January Crockpot Extravaganza!

So today marks the first day of my month of frozen crockpot meals. What does that mean, you may be wondering. Well it means that Whit here is uber lazy. And uber busy. And when I cook something, I actually end up eating something else entirely because I hate what I have made. And that's usually a PBJ or frozen taquitos or veggie chicken nuggets (because that's somewhat healthier).

I'm also in a cooking rut, so on my one and a half week vacation to Florida, I sat down on Pinterest and found a bunch of pins about cooking (or, in my case, prepping) a whole bunch of meals for the month and sticking them in the crockpot. 

Yesterday, I went to Wegmans (the best grocery store ever) and bought a LOT of food. I had pre-built my shopping list using the Wegmans App and the recipes I had chosen, so all I had to do when I got there was find the stuff and stick it in the cart. I ended up spending about $285 total, which included both dinner food and breakfast/lunch food. When I run out of perishables mid-month (yogurt, fruit, etc). I will make a small run, but I should actually be mostly good for the entire month. 

Here's the damage. I had to get a big cart because I had so much food! While most of the recipes call for only boneless/skinless breast, I tossed in some bl/sl chicken thighs as well, because I personally prefer the taste of thighs to breasts. Where possible I tried to get organic vegetables, and I did get some organic stew meat, but the rest of the meat was non-organic.

But, of course, I forgot the two most important ingredients - Crock Pot Liners and Freezer bags. So add another $15 onto that. 

This morning, I got up and began the process of assembling my foodstuffs. Since I am le one person, I can make a regular sized meal and have plenty of leftovers. And I also opted to make some homemade versions of my go-to frozen meals - taquitos, pizza, etc. Because I wanted a bit of a challenge, I incorporated a "Meatless Monday" angle to it as well, so Mondays will be some form of a vegetable soup (My blender will be getting a workout because I HATE eating vegetables). 

Here's the list of recipes that I opted to create:

1. Fiesta Chicken Soup - I made two batches of this - which is strange because I'm nervous I won't like it. Welp, gonna be eating a lot of it, so I'd better suck it up!

2. Lemon Garlic Chicken

3. Balsamic Steak

4. Honey Romano Pork

5. Balsamic Pork (was supposed to be Green Chile Pork Tacos, but I ended up using all the salsa and such for a second batch of the fiesta chicken soup. I also had some extra balsalmic vinegar, more on that below, so I said, why not)

6. Mongolian Beef - I subbed chia seeds for corn starch here. 

7. Pesto Chicken - I made a LOT of this, so I'm going to have a lot of leftovers. This seems like it would be good mixed in with other stuff - like maybe a quinoa salad or regular salad - so I think it's okay

8. Broccoli Cheddar Soup (I put the chopped carrots, frozen broccoli, onion powder, and garlic in a bag and tossed it in the freezer, but I'm counting it).

9. Homemade Taquitos - More below

10. Frozen Pizzas - I used whole wheat pizza dough for this, more below

11. Lentil Burgers - More below

Also three soups that I will prep the Sunday before for Meatless Monday:

12. Butternut Squash Soup

13. Black Bean Soup

14. Tomato Basil Soup

Also also, because eating a turkey sandwich every day isn't the healthiest thing in the world, I'm prepping some lunch food for the week as well. I bought a few lbs of quinoa and I plan to add in stuff like feta, olives, pepperocini, and greek dressing (obvs. a greek salad), caprese-type salad, and maybe a southwestern-type salad. I also want to try and make some lettuce wraps, but not sure if that's gonna work out for me.

But I digress. Onto the main event. Crockpot dinners!

I started off by writing down all of the names of the recipes on the bags. Since I work 8hrs a day, the crockpot is gonna run for 8hrs, so that was easy. Most of these recipes are all in the bag, so there's not really anything else I need to write on here. If I do this again, I'll write the dates on the bags, but since all of these were made on the same day, there's really no need.

Then I chopped a lot of garlic and carrots.

But wait, there's a key ingredient missing, right? Well, anyone who knows me knows that I have a vile, evil, loathing hatred of Alliom cepa, otherwise known as the common Onion. But, I actually miss the taste of onions when I don't cook with it. What to do, what to do.

Solution: Onion Powder! All the taste, none of the nasty.

I also forgot to grab ginger, so I'm using the ground stuff where the recipe said real ginger. It's fine. 

Once I had prepped the ingredients, it was time to start assembling. I stuck the bags in a bowl to keep them upright until they stood on their own. It made things a little easier, actually.

It was actually pretty easy to assemble everything. The hardest part was trying to get the boneless skinless chicken out of its individually-wrapped packaging (normally, I love that Wegmans does this. But today, not so much). 

I wanted to brag - this is a lemon from my parent's fruit trees in Florida. 

For both the balsalmic steak and pork, I used this esperesso balsamic I'd had in my house for a loooooooooong time. I figured it was already aged, I had just aged it a little more. ;) 

This is the finished product:

Then it was onto making my non-crockpot frozen options. I bought a whole roasted chicken at wegmans and plucked it dry for my taquitos

Obvs the dogs were interested in getting a piece of chicken too

Then I assembled the taquitos. I ended up using both burrito tortillas and gordita tortillas, simply because I had a lot of filling. Next time, I'll add less filling and make smaller taquitos, but it's good for now:

I'm not gonna lie, I ate one (or two). The cream cheese really makes it.

When those were cooking, I started on my frozen pizzas. Now, much like wth onions, I actually am super finnicky with my pizzas. So I opted to create a white pizza with tomatoes and such on it.

I opted to not put the spinach on before freezing/cooking, so it'll be fresh on top when I eat it.

And since I had mozzarella and tomatoes left over...I had some ready-made caprese mix ins for my Quinoa salad lunch on Monday! (I'll make the quinoa tomorrow to preserve freshness)

Last, but not least, the lentil burgers. I started off by boiling a bag of green lentils (recipe calls for black, but I don't know the difference hah!). 

I grated a carrot, added in the onion powder, garlic powder, and tumeric. Then I deviated from the recipe and added in Chia seeds instead of flaxseed, and reduced the amount of eggs (I was making a double batch, and the recipe called for 4 eggs for a single batch). Now I'm letting the mixture sit for a while to see how much the chia seeds absorb. If they don't absorb enough then I'll add in some panko crumbs. 

After these sit for a while, I'll fry them up into little patties and stick them in the freezer. The last thing I need to get is some cling wrap to wrap everything up in before I stick them in the freezer. Then it'll be time to clean and nap. 

Or maybe I'll nap now. 

Yes, I think I'll nap now.

I'll post some reviews on each of these recipes that I tried and their modifications. So stay tuned!