot for 3 hours

Best Slow Cooking Mac & Cheese I Have Ever Tasted!!

Oh...my...god!!

That macaroni and cheese truly was the best I have ever tasted. I cannot believe that I, reluctant cook, ordinary homeschooling mom, basically still a novice when it comes to new meals, made a mac and cheese that tasted that good!!! And I was so worried that something would go wrong.

I expected it to be crusty and dry but it surprised me and was anything but. It was just like I like it, not too cheesy, not too dry, soft and yummy comfort food!


I feel excited, now, about all my other planned one pot meals!! I asked my son if that wasn't the best mac and cheese I have ever made (I've only tried it once or twice before, I think) and he agreed rather enthusiastically that it was, LOL!

Here's what I cooked it in...

And I got the recipe from Three Ingredient Slow Cooker Comfort Foods.

Now this book's recipes are designed for a slow cooker that has "high" and "low" settings. Obviously, with my beanpot, I used oven temperatures. So I altered it a smidge. I cooked it at 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours and that worked out perfectly!!



See you tomorrow!

Jeanine

Pizza, anyone?

Sigh.

Once again, I did not make the one pot meal. I'm sure I have mentioned it, but in case I haven't, I have spent the past couple of weeks racing to the finish line to get my homeschool planning done. As a Waldorf homeschooler, I plan every single day of my son's year in advance.

Last night, I finished and was so excited, I could hardly stand it!!

But then, I felt miserably exhausted and kind of sick. Today, I feel better but not up to cooking. I ordered pizza, instead.

Hopefully, by tomorrow, I will have fully recovered!

Can I tease you by telling you which slow cooker, one pot meal I'm going to make whenever the heck I get around to it?

Mac and Cheese Bake

Three Homeschool Meal Plans

  

This year, I have been letting my son participate as much as possible in planning our homeschooling year.

We decided together which holidays we would incorporate into our homeschooling this year and he told me which ones he had had enough of for now. We decided that Fridays would be our cooking day and he asked to choose one meal a month to learn to cook by himself.

So today, we did a lot of meal planning. We used the beanpot cookbook and two other slow cooker, one pot meals cookbooks...

(1) First, we chose the eight meals he would learn during the school year.

What we're going to do is cook the same thing every Friday for a month with me helping until the last Friday and on that day, if he feels comfortable, he will cook without me. At least half of the eight meals are pasta (we love pasta) but I did coax him to branch out a bit and add some meals that were not pasta-based.

(2) Next, we planned the meals for September. My plan is to try something new on Mondays and Wednesdays, do the meal on Friday that he has chosen, order pizza on Saturdays (for pizza and game night) and have leftovers on the nights in between.

(3) We need to plan our sandwich lunches, too, but we’ll get to that another day this week. I like how quickly you can put lunch together if you make sandwiches, but they must be tasty!

See you tomorrow!

Jeanine

Just Hit the Motherlode of Slow Cooking, One Pot Meal Recipes

Today, a great big cookbook came in the meal, Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. I wasn't expecting it to be so huge. Can't wait for my beanpot to arrive so I can try some of the recipes. I already have some great ideas to choose from for my first one!

At the grocery store today, I wanted to stock up on chopped chicken, onions, tomatoes and the like, but when I looked at the dates for most of them, I was afraid they wouldn't last enough.

So I'll load up next week!

I was telling my son about it and he was excited, too!

The beanpot recipes will be fun to try, too. A lot of them only have 2-3 ingredients. And only take a couple of hours.

See you tomorrow!

Jeanine

Looking Ahead to My First Slow Cooking, One Pot Meal...

My Beanpot

Just checked on my beanpot! It should arrive sometime next week. I can hardly wait to get started cooking in it!!

I ordered a couple of cookbooks that haven't gotten here, either, but I have seen another recipe I think I might try...

Beanpot Chicken

Place 5-6 breasts of chicken in the bean pot and pour 1 can chicken broth and 1 can of cream of celery or broccoli soup.

Add a few garlic cloves if you choose. Slow cook at 300° for several hours and serve over egg noodles or rice.

Option: add broccoli florets for the last few minutes.

Doesn't that sound yummy? With only 4-5 ingredients altogether, that you just dump in the pot!