Before I had children, I wasn’t really much for cooking. I would grab something out of a can and eat it on my way to my second job. Naturally, after I got married, this had to change.

And when I discovered the magic of the crockpot, I learned that I didn’t have to love cooking. It would do the cooking for me! I went on a crockpot learning binge, finding all kinds of recipes that I could put in that thing.

Then I learned that a lot of slow cooker recipes are still time-intensive! I might have to find up to 20 ingredients. I might have to prep a lot of vegetables. I might have to scour the grocery store trying to find some kind of special seasoning.

With that much work, I was missing the point of the slow cooker – which is to do less work! So I was thrilled to come across this slow cooker red beans and rice recipe. It was already pretty easy, but I adapted it to be even easier. Because…I’m still not much for cooking.

I hope you love this! If so, be sure to try our easy vegan crockpot rigatoni for another simple slow cooker dinner!

Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice

You’ll need the following ingredients for this dish:

• 16 oz. bag of light red kidney beans
• 1 package of smoked sausage links
• 1 package frozen seasoning mix (onions, green peppers, red peppers)
• Chicken bouillon
• White rice

And that is it. Really. There are only five ingredients.

Start by rinsing the kidney beans and draining them in a strainer. Place them in the slow cooker. Cut up the sausage links into 1/2 inch circles and put them in the slow cooker as well.

Open the bag of frozen seasoning mix and toss the entire thing into the slow cooker. Now you’ll add your liquid.

The original recipe called for chicken broth, but chicken broth is kind of expensive. So I buy a container of powdered chicken bouillon and add about four teaspoons of it. Then I add seven cups of water.

Just for flavor – I add a little Cajun seasoning on top as well.

Put the lid on top and cook it for seven hours on Low.

About 30 minutes before the red beans and sausage are done, I cook the white rice. That way, it’ll be hot when the food is ready.

Dish the rice into bowls and ladle some of the beans and sausage on top. We’re done!

I might add a pan of biscuits to this, but this cooks up so large that I usually have enough for dinner the next night too. Win!

Get the full recipe below!

Print

Slow Cooker Red Beans & Rice

Adapted from http://littlemagnoliakitchen.blogspot.com/2012/08/crock-pot-red-beans-and-rice.html

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 7 hours hours

Total Time 7 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Servings 12

Ingredients

• 16 oz light red kidney beans
• 1 package of smoked sausage links
• 1 package frozen seasoning mix (onions, green peppers, red peppers)
• 4 tsp chicken bouillon
• White rice

Instructions

• Rinse the kidney beans and drain them. Place them in the slow cooker.
• Cut up the sausage links into 1/2 inch circles and put them in the slow cooker as well.
• Open the bag of frozen seasoning mix and toss the entire thing into the slow cooker.
• Add four teaspoons of powdered chicken bouillon and seven cups of water. Season to taste.
• Put the lid on top and cook it for seven hours on Low.
• 30 minutes before the beans and sausage are done, cook the white rice.
• Dish the rice into bowls and ladle some of the beans and sausage on top.

Don’t miss these other simple recipes for the family!

And get more ideas for easy dinners on my Family Meals Pinterest board!

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My children are just famished during the school day. I think it must be all the mental effort they expend figuring out ways NOT to do their work.

So this year I decided to create a simple back to school snack station that they could use on their own during snack break. Thanks to some awesome savings at Publix, I stocked our station for a lot less than usual!

See how we stocked our snack station and get ideas for your own! Plus, you can download a Publix coupon and enter our giveaway to win $15 in PayPal cash to get some kid-friendly snacks for your family!

Disclosure: The information, products and Publix gift cards were provided by General Mills through Linqia.

Simple Back to School Snack Station

Sometimes I try to make homemade snacks for our children, but on some days I just run out of time to do it myself. So, picking up snacks I know my kids like can really be a time-saver.

Some of the simple snacks for kids I like to use include Fiber One chewy cookies, bananas, Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, and Chex Mix. (Seriously, those Fiber One cookies are incredible. It takes a LOT of self-control for me not to eat the whole box.)

So here’s how I make up the station:

I empty the Chex Mix into small resealable bags – usually three bags at a time, one for each of my older kids. Then I remove the granola bars and cookies from the box and place them in the basket, along with the bananas.

That’s it! That’s all I do! When it’s snack time, I set the basket on the table and the kids go at it.

Hey, hey! One at a time!

I will say that I don’t let my kids snack during school. We take breaks to have snacks, but when we’re schooling, we’re schooling.

Do you need to fill up your back to school snack station? Save $5 on your $20 purchase of participating snacking items when you share the Publix Snack, Share, Save event with friends! Visit the campaign landing page to find out how.

Plus, you can save $5.00 instantly when you buy $20 worth of participating items from PepsiCo, General Mills, & Unilever between 9/24 and 9/30! So it’s a great time stock up on Fiber One Cookies, Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, Chex Snack Mix and all the other kid-friendly snacks you can!

Here’s how to get your coupon: 

1. Go To SnackShareSave.com and Choose a Design to share on your social media account
2. Log In to your Publix Skip The Clip Account
3. Share the social media design via Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest
4. Check your Skip the Clip Account for your $5 Coupon.

And you’re done!

Want even more snack savings? We’re hosting a $15 PayPal giveaway so you can stock up on snacks right now! Woohoo!

You can enter using the Giveaway Tools widget below! One reader will receive $15 in PayPal cash!

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As homeschoolers living on one income, we simply cannot afford to eat out often. But I don’t have time to make a lot of our foods from scratch.

Nevertheless, we still manage to feed our family of six for $500 a month. Read on to see how we feed a family of six on a budget!

How I Feed a Family of Six on a Budget

1. Stick to a budget.

The key word in “on a budget” is budget. We’ve had to be hardliners about how much money we’ll spend on groceries each month. Each month, I stick to $500 or ($110 per week). If I have extra at the end of the month, we splurge on a little something.

To stick to the budget, I cannot go shopping without a list. And I cannot go shopping with children who beg for everything in sight. So I always make sure to get at least one “treat” for them, even if it’s a bag of generic graham crackers. That usually keeps them satisfied.

2. Use a list of “go-to” meals.

This tip isn’t even really about sticking with our budget. This one was born out of my frustration with not knowing what to make every night.

I started with a list of seven dinners that I know my family likes (and that fit our budget), then I tried a few more until I had fourteen. Now I have a list of 28 “go-to” dinners that I know fit our budget and are easy to make and my kids will eat. (Fish and grits, red beans and rice, and beef stroganoff are staples around here.) I don’t have to stress about what to make and I don’t have to worry that I’ll break our grocery budget.

3. Buy in advance.

If I see an awesome price on meat, I just buy it right then, even if I’m not cooking something that uses it that week. That’s what freezers are for, right? I can’t stock our freezer too much, because it’s small, but when I have meat or fish up there, I can generally find an inexpensive meal to use it in.

Do you have any tips for how to feed a family of six on a budget? Share them in the comments!

This post is part of the “Feeding the Homeschool Family” linkup from iHomeschool Network! Click on over to read even more meal ideas from our fellow bloggers!

The post How I Feed Our Family of Six for $500 a Month appeared first on Look! We're Learning!.

I got the chance to try out Progresso Bread Crumbs at Publix this week and I’ve found that there are lots of ways to use bread crumbs in my cooking. Today I’m sharing 10 simple recipes with bread crumbs, including a super healthy lunch that is great for busy moms!

I’m also hosting a $15 Paypal giveaway so that you can try out Progresso Bread Crumbs for yourself! Plus, grab a coupon to save now through June 30, 2015!

Super Easy Healthy Breaded Fish Recipe

Bread crumbs don’t have to be boring! Recently I got to try two of Progresso’s bread crumb varieties:

Progresso Italian Style Bread Crumbs— The savory herb flavor, lightly toasted taste and finely ground texture are perfect for your favorite family recipes.

Progresso Panko Bread Crumbs— Panko is a Japanese style bread crumb with larger flaky crumbs that create a light and crunchy coating that is perfect for breading fish, poultry, pork, seafood and vegetables. It can be used to add a delicious crispy topping on baked dishes such as macaroni, casseroles, and even works well on many desserts.

For my breaded fish, I used the Italian Style bread crumbs. I love that they’re already seasoned, so I can skip the extra salt!

Ingredients:

1 flounder fillet

1/4 cup Progresso Italian Style Bread Crumbs

1/2 cup almond milk

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

I poured about 1/4 cup of bread crumbs into a pie plate. Then I poured about 1/2 cup of almond milk into a cake pan. You use what you have, right?

Then I dipped my flounder fillet into the almond milk, making sure to coat both sides.

Next, I added the breading by dredging the fish in the bread crumbs on both sides.

I added enough oil to a skillet to coat the bottom and heated it until the pan was good and hot.

Then I just added the fish and cooked it for about 5 minutes on each side. Done!

To fill out my meal, I paired the fish with spinach and tomato tossed with balsamic vinegar and some cantaloupe chunks.

Just look at that breading. Oh my.

10 Simple Recipes with Bread Crumbs

Need some bread crumb recipe ideas? Try these 10 suggestions!

1. Make meatloaf. Bread crumbs are a great stabilizer for holding your meatloaf together. Mix a pound of ground beef with egg and bread crumbs and bake.
2. Make meatballs. Use bread crumbs to shape meatballs and then cook with them with spaghetti! A kids’ favorite!
3. Make fish sticks. Dredge the fish in milk and the bread crumbs and bake them to skip the extra fat of frying. Progresso Panko Bread Crumbs are great for this, because the crumbs are fine and they brown quickly.
4. Make chicken tenders. Dip chicken tenders in milk, egg, then bread crumbs to make them extra crunchy!
5. Make pasta sauce. Toasted bread crumbs and butter make a fabulous, simple pasta sauce. (Using preseasoned bread crumbs such as Progresso’s Italian Style Bread Crumbs saves time on this one.)
6. Make zucchini fries. Dip zucchini strips in milk, egg, then bread crumbs, and bake them.
7. Make cheese sticks. You can roll mozzarella cheese sticks in egg, then bread crumbs, and fry them for an indulgent treat.
8. Make “fried” shrimp. Shrimp tastes great breaded. Use bread crumbs instead of cornmeal and bake your shrimp instead of actually frying them.
9. Make vegetable casserole. Saute some fresh vegetables, such as yellow squash, onion, and broccoli. Mix them with heavy cream and cheddar cheese, then top with bread crumbs and bake for about 30 minutes. Delicious!
10. Make crabcakes. Use jumbo lump crab meat, egg, and bread crumbs to shape crabcakes. Bake them for about 10 minutes.

And now it’s time for the goodies!

Grab your coupon to save on Progresso Bread Crumbs! You can save $1.00 off any TWO Progresso Bread Crumbs varieties!

Download your coupon HERE.

Plus, you can enter below for your chance to win $15 in Paypal Cash! That way, you can experience Progresso Bread Crumbs for yourself! Just use the Giveaway Tools widget to enter.

Disclosure: The information, products, and Publix gift cards were provided by General Mills through Linqia.

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Even if you’re not vegan (which we’re not at the moment), this is a quick and delicious recipe that our family loves. I mean, I toss five ingredients into the slow cooker at around 2:00 and then we have a hot dinner at 6:00 p.m. It couldn’t be easier!

Yes, this recipe only has five ingredients. And they’re all kid-friendly! So there’s no “Ewwww!!! I don’t like this!” at the dinner table.

Plus, this is an easy recipe to customize. If you don’t like mushrooms, swap them for something else or leave them out. Prefer to use meat? Replace the vegan tofurky with ground beef. It’s really easy to make this into something your family will love!

If this is a family favorite, add our easy chocolate chip butterscotch cake mix cookies for a simple dessert!

Vegan Crockpot Rigatoni

We got the original recipe from the book Fix-It and Forget-It: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker, which I later gave away (like an idiot). Fortunately, the whole recipe is posted at Food.com. We’ve adapted the recipe to make a meat and dairy-free version below.

Yes, there are only five ingredients in this dish. (This is probably one of the reasons why I love it so.)

You’ll need:

16 oz. box of rigatoni

4 oz. Daiya mozzarella-style shreds

12 oz. Tofurky ground beef style

24 oz. spaghetti sauce (any brand is fine)

2 – 6 oz. cans mushroom stems and pieces

Cook the pasta according to the package directions, then drain it. Spray the inside of your slow cooker with nonstick spray. (You’ll be glad you did this later.) I usually turn my slow cooker on low heat when I put the pasta in the water.

Layer the ingredients in the slow cooker in this order:

1/2 of the spaghetti sauce

1/2 of the cooked pasta

1/2 of the ground Tofurky

1 can of mushroom stems and pieces

Repeat all of the layers a second time. I’m using a five-quart slow cooker here and it nearly fills it up, so you probably don’t want to try making this much with a smaller size slow cooker. If you have a smaller model, be sure to reduce the quantities of your ingredients.

Put the lid on the slow cooker and let everything cook on low for about 2 1/2 or 3 hours.

Since we’re using vegan “cheese”, we didn’t add it until the end. It’s not as firm as dairy cheese, so it takes very little time to melt it. By the time we were ready to add the “cheese” to the top, our dish was looking like this and smelling wonderful.

Sprinkle 1/2 of the Daiya mozzarella-style shreds over the top. Be sure you cover the entire surface with cheese. Replace the lid and cook for another 30 to 45 minutes.

Let’s take a look at how everything cooked underneath…

Oh my. That’s simply marvelous.

We dished it up and we served it and all the kids had seconds! If you want to round it out, you could easily add rolls and a salad for a full meal.

Full instructions and a printable recipe are below!

Print

Vegan Crockpot Rigatoni

Adapted from recipe at http://www.food.com/recipe/crock-pot-rigatoni-60703

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 4 hours hours

Total Time 4 hours hours 5 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Ingredients

• 16 oz . rigatoni
• 24 oz . spaghetti sauce (any brand is fine)
• 12 oz . Tofurky ground beef style
• 2 - 6 oz . cans mushroom stems and pieces
• 4 oz . Daiya mozzarella-style shreds

Instructions

• Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Spray the inside of the slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray. Turn the slow cooker on to low heat.
• Layer half of all the ingredients, except the Daiya mozzarella-style shreds, in the slow cooker in the following order: spaghetti sauce, cooked rigatoni, ground Tofurky, and mushroom pieces. Repeat with the other half of each ingredient. Cook on low for 2 to 3 hours.
• Sprinkle the Daiya mozzarella-style shreds over the top. Continue cooking on low for 30 to 45 minutes. Serve.

If you’d like even more great slow cooker meals, check out the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook! (Affiliate link provided below.)

Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker

Don’t miss these other easy recipes!

This post is part of the Crockpot Meals linkup from iHomeschoolNetwork! Be sure to stop by and visit our fellow bloggers for some great winter crockpot recipes!

For more simple family dinners, check out my Family Meals board on Pinterest!

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Good morning! Hope your week of learning is going well!

Today I thought I’d share a first-time cooking experiment that actually turned out alright! Every few months, our congregation receives a visit from a traveling overseer who arrives to share encouraging Bible truths with us. In fact, this time we got to watch a truly inspiring video about the efforts to offer Bible lessons in regional and tribal languages, even those that have never been translated into writing before!

Our family had the opportunity to assist with providing food for the overseer and his wife on Saturday and I was asked to prepare chicken salad. Here’s the problem: I’d never made chicken salad before. I knew it probably wasn’t that difficult, but I don’t like using other people as human guinea pigs on a recipe I haven’t made previously. I pictured all kinds of horrible results: someone getting food poisoning because I hadn’t poached the chicken long enough; an unexpected allergic reaction to some of the ingredients; even the dish just not tasting good in the first place.

But it was Pinterest that came to the rescue! I found a great waldorf chicken salad recipe on Mom-2-3 and off I went! The recipe as written is designed to feed six, so I quadrupled it to make sure there was enough for all in attendance. I ended up with two of the standard size foil serving trays’ worth of salad.

The basic ingredients of the recipe are boneless chicken breast, apples, dried cranberries, walnuts, celery, and mayo. I did adapt it a bit by using about 1 1/2 cups of mayo per batch. (The original recipe called for at least two.) I also used Gala apples instead of the recommended Pink Lady apples, because that was what we had in the fridge.

It turned out wonderfully! Everyone liked it and I got a lesson in faith. Do you have a chicken salad recipe that you love? Let us know in the comments!

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Good morning! We’re ready to start a new week of learning! Hope you are too. Today, I thought I’d share a really simple, quick recipe that I absolutely love. If you caught our series on How to Afford Homeschooling, then you know that eating cheaply is a huge part of that for us. This is one of my standby dessert recipes that is both simple to make and easy to afford. Seriously, this recipe is so simple that I’m actually mad at myself for not learning how to make it before now.

Start with a cup of sugar.

Add a cup of smooth peanut butter. Some recipes use chunky peanut butter, but I prefer smooth.

Mix them together for a bit just so the peanut butter gets coated with sugar.

Add 1 egg.

Then 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

Then 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 – Simple, right?

Mix everything together well until you get a consistent texture.

Use a tablespoon to drop 12 equally sized dollops onto a cookie sheet. Use your fingers to flatten them into disks.

If you want to, use a fork to make cross hatches on the top. This last step is purely for decoration and normally I don’t do it. But since these were going on the Internet and all….

Bake them at 350 degrees for 9 minutes and….

Voila! Yes, they’re enormous, but what could possibly be wrong with that?

Selena’s Favorite Peanut Butter Cookies:

Adapted from the Peanut Butter Cookie recipe at All Recipes

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Mix all five ingredients together thoroughly. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten into disks with your hands. Bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them cool for about 20 minutes. Then try valiantly not to eat them all at once!

– Makes 12 giant cookies

Do you have a cheap go-to recipe when you want to make dessert? Let us know about it in the comments! Keep on learning!

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Hi everyone! Welcome to this week’s installment in our series “How to Afford Homeschooling”! Today we’re talking about how we cook cheaply.

It’s no secret that feeding a family is really expensive, especially since prices continue to go up so often. And just when you think you’ve settled into a predictable grocery budget, the kids have a growth spurt and your food costs double. (I shudder to think how much we’ll be spending when Pooh and Roo are teenagers.) For now, though, we manage to keep our food budget at about $300 a month for two adults, one elementary-aged child, and two preschoolers. Here are some of the ways we make that happen:

Stick to a shopping list.

The night before we go shopping, I sit down with the store sale paper and base all of our meals around what meats are on sale. I write those items down and then I fill in the rest of our week’s menu with meals that I know I can make for about $5. Stir fry, spaghetti, and split pea soup are some of our regulars for dinner. Once I make the list, I total up the expected cost. At the store, I stick to exactly what’s on the list. Period.

Choose generic brands.

I grew up eating name brand foods and I was actually afraid to try generic brands for years. Surprise! They don’t kill you! Unlike what I heard from others, I can taste a difference. But, it’s certainly not a big enough difference to pay two or three times more for the same product. Naturally, buying generic means I can’t use coupons, but I end up saving more this way than I did in my couponing days.

Eat at home.

Okay, this one’s a suggestion you hear all the time, but it deserves repeating here. We used to frequent the drive thru window at a couple of fast food spots near home, because I was just too tired to cook. But, now that we plan our meals ahead of time, I know what we’re supposed to eat each day as soon as I get up. Christopher Robin is a HUGE help in this regard as well, because he’ll jump in the kitchen and cook dinner often. Which brings me to my last tip…

Involve the whole family.

We do almost all of the things on this list together. I ask for family input on the shopping list and if the kids want something we can’t afford, we tell them that it’s too expensive but we’ll find a way to make it ourselves. Now they’ve pretty much stopped asking for sweets altogether, because they know we’ll always have something they like on the menu. (They’re partial to Daddy’s chocolate chip pancakes.) We also shop for groceries as a family. A lot of times family food budgets go out the window, because spouses shop independently. But when we all go to the store together, it helps us stick with what’s on the list and get some ideas for the next trip.

These are just a few ways we save on our cooking each week. In a future post, I’ll share one of our weekly menus so you all can get a detailed look at how we feed our family on $75 per week. If you have any suggestions of your own, please share them in the comments.

Come back next week for our next post in the series: “Generating Income”! Keep on learning!

Related Posts:

How to Afford Homeschooling: Having “The Talk”

How to Afford Homeschooling: Finding Free Homeschool Resources

How to Afford Homeschooling: Making Friends with Your Local Library

How to Afford Homeschooling: Saving Money Around the House

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To those of you unfamiliar with the deep South, allow me to give a very short geography lesson. The part of the East Coast in the U.S. that includes the coast of Georgia and South Carolina (and maybe the extreme north Florida coast, depending on who you ask) is referred to as the “Low Country”. I imagine it’s because it’s low to sea level and it’s really, really country, but I actually have no idea. Major cities in the area include Savannah, Hilton Head Island and Charleston.

I’m from Florida originally, but I grew up in the Low Country. While I am glad to have left the area, the one thing I miss is the seafood. I have never had seafood like that anywhere else in my life. When I was growing up, my parents would steam live blue crabs and oysters in a giant stockpot and we would eat like kings.

If we got enough people together, we’d have what we called a “Low Country Boil”, which is usually shrimp, potatoes, corn on the cob and smoked sausage tossed into a stockpot and boiled over a mixture of water and Old Bay seasoning. (I have to been Low Country Boils that included crawfish, pork neckbones, snow crab legs and king crab legs as well.) Traditionally, the food is dumped onto a table spread with newspaper and everybody eats with their hands. Since the kids are getting a little older, I decided it was time for their first Low Country Boil.

So we all sat around the table and ate with our hands. Tigger ate almost everything she could find, but kept putting her eaten corn cobs back in the pile. Ick. Pooh only wanted to eat the “shrimps” and Roo seemed partial to the potatoes. Daddy got full the fastest and I dipped my food in a mixture of ketchup and hot sauce. (It’s a Southern thing.) Apparently, it was a pretty big hit. There were only scraps left and everybody was still alive afterward. If nobody dies, it’s a good cooking night in our house.

See? All smiles! That’s the sign of some good eating.

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