Crocktober Meal Prep #1

Investment cooking is a great way to stretch your budget and make quick, simple and healthy meals for your family.  I like to try to make one or two things that I can use throughout the week ahead as well as a little extra to add to our freezer for another future meal.  I decided October would be a great time to have some fun and challenge myself to really use my slow cookers to do my investment cooking this month.

This past Saturday I took a pork roast and cooked it all day in my largest slow cooker.  I shredded the entire roast and divided it in three parts to use for other dishes such as pork verde and pulled pork for sandwiches.  Sunday I took a third of the shredded pork roast and put it into my smallest slow cooker.  I mixed up a sauce with sugar free BBQ sauce, sugar free ketchup and mustard and let it all cook on low for four hours.  I served it on hamburger buns and it was delicious.  We have plenty of leftovers for my daughter's lunch and one more supper for us this week.

I cleaned out my refrigerator and gave it a good deep clean.  It made sense once I saw what was left over in the fridge to make some minestrone soup and use up the odds and ends I had in there.  I did the soup on the stove as it was a super quick and easy one to make up or I could have done it in our medium slow cooker.  Either way would've been fine.

Making up two main dishes seems to be the perfect number of make ahead meals for us right now.  We are able to have enough quick and easy suppers and lunches to help us out during a busy week without getting tired of them.  In between I can pull something else from the freezer to reheat or make breakfast for dinner.  I have half a package of hot dogs to use up one night too so we already have one quick supper planned with those.

These two containers are in the freezer for future meals

Weekly investment cooking helps us so much to eat well no matter how busy our schedule gets.  It saves me a lot of time and money too.  I'm able to make our groceries stretch and in turn my money as well.  Using my slow cooker makes it even easier.