I have found "The Answer"

I have found "the answer" to all of my problems! What is it, you ask...Meal Planning.

I am a working mother of two small boys and have a husband all of whom want to eat dinner every night. (Who knew?)The boys would be happy with cookies or any other junk food, but since I want to be a “good” mom, that’s not going to happen. So what can I do to ensure we get healthy food for dinner? Do a web search and the answer is “meal planning.” Apparently this is the solution to many of our problems (good to know, right). So how does a busy mom of small kids go about meal planning when I don’t have 4 to 5 hours to prep numerous meals on some day during the week?

Bring in the slow-cooker, aka crock-pot! This little appliance may well become my best friend. A few weeks ago I made pulled chicken (Chicken, BBQ Sauce, and some broth). This lasted us for 3 dinners and 2 lunches, but we tired of pulled chicken sandwiches before we were out of chicken. So…I needed to find more versatile recipes that we could eat for several days, but not eat the same thing every day.

I decided to cook some chicken up in the crock-pot with some chicken broth and half a package of make your own dressing mix (you can use ranch or Italian), then shred the chicken. I froze it in quart freezer bags to use to make the following recipes:

1 Chicken Quesadillas

2 Buffalo Chicken Pizza (Cheese Pizza for the boys)

3 Sloppy Chicken Joes

4 Chicken Enchiladas

5 BBQ Chicken Wraps

6 Pulled Chicken Sandwiches

7 Chicken Tacos

8 Pesto Chicken Club Wrap

Now I have several healthy meal options for busy nights! This will work so much better than Pulled Chicken Sandwiches for 5 meals!

I think I will try Freezer Cooking next to add some variety to our meals.