When you run your own business, juggle multiple jobs to pay off school debt, or are just plain swamped with life, it can be quite a challenge to eat healthy. Fast food is everywhere, constantly tempting us to stuff our faces so we can quickly curb our hunger and get back to our massive to do lists. An occasional burger and fries isn’t that big a deal, but if you give in on a regular basis, you’re gonna blow up like a balloon and have a laundry list of health problems to deal with.
While I’m pretty good at avoiding fast food, I have a bad habit of eating lots of frozen dinners and take out. Even though I pick meals that are low fat and preservative free when I can, it’s just not the same as cooking at home where you get to see and control exactly what goes into each meal.
If You SEE What Goes Into The Foods You Eat, You’ll Make Healthier Choices
For those of you who love to cook, you’re probably already eating lots of healthy foods, especially since you see everything that goes into what you eat. I went through a brief baking craze phase (try saying that 5 times fast 🙂 ) in my 20’s and ended up getting rather grossed out after I saw how much butter and sugar it took to make a lot of recipes. I stopped eating sugar cookies and pound cake after that!
Several of my 2012 goals are focused on health and fitness and I’m really making an effort to work on them this year. I’m getting regular exercise into my schedule now, decreasing my intake of processed foods, and eating more raw snack foods when like veggies and fruits. Cutting back on frozen dinners and take out is another goal I’m working on, and I’m starting to cook dinner at home again a few times a month.
Good News – It’s Hard to Screw Up Easy Slow Cooker Recipes
I’ve never considered myself a good cook, probably because I’ve had a fair amount of disasters in the kitchen. What I have learned however, is that simple cooking can have amazing results without talent! A recipe really doesn’t need 20 ingredients, 3 saute pans, and a double boiler for it to taste delicious. Those are the ones that usually end up terrible due to getting the portions of different ingredients mixed up, not timing things right, or substituting too many ingredients when you don’t have everything on hand.
Cleanup and planning are my least favorite aspects of cooking and fortunately I’ve found a solution to both – easy slow cooker recipes. I am a KLUTZY cook but I’ve had a lot of success using a simple slow cooker! They aren’t expensive to buy, and many have containers that lift out making it easy for serving and storing leftovers in the fridge. Most importantly though they make the simplest of ingredients taste delicious!
Save Time And Eat Healthier
I used to spend a lot of time flipping through cookbooks and making huge grocery lists and it lead me to dread cooking. With a slow cooker you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches because you really don’t need anything fancy – pop in some veggies, protein, and a broth or sauce and you’re set. I’ve even made a few of my own easy slow cooker recipes – most recently a vegetarian chili that’s healthy and really basic:
Sydney’s Vegetarian Chili
- 15 oz. can tomato sauce
- 15 oz. can diced tomatoes
- 15 oz. can black beans
- 8.75 oz. can kidney beans
- 8.75 oz. can corn
- ~ 1/3 cup chopped onions
- 2 large green peppers chopped
Combine all ingredients together in the slow cooker. Turn on low when you leave for work and it’ll be ready for eating by the time you get home! I didn’t even need to add ANY salt!
Try it some time and feel free to modify it to your liking.
Untemplaters, do you like to cook? Have you ever created your own easy slow cooker recipes? What steps are you taking to eat healthier this year?
The easiest slow cooker recipe is this:
4 chicken breasts
1 cup salsa
1 cup corn
1 can black beans
Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, shred chicken, mix and enjoy. Great on tortillas!
This is our favorite slow cooker recipe 🙂 Although we usually add a half (or more) block of cream cheese 30 minutes before we eat. In addition to tortilla’s, we also like to dip dorito’s in it… amazing 🙂
Eating it with tortillas and doritos sounds really good. Now I’m hungry! 🙂
Alright, that’s it, I’ve been debating whether or not I should get a slow cooker for a while now, and wondered if it really would be worth it. I’m going to have to try it now.
I’ve made some pretty simple (and delicious) meals at friends’ houses just by throwing stuff in the pot and leaving it all day. Time to get it set up at home!
Nice Tyler! I think you’ll enjoy one especially since it’s winter time now. I try to keep mine out on the counter instead of in a cabinet so it makes it even easier to use. Being able to set it on low and not have to worry about it for several hours is great and has helped me cook more often at home.
I love my slow cooker. It is a great way to simplify cooking and reduce food waste. And the leftovers are pretty good too. !
You’re right that it helps cut down on food waste. I’ve thrown in leftover salad greens and rice that had gotten hard and the slow cooker did wonders with both! I used to waste so much rice but now I save all the leftover rice for soups and stews.
You are SO right when it comes to recipes. I used to follow them to the letter. Meal prep seemed to take forever – cutting, chopping, dicing, and measuring all those ingredients. When you do that, it’s cheaper to order out.
I love my slow cooker. Primarily because I can cook wonderfully flavored, inexpensive meats in it. Plus, it leaves my house smelling like a grandmother’s cooking in it. My favorite flavorings for meat are seasoning salt, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. It always works on pork, beef and chicken. Unfortunately, I haven’t used it to make many vegetarian dishes. I usually just heat my veggies up quickly on the stove.
We love using our slow cooker during winter. For us the time between leaving for work and coming home can be a little too long though, even for a slow cooker. We managed to get around this by plugging the cooker into a simple timer so it goes on an hour or so after we leave. Great coming home to a meal ready to go!
Good tip of using a timer! When I use mine on the weekends I usually turn it off after a couple hours using a higher setting. Super easy!
Good thing you caught me in the morning… maybe I’ll go toss dinner in right now?
Hope you had a chance to use your slow cooker! I am not that fast in the mornings so I like to prep my ingredients the night before so all I have to do is take them out of he fridge in the morning, throw them in the pot, and run out the door.
I was just about to say that I never see enough vegetarian slow cooker recipes, and then you gave me one! That one is so easy and healthy. I have no excuse now 🙂
Thanks Jeffrey! :). I had a hard time finding vegetarian ones myself so I started making my own. I was pretty happy with how the chili turned out. Letting it simmer on low for several hours really brings out the veggie flavors.
We love cooking in our slow cooker during the winter months. We just had chili last night. We try to use it around once a week or so. It makes mealtime a little less hectic and there’s just something about eating something made in the crock pot on a cold winter day.
It really is a cozy warm feeling to eat slow cooker meals during the winter. I feel like sitting by the fireplace just thinking about it. Nice job making chili last night! I made too much of my veggie chili so I froze about half of it. That’ll come in handy next time I don’t have ingredients on hand.
I don’t know that I have made my own recipe, but I put my slow cooker to use pretty frequently – beans and rice, chili, bbq chicken, pot roast. I look up recipes depending on what I have the taste or ingredients for.
Nice Matthew! Beans and rice sound nice and hearty. I’ll have to try that with wild rice to give it a nutty flavor. Mmm I’m getting hungry thinking about all these yummy dishes. 🙂
For split pea and ham, hard to beat a slow cooker. Good thing you’re out of your baking craze. Butter is good, but toss in sugar and you’ll end up like Paula Deen!
Oh my gosh she is the butter queen! Her show is fun but I don’t use any of her recipes. Split and ham sounds good. I’ll have to try that soon just without the ham. I had a nice greenbean mushroom soup with tofu today. Slow cookers are so easy!