Sunday, September 30, 2012

My 14-day Crock Pot Challenge

Call me crazy, but I'm challenging myself to a new test.  I want to see if I can use my crock pot for 14 straight days.  One meal or snack a day will be made from the slow cooker.  Tomorrow, October 1, will be my first day. Some of the meals will give us a ton of leftovers, especially when there are just two of us eating together, but that should cover our lunches for half the month, too.

We did our grocery shopping this evening so that we have everything we need in-house.  I realized that I missed some ingredients for two of the meals, so those are going towards the end of the challenge so I have time to get back to Publix.  For the 12 meals I did shop for, we spent $140.  The ingredients I'm missing for the other two meals should come to about $10 total so it's safe to say that I will have 14 days of meals for $150.  I'm sure if we had shopped coupons and based meals on what was on sale we could have cut that down a little bit, but at close to $10 a day with a ton of leftovers, I'm not upset about it.  We also bought a few extra things while at the store, so it should take us even further than two weeks.  

Tonight I will cut and prep for meal #1 and I'll throw everything into the crock pot in the morning.  We'll have dinner as soon as we get home.  Hopefully, this will help us kick start our motivation to start working out again.  

To make sure that I wasn't running to Publix every evening or quitting the challenge mid-way through I made my list of meals.  Most are from recipes I found on the Internet, some are from a cookbook I have at home: Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook, Feasting with your Slow Cooker.

Source: Amazon
Here they are, if the recipe is online, I've included the link so you can follow along at home.  I'll blog about the experience along the way and I'll make my notes about the recipes at that time.  
  1. Absent Cook Stew, book page 28
  2. Pork Roast with Apples and Sweet Potatoes
  3. Sugared Pecans
  4. Stuffed Green Peppers, book page 123
  5. Applesauce, book page 245
  6. Egg & Broccoli Casserole, cook page 23
  7. Minestrone Soup
  8. Buffalo Chicken Sandwich
  9. Greek Chicken
  10. French Onion Soup
  11. Mac n Cheese
  12. Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup
  13. Lasagna
  14. Overnight Oats
Wish me luck!  Stephen is super excited about all of the food coming his way.  

No comments:

Post a Comment