Eat at home challenge

So I’m a little apprehensive to even type this out because it makes it more real, but I think it will also help to hold us accountable. This ‘eat at home challange’ all came about because my bloggy buddy Kim is giving up shopping for Lent. While we are not Catholic I can appreciate the idea of making a sacrifice and how we all have areas in our lives that can become more important than they should be. I starting thinking about giving up shopping. Jeff and I talked about it, and while that would be difficult for me in recent years with budgeting I’ve been forced become much better about not shopping excessively. However, one area the we continue to spend excessively is eating out. We eat out several times a day sometimes week, so we are officially giving up eating out for Lent. We are making a few exceptions for a youth fundraiser and we are celebrating Valentine’s on Thursday, but other than that we’ll be eating at home for the next 40 days. I’m hoping this will be fun and that it will become a habit.

Here are a few challenges I see:

• It has to be easy-with a 3 year old and 5 month old I can’t spend tons of time cooking and then cleaning up my kitchen 3 times a day.
• It has to be ‘normal’ I’m not real adventurous in trying new things and I like to know that other people have tried a recipe and like it. I have found a few recipe blogs that I love and have been trying several of their recipes. Cara’s taco soup and upside down taco pizza are staples around here these days. I also love this recipe blog too and look forward to trying a few of her recipe’s.
• I’d like to eat as healthfully as possible. We try to limit the grains, bread, pasta that we eat because of Landree’s eczema. I do use corn pasta and bought a new rice pasta to try too.
• I would like to stay in our normal grocery budget and just save the money that we normally use to go out if possible (updated: I went shopping today and spent exactly our grocery budget. I’m really excited about this! I know I’ll have to get a few more things like fresh fruits and veggies in the next few weeks and milk, but that won’t be much! YEA!)
• And the kicker…I don’t touch meat. I know it’s weird. I really think it’s a sickness. I can NOT touch raw chicken without gagging. period. the. end. My handy dandy crockpot has become my new best friend in that area. I don’t mind dropping a frozen piece of chicken into the crockpot to cook and then I can deal with it after it’s done :) I don’t touch hamburger either so as long it can be dumped into the pan I’m safe.

So what do you think? Anyone want to join us? Any good recipes you want to share? I might…no promises here…try to start a little recipe blog. Ok, I’ve started a new little blog, but again, not promising to post :) You can find it here.

I’ll leave you with a super yummy, easy new fav around here.

Creamy Chicken Italiano (my friend Patti’s recipe) serves 4-6

1 pound chicken

1 packet of Italian dressing mix

1/4 to 1/2 cup of water

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 package of cream cheese

1 can of mushrooms (optional)

bowtie pasta (4 servings)

Mix Italian dressing mix with water. Pour over diced chicken in crockpot and cook for 3 hours. Mix softened cream cheese and cream of chicken and add to crockpot, basically to melt for the one more hour. Add mushrooms at this time if you like. Cook bowtie pasta (4 servings) and add to chicken mixture after 4 hours. Serve immediately.

Y’all this is so easy and delicious! Seriously! And I actually cook my chicken for 3 hours and then cut it up when I add my soup mixture. You know, to avoid touching the raw chicken! It makes a lot and is even good leftover. I would recommend when severing it the second time that you heat it on the stove top and add a little water. Let me know what you think.