This is a pretty foolproof recipe for a family meal. This can be started in the morning and be done as early as after school. Cook on low in a greased 6-7 qt crock pot.

• 2 lbs of cooked and drained hamburger or 2-3 cups of shredded chicken from a previous crock pot cooking
• Chopped onion
• Sliced or chopped bell peppers, one of each color
• 1 finely chopped jalapeno
• 1 lg can store brand tomato soup
• If using chicken, use either one can of chicken broth, or 2 cup measure of broth in freezer from previous crock pot cooking
• 1 pkg store brand taco seasoning
• Around 4 cups of shredded Colby jack, Mexican, or Fiesta blend cheese
• 20 corn or flour tortillas
• Optional, can of black beans, drained

In a medium saucepan, combine soup(s)and taco seasoning and allow to simmer, stirring occasionally.

In large bowl, combine bell peppers and onions. I put my cheese in another bowl as well, because it’s easier to assemble enchiladas that way. Likewise, beans, with a spoon, and chopped jalapeno.

Take your ingredients and put them in assembly line order, starting with your tortillas, cheese, then peppers and onions, then meat, and then beans, and ending with your greased pot. You won’t use your soup mix until the end.

Hold a tortilla in your hand and with the other hand, add your ingredients, then roll and put in the crock pot. Just fill up the pot, layer by layer of these until you are out of ingredients. Then pour soup mix over and cook on low anywhere from 3- 6 hours. You can top with additional cheese at the end if you wish, I always do.

Cheesy, spicy, easy, and yummy. Enjoy!

As promised, here is a simple meal to prepare that feeds up to 9 people easily, including teenagers! You can start this in the morning before work and it will be done when you get home. This is for a 7 qt crock pot, just down size for smaller ones. This meal is cooked on your low setting.

• 2lbs cooked and drained ground beef that has been cooked with onion and garlic, salt and pepper.
• Generic spaghetti sauce, Kroger makes a good one. I use their traditional and can usually purchase at 4 bottles for 5 dollars. If using large pot, use larger bottle.
• Basil
• Lasagna noodles. If you are starting your meal around noon, you can use the oven-ready, but you’ll need two boxes. Either way, you will need to break to fit.
• 2-3 cups shredded mozzarella
• 2 eggs
• Large container cottage cheese
• Frozen chopped spinach in the smaller bag, thawed and drained
• Parmesan cheese, about half a shaker can
• Optional, vegetable dip packet, unmixed
• One can of store label Italian stewed tomatoes

In a large bowl, combine the cottage cheese, Parmesan, eggs, basil, vegetable packet, and spinach. Add half the mozzarella lastly to the mix because after it is added, it becomes hard to stir.

Combine the hamburger, spaghetti sauce, and about one half of the jar used with water. Add basil to taste.

On the bottom of your greased crock pot, spread the can of Italian tomatoes. Then add broken noodles. Cover them with a few ladles of sauce; thinly, and then spread cheese mixture over that. Cover the cheese with a couple of ladles of sauce, more noodles, then sauce again, and then cheese. The trick to making this cook evenly is to make sure between every noodle layer, a thin layer of spaghetti sauce is both on top and below the noodles.

Reserve the last of the mozzarella for the last 15 minutes of cooking. Just add it when you get home at the end of the day.

You can adjust the measurements in anything I listed according to your tastes and size requirements. Don’t worry about a thing! This meal cooks itself and will make your home smell amazing. Basically figure that a 7 qt crock pot, on low, will take about 5- 6 hours with oven ready noodles. Figure a little longer for regular noodles. It doesn’t hurt it any to cook an hour or so longer if you are gone longer than you thought you would be.

Scroll down and tell me what you think!

You'll love this simple way to offer pulled pork sandwiches to your family and guests. I start out with a large roast, this last Superbowl I got my hands on a 10lb blade roast on sale.

First, slice two onions and throw in 4 garlic cloves before you add the roast to the crock pot. Then, heavily salt, pepper, and add more sliced onion.

Walk away for the whole day. I started around 8:30, and it was done before 4:30. I probably could have taken it out earlier, but why? It sure doesn't hurt it to go a little longer.

You will need to use a turkey baster to remove as much broth as you can, try to get it all. I put it directly into a glass measuring cup so that I know how much I have for rice later. Usually, that's what I do, but this turned into soup base!

Once you're just dealing with the roast and onions, slice it up and remove the bone. After I slice it in the crock pot, it's easier to shred with a couple of forks. Then you add a couple of bottles of one kind of inexpensive bbq sauce, and a couple more of another kind. I like a mix of thick and smokey, and honey bbq sauce. You could always make your own if you don't have any in your pantry, but it sure is easy like this.

This meal is great with bargain buns, Bush beans, and various cut fresh veggies.

• Bell pepper
• Carrots
• Celery
• Jalepeno
• Pickles, or just cucumbers

Don't forget the cole slaw! Happy eating! Scroll down and tell me what you're cooking in your crock pot.

Some people enjoy going through the recipes that come with the guide on a new crock pot so they can try something new in a new device that they don’t think they know how to use. As an avid crock pot user for about twenty years, I can tell you that there simply isn’t anything easier to use, besides maybe, the toaster! Literally, you put uncooked stuff in, you take cooked stuff out, and that’s it!

I’m not against recipe books, at all. I have a fine collection. But I’ve learned to see them as an idea farm, rather than the “1 tsp of this here, 3 oz there," and so on, of a recipe collection. Once you get the gist of what you want to do, the sky’s the limit.

I’ve talked about this for years as people have enjoyed my creations and marveled at the ease in which I live my domestic kitchen life. Now that people are feeling the pinch at the grocery store, I hear more and more about learning to cook with the basics. That’s been the trick all along, folks. You can save enormous amounts of money by shopping savvy and cooking your foods “homemade” style. Running the oven, however, is really not as cost effective as a crock pot, and I’d like to show you some of the methods I use to cook amazing inexpensive meals without any real work. Seriously.

This will cut your grocery bill so quickly it will make your head spin. You don’t have to sacrifice taste and texture to do it, though.

Whether it is a small frying chicken, (I use two at a time,) or a pork shoulder roast, or a chuck roast, or even London broil, and it doesn’t matter what size crock pot you’re working with, always spray your pot with an oil spray. Put your meat in the pot and add the following either separately or together, or any combination of:

• 1-2 onions, I prefer sweet yellow onions because they are higher in nutrients and taste phenomenal.
• 3-6 garlic cloves, or a couple of spoons full of the already minced garlic in oil. I’ve even used the whole clove, cut in half and set in each side of the meat. You can take out the hard part as one big thing later.
• Shredded cabbage. It’s cheap and you get various kinds if you purchase the mix for slaw, and it includes carrots. Way high in vitamin C, cabbage actually contains 60% of your daily necessity. The flavor is out of this world, and the aroma cooked like this is amazing.
• 4-8 celery stalks, cut on the diagonal in small pieces, the size you prefer. Cooking it in the crock pot softens it greatly, and cutting on the diagonal keeps it from ever being too stringy; the main reason I hated celery as a kid. Celery is high in natural sodium and is a good blood pressure regulator.
• Sweet potatoes, peeled and halved the short way. Awesome amounts of vitamin a, c, and beta-carotene. The flavor is savory when cooked with meat, and really delicious.
• Red potatoes, any really, I just love the flavor of the red, and you don’t have to peel them so they’re pretty easy to prepare. Just scrub, and only cut the big ones.

If you only plan on cooking one dinner in this manner, you won’t need more than a glass of water added to your crock pot.

If you add enough water for your crock pot to be one-half to three quarters full, by the time your meat is through cooking, 5-7 hours later, the juices from the meat will cause your pot to be completely full.

Once the food is cooked, I take my 2 and 4-cup glass liquid measure and fill with my ladle until I have reached either of those measurements. I do that because I like to use my homemade broth for rice and stews later on. If left in place, the ceramic pot inside the cooker will keep food hot for up to 2 hrs. I take it out with mitts instead and set it on a safe surface until it cools down some. Then it’s easier to de-bone the chicken or shred the meat, and the broth can be ladled safely into freezer bags. I partially roll down the top of the bags about 1-2 inches so that it sets upright by itself on the counter while I pour the ladled broth from the glass measures.

Make sure to let the air out of the bag as much as possible, and put in the freezer for more meals ahead. That broth will end up with some of the vegetables in it, and will be wonderful for:

• Broth later on, just as it is
• Liquid for cooking rice, make sure you have taken a marker and wrote *whether or not it was a 2 or 4 cup measure
• Liquid to cook homemade beans and lentils
• Soup base for virtually any type of soup

Then, using the shredded meat or de-boned chicken, I take 2-4 more freezer baggies and portion up 2-4 more meals for advanced preparation. Those can be used for:

• Stews
• Crock pot lasagna
• Enchiladas
• Chili
• Roast meal of any sort
• Beans

It really is fun to be creative and frugal at the same time. I enjoy stocking up on aluminum disposable pans from the dollar store and making meals ahead of time for the freezer so all I have to do is heat in the oven when that is more convenient, like football game nights or days when we’ve had doctor appointments and haven’t had time to think about dinner. Learn more about these dinners in my future posts!