Hello again!

Hello!  I can't believe that it is already the first day of March!  Where did February go???  I think it flew by in a whirlwind of party preparations and baking.  E turned 2 on the 19th and her party was the 23rd.  And I was out of commission for three days just prior to her party with a nasty case of vertigo.  Trust me, that stuff is nothing to mess with.  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.  Ok, maybe my worst enemy, but not just any plain old, ordinary enemy.  :)  Anyways...  Onto the reason for my post.

I really enjoyed the challenge of the no spend month in January.  I discovered that I respond really well to a challenge issued, even if I am the one that issued it.  So last week as I was making up a meal plan and came up with a challenge for myself in March.  Every time I use my crock pot to cook dinner I think, "Man, I really love this thing!  I should use it every day!" But I never did.  The problem was that I only knew about 4 recipes for my crock pot and even though I love those meals, we really don't want to eat them every night.   So I decided to increase my crock pot repertoire by finding a new recipe to try every night for the month of March.  I am calling it "The March of the Crock Pot"!!!  Catchy, huh?  Then began the online search for easy, kid-friendly crock pot meals.  Thank goodness for my awesome meal planning site Plan to Eat.  Seriously, you guys should check this site out, it is amazing!  You get a "Save Recipe" button for your browser (like a Pinterest "Pin It" button).  When you find a recipe that you like, you just hit the Save Recipe button and it automatically uploads that recipe to your recipe book on the Plan to Eat website.  Automatically!  And then when you want to do your meal plan you can just drag the recipe that you want to the day that you want to make it and BAM, meal plan made!  It has seriously changed my life!!  I love Pinterest, but I almost never got around to making recipes that I pinned on there, but now that I can put it right into the recipe book that I use to do my meal planning, I am trying new recipes left and right!  And then when it's time to go grocery shopping the site automatically makes my shopping list for me too!  Life changing, I tell you!  Check it out.  Plan to Eat  But, I digress...  

I am so excited about this March challenge.  In fact, I was so excited that I couldn't even wait for March to start it, so I started last night!  I made my own yogurt in the crock pot.  It was so easy and so much cheaper than buying it at the store.  It does take a while but most of the time is completely hands off.  Now, I did not plan my time very well (I blame it on my excitement), and I had to set an alarm to get up at 12:30am to add the yogurt cultures, but other than that, the recipe was super easy.  Anyone can do it!  Aunt Tammie, I am talking to you!  Since I got almost all of my recipes online, I am just going to post the links (since my brilliant Aunt Tammie taught me how to do that today!) to where I got my recipes.  This is the recipe that I loosely followed for my yogurt.  Foolproof Greek Crockpot Yogurt  My thermometer wouldn't work, so I had to find a recipe that did things more based on time rather than temperature, but it still worked out perfectly!  

Here is what it looked like in my crock pot before I put it in the fridge (Aunt Tammie also taught me how to put in pictures!).  My kiddos couldn't even wait for it to get cold before trying it out.  And since they licked their bowls clean, I call it a success!  It is unsweetened, so I just added a little honey and a sprinkle of granola and the kids loved it.   It is a lot thinner than the greek yogurt I have gotten used to eating, I am hoping that it thickens up a bit in the fridge, but it is still very good.  I am also planning on using some of the unsweetened yogurt as a replacement for sour cream in some of my recipes.  So exciting!

And then for dinner tonight we tried Crockpot Mac and Cheese.  It cooked a little faster than I anticipated, so it got a little burned around the edges, but it was still tasty.  It only took me about 10 minutes to mix it all into the crock pot and then get it going.  The temperature had to be adjusted about 45 minutes into the cooking and it only took about 4 hours till it was done, so it is not a recipe for a work day.  But it was still nice to just be able to dish it up at dinner time and be done with it.  

Neither one of my children would even put a bite in their mouth and try it.  Why are my kids so weird?? What child doesn't like macaroni and cheese???  That being said, I think I will put this recipe into the "Probably not again" pile.  Even though it was good, it wasn't really any easier or tastier than making a homemade mac and cheese the old fashioned way.  So I think I will just stick to that.  But it was still nice to try.

Wow, that was a nice, long post!  With many links and pictures because I just learned how to do that. :)  I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you back here later for more of my "March of the Crock Pot"!  I'm off to go wash my crock pot (since somebody forgot the slow cooker liners at the grocery store) so it will be ready for tomorrow night's Beans and Rice.  Yum!