Our Top 5 Favorite Crock Pot Recipes

Wednesday and Thursday nights can be tough around here.  Every other night of the week we eat dinner around 5:30 but on Wednesdays I teach dance until 6 and Thursdays are errand day so I'm usually out and about pretty late.  If we don't plan ahead and have a pre-made dinner of some sort, we end up with a tired, hungry and fussy toddler and a night filled with food prep, cooking, eating and cleaning up instead of a night of fun quality time together.
Over the past couple of years we have found some fail-safe slow cooker meals that we have enjoyed time and time again and I would love to pass them along to you!

Roast Chicken and Gravy
The gravy is AMAZING!
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Honey Apple Pork Loin
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BBQ Pulled Pork and Collard Greens
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we use this sugar free BBQ sauce recipe.

Pork Chops
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Kielbasa & Superkraut
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With the help of our crock pot, if I know we are going to have a late or busy night, I get dinner taken care of earlier in the day, *try* to go ahead and clean up the dishes and such.  Then, all we have to do is come home and dish it up!  We either pair it with or put it over a salad or I go ahead and prepare veggie sides that we can warm up later.  If you don't use your crock pot very often, or don't have one at all, it can really make a HUGE difference in your life!  You can have the health and money saving benefits of a home cooked meal yet feel like you have the night off.  I even know some working parents who put everything in the inner crock part of the slow cooker, put the lid on and put it in the fridge overnight.  Then, in the morning, they just plug it in and put it on low so dinner will cook while they are away.  Most soup and chili recipes work well in a slow cooker too!  Leftover nights are also a great way to get a quick homemade dinner.  A night or two a week, instead of planning a crock pot recipe or two, I'll double a recipe and save the leftovers for Wednesday or Thursday night.  There is always a way around eating fast food if you are willing to take the time to plan ahead.  

What is your favorite slow cooker recipe?  How often do you use yours? 

~Sarah

Flashback!  Here's what we were up to one year ago today: "Cleaning In Circles"

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Cook With Your Kids!

We do A LOT of cooking in our house and Ayden has been a side kick in the kitchen since he was probably 4 mo the old. We'd get him set up in his Bumbo or bouncer and give him bell peppers or mesh feeders full of goodies to taste and gnaw on. When we moved in with my parents, we stared using a dining chair with arms and he'd stand right up next to us while we prepped and cooked meals. 

He has his own kid knives and knows where to find cutting boards. Today, he walked up to me like this:

He had found his little Gerber knife in the open dishwasher and helped himself to our biggest cutting board. He was ready to chop!  I set him up on his Little Helper tower that David built for him and set him up with some snap peas and he proceeded to "chop" and snack away.  He was occupied with that for probably 20 or 30 minutes. 

I took pictures of the whole process of building the tower and plan to dedicate a post to it soon. He loves it so much!  If we are in the kitchen, he begs for us to pull it over to the island so he can get in on the action. 

With how important food is to our family, we absolutely love that he shows so much interest in it. This Web MD article talks about all of the benefits of cooking with kids and I believe every word!  

As a teacher, we would incorporate cooking activities into our lesson plans. They would cover literacy (reading a recipe), math (measuring/counting), all 5 senses and even sometimes writing if we had them write about the experience afterward. That's not to mention all of the listening/communication skills that are practiced when you do anything as a team.  Those lessons were, by far, the most memorable for my students.  It might be messy and may make things take a little longer but the benefits to cooking with your kids far outweigh the risks!  

Do your kids like to cook with you?  If they do, what "job" do they get to have?

~Sarah

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12 Ways To Use Cucumber

Now that we are approaching the peak of summer, our garden is really starting to produce!  Our first summer veggies that we have been enjoying is the cucumbers. 

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The thing about cucumbers, squash, tomatoes and peppers is that once they start producing, they start producing! Sometimes it is hard to keep up.  Since we already have more cucumbers than we know what to do with, and the season has only just begun, I've been doing a little research so that none of our precious produce goes to waste.

I thought I'd share some of the great uses for cucumber that I've found and believe me, this doesn't even put a dent in the possibilities!

There's always the beauty stereotypes that really do work:

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Reduce puffiness and hydrate around your eyes.

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Hydrate and brighten your skin.

And of course, endless edible (and drinkable) possibilities:

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Eating them raw.
Cut them into shapes to make them fun for kids to eat!

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Cucumber Lime Smoothie

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Chicken Salad Cups

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Cucumber CHIPS?  Yes, please!

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Cucumber Martini

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Chilled Cucumber, Basil and Mint Soup

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Cucumber Lime Pops

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Cucumber Subs

And the two things we've been enjoying this week:

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Watermelon Mojito Salad

Cucumber Mint Spa Water!

A trend that I have noticed (and enjoyed) is the flavor pairings of mint, lime and watermelon with cucumber.  Every single one of those flavors is light and refreshing, it's no wonder they all go so well together! We can't wait to start trying some of the others!  As I find cucumber ideas, I'll pin them to my new Cucumber board on Pinterest.  If you find yourself swimming in cucumbers and need some ideas, I'ver got you covered.

Flashback!  Here's what we were up to this time last year: Jumpin' Jig

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Cheat Night Date Night

No, not the kind of cheating that first comes to mind!  David and I dropped Ayden off with his grandparents and went out on a proper date during which we indulged in very non-Paleo food.

Our dietary lifestyle has evolved drastically over the past 10 years. Just a few months after Ayden was born, we took it several steps further with a Paleo inspired healing diet for David's auto immune disease.  I joined David on this journey for several reasons. 1) I had heard about Paleo and was intrigued to see how my body would change/perform and, of course, wanted all of the amazing health benefits.  2) I had tried the South Beach Diet in the past and liked how my body looked without grains in my diet. I knew it would help me lose any lingering baby weight and would make me feel great! 3) The most important reason of all, I knew this was going to be a difficult journey for David and that he'd need more than mere support. I knew in order to be successful with his goals that he'd need a buddy. Someone who was being just as strict about food. He is more important than any food could ever be and I was happy to sacrifice foods that weren't good for me in the first place to help set him up for success.  He's had ups and downs in progress with his disease but with all of the changes and choices we've made he didn't feel right paying as much as we were in supplements each month.  We decided to move from the healing diet (which involved even more restrictions than Paleo alone) to plain old Paleo (yay for eggs and almond meal!) 

With that decision came a bit of wiggle room and we finally loosened the reins on how strict we are. Here are our new guidelines:

- only Paleo approved items kept in the house (except for my hummus, peanut butter that I have personally added back in for snacking) and of course the dark chocolate that we never gave up which has a small amount of refined sugar in it. 

- allow a monthly "cheat" night where we can eat however much of whatever we want. Ayden will someday be included whenever he becomes aware that there are other options. We won't rush him into eating sweets but won't keep him from them completely once he discovers them. We want food to be a non-issue and want to arm him with knowledge and tools for when he is ready to make his own decisions. We understand that sheltering and withholding experiences is no way to provide knowledge and tools. 

- Continue trusting and listening to our bodies. If we have digestion or energy issues after consuming certain foods, we take note and limit those foods in the future. The goal is to tailer a diet specifically for our individual bodies. My body handles beans and lots of eggs just find whereas David can't go too crazy with them without some discomfort. 

We had our 3rd cheat night last night. The first was pizza and cupcakes for our birthdays and the second was Thai food for our anniversary. Last night was dinner at a local Indian restaurant (hello chicken tikka masala and garlic naan!) and dessert at a book store cafe. 

This is working so well for us!  We rarely felt deprived before bcause we totally subscribe to the long term benefits of a healthy lifestyle. We also truly believe it has to be a lifestyle.  A way of living all the time, even on special occasions. That being said, we did grow up on the standard American diet and have foods from our childhoods that we miss sometimes and we can't argue that the creaminess of cheese or the sweetness of pie aren't delicious. A once-a-month cheat day is just enough to still enjoy our favorite foods from our pasts while not spiraling out of control as we both typically do. When we see a food that brings us back to our childhoods or makes our mouths water, instead of having it on the spot, we take note of it for a potential cheat day indulgence. Then we go on a monthly date where we eat those foods and it makes the indulgence even more fun and special.

We are thinking that next month will be Mexican for dinner. We haven't picked dessert yet...  What's your favorite sweet indulgence?

~Sarah

Easy Beet Chips

I always thought that I hated beets. I feel like they get tossed in with other childhood horror foods like Lima beans and Brussels Sprouts (mmmm, Brussels sprouts!). One of the coolest parts of our dietary lifestyle is how much it has opened my eyes to the multitude of possibilities when it comes to preparing food. Just because your mom always steamed your broccoli then smothered it in cheese-like sauce doesn't mean that is the only way to prepare it. I don't know about you but the beets of my childhood were pickled, paired with liver and onions and eaten by my grandmother who loved to force her food onto you. "Come on, just one bite..."  Yup. Beets were pretty much ruined for me early on in life. 

Last summer we had a fun challenge for ourselves to try a new veggie every week. Somewhere along the way I got brave and decided to give beets a chance. We roasted and drizzled a balsamic reduction over them and they were so. amazingly. good. 

As it turns out, there is more than pickling when it comes to preparing beets and we had been missing out!  Since then we have had them several ways, including in our homemade juice and now:

In salty, earthy, satisfyingly crunchy chip form!  The process is pretty easy:

Cut off tops and bottoms of your beets.

Peel away the outer skin.

Give your littler helper his own Gerber knife so he can help.

Slice your beets as thinly as possible.
I like using a mandolin slicer!

Put the sliced beets in a bowl and drizzle on your favorite oil.

Add some salt and give them a toss.
(We like to use Celtic sea salt.)

Line them up on your dehydrator trays (or cookie sheets).

Dehydrate on 125* (or put in the oven on the lowest setting with the door cracked.)

24 hours later (or however long it takes to make them crunchy) you have delicious chips to use in dips, eat with sandwiches or feed to your toddler as snacks on an airplane ride to Washington DC. 

Kid tested, mother approved!

What a great way to get some great veggies into my baby!  And us too for that matter.

If you are interested in reading more about dehydrating, one of my favorite fellow bloggers recently wrote a post about it.  Head over there and check it out!

Do you make any homemade chips?  We make beet, sweet potato, apple/banana, and most often, kale!  Link your favorite recipes below!

~Sarah

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Simple Syrup

I haven't updated on the girls in a while!

Since we installed them, we've been back once to make sure the queens had made their way out and a couple more times to feed them. We also had our mentor come back to help with our first real inspection (more on that in a minute). 

Before learning anything about beekeeping, I would have never guessed that you'd have to feed them. I figured they were wild creatures, surely they'd take care of themselves, right?  The reality is, when you get a package of bees, they are young and not yet established in the hive. They have to produce a lot of wax to pull out all of their comb before they even have a place to start storing nectar. Also, the nectar flow is a bit minimal in April. So, you have to feed them. 

A bee's natural food is honey (yeah, they don't make it just for us!) but until they can get their comb pulled and start making honey from the May-June nectar flow, we feed them sugar water. Also known as "simple syrup."  

If you don't keep bees yourself (which I am assuming not very many of you do), you can use simple syrup in homemade lemonade, sweet tea or cocktails.  This extra step really makes a big difference in the intensity of the sweetness than just adding sugar alone.  Though I'm going to give you super easy step by step instructions for how to make it for bees, it really can be used for anything that needs to be super sweet. 

The ratio for simple syrup is... well, simple. It's 1:1. I have a lot of bees to feed so I will be using an entire 5lb bag of sugar (or 10 cups) to 2.5 quarts (also 10 cups) of water. 

Bring water to a rolling boil.

Remove water from heat source.
This will help avoid burning the sugar.
(Burnt sugar will ruin the syrup and make the bees sick.)

Add your sugar.

Stir until all sugar is dissolved.

Thick, sweet and ready to go!

Fill your jars.

(The lids with the holes go in the feeders)

There you have it!  A super simple tutorial for simple syrup. 

A couple of funny things that happened while making my first batch of simple syrup:

1) We don't eat refined sugar in our house so when I saw "sugar" on my grocery list I literally stood there in the grocery store trying to think of what I meant to type, thinking that my phone had autocorrected to sugar. "Oh yeah, you have to feed your BEES!" Duh...

2) The whole time I was making it I was daydreaming about the most delicious cocktail I have ever had. We went to a fancy schmancy restaurant years ago and I had my first Lemon Drop. It was the owner's special made with fresh lemon juice and simple syrup. It was served in a frosty glass with sugar around the rim. I might have had a few and they tasted like the sweetest lemonade I had ever had. A few months later, remembering the deliciousness, I ordered a lemon drop at a bar.  It was made with lemon juice out of a plastic bottle and sweet and sour mix. It was served in a plastic cup and was watered down by ice. It was pretty disgusting.  I suppose I was spoiled pretty badly because I couldn't even finish it. Good times, haha. 

As for our findings during our first hive inspection, we located both queens, eggs, larva, pupae and capped brood.   They had actually slowed down on the sugar water consumption big time (a sign that they are finding plenty of nectar!) which is a good sign that they are thriving in their new environment.  Our mentor was super pleased with what he saw and said that the next time we check on them (you do inspections every two weeks), their numbers will have DOUBLED!  We were so proud of them!!

Do you have any special recipes involving simple syrup?  Please share them below!  Also, have you had any flashbacks to your wild and fancy free college days lately?  Do tell!

~Sarah

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Toddler Friendly Smoothie

We drink a lot of smoothies at our house, especially since the weather is warming up!  It is a cool and refreshing way to start the day and an awesome way to get in a heaping amount of greens early on.  Talk about starting the day out right!  Ayden has always enjoyed smoothies too and I was recently talking to a fellow mother who had never thought to make smoothies for her daughter.  I had her at, "He drinks an entire handful of spinach!"  I don't know about other toddlers but Ayden, who doesn't have molars yet, has a tough time eating leafy greens.  He'll put them in his mouth and gum them around a bit and then out it comes.  Smoothies are the way to go in our house!

If you've never had a green smoothie, you may be concerned about it tasting like grass or other things green.  I'd imagine that some greens may cause that to happen (kale, for instance) but the light flavor of baby spinach is completely masked by the fruit.  Nothing but sweet deliciousness and TONS of nutrition.

I typically put in some frozen fruit, a banana (sometimes frozen, sometimes not... depends on what we have available) a HEAPING handful or two of spinach and a liquid of some sort.  Sometimes we juice some carrots, a head of romaine and an apple and add that as the liquid.  If we don't feel like cleaning the juicer, we just stick with coconut water or OJ.  Any kind of yogurt, milk or milk substitute would work too!  You can also add ice if you don't have any frozen fruit.  The sky is the limit.

Ayden's favorite combo:
Pineapple, orange, banana.

The amount of each ingredient you add is totally personal preference to what consistency you like and what flavors you want to dominate.  You really can't mess it up!

Kid tested, mother approved!

Get your toddler to drink his/her greens today!  If you give it a try let me know what you think!  Are smoothies a regular on your menu?  What is your toddler's favorite flavor combo??

~Sarah

Thank you for stopping by Life With the Ladniers!

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