I used to cook dinner from about 4 to roughly 4:30. Sometimes it was 4:15 or 4:30 to 4:45 or 5. But the upshot is, my family is hungry by 4:30 or 5 and I spend about half an hour cooking.
But now, Nat is in school from 1:30-4:30 and we don't get home until about 5. I spend her school hours near school, writing, while Selina is hanging with the babysitter. Or, on days I don't have a babysitter, I spend the time at home with Selina until 4ish, then put her in the car to go pick up Nat. Either way, though, cooking dinner doesn't fit into the new plan at all. Not the way it always has in the past.
So we've been eating a lot of crap lately. The kids will get frozen pizzas and mac and cheese from the babysitter and I will eat a plate of nachos after they're in bed. When Cole is home, we've been mostly eating out.
I've been trying to figure out how to solve the dilemma of dinner. One idea is to make a big soup or stew once a week. Now that it is soup weather again, this should help. I can make the soup before school and we can eat it later and it will not only be good but better than it would have been hot off the stove.
Still, we can't eat soup every day.
So here's my question for the crock pot people out there: Would that help me? Could I toss delicious dinner ingredients into a crock pot to be ready at 5 and the serve us all a tasty dinner the minute I get Nat home from school?
Can you make things in a crock pot besides the soups and stews I'm already making?
Advice, recipes, crockpot manufacturer preferences welcome--yea, encouraged!
