Today I’m starting a new series on the blog – Mom Life Mondays! I know how hard it is to be a wife, mother, and employee and I’ve learned a few tricks along the way. Today I want to share how we handle weeknight meals in our house. Hopefully this will help you gain some time back to your evenings and take some of the stress out of the work week!

I am in charge of dinner in our house Monday through Thursday and Matt is in charge of the weekends. Usually one night on the weekend we eat our or order in. When Margot turned six months and needed to start eating real food I found myself stressed out about how I was going to get home at 6:00, eat dinner by 6:30, start bath at 6:45, and get her in bed by 7:30. My solution to this was to make a large meal in the slow cooker twice a week and eat leftovers twice week. This way dinner is pretty much ready by the time we get home and I don’t really have to think about it.

Every Sunday I make a grocery list and we buy our groceries for the week. I check my Pinterest board for dinner ideas and add all of the ingredients to my list. For the most part I throw everything in the slow cooker in the morning before we leave for work or daycare. Every once in a while if a recipe is more complicated I will prep the night before, but I usually try to stay away from complicated recipes during the week. I also use an outlet timer with it with my slow cooker. Since most slow cooker recipes need to cook on low for eight hours I set the timer to start at 10:00am and turn of at 6:00 pm. If you’re really fancy you have a newer slow cooker you can set the timer on – I definitely see one of those in my future!

The other thing that has been life changing is slow cooker liners! For so long we had to clean the dang crock pot every night until I finally remembered about those and started using them. Such a  life changer for cleaning up!

Slow cooker burrito bowls is a recipe I adapted from a casserole recipe for use in the slow cooker. We eat this probably every other week and it’s really good reheated the next night for leftovers. You can get creative with toppings and hot sauce if you like it spicy to suit every one’s taste!

Slow Cooker Burrito Bowl

Ingredients:

1lb ground turkey

1 package taco seasoning

1 15oz can black beans

1 15oz can diced tomatoes with chiles

1lb bag of frozen corn

2 packages of Spanish style rice

1 package shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:

1. Line slow cooker with liner.
2. Place ground turkey on bottoms of slow cooker.
3. Top ground turkey with taco seasoning, beans, tomatoes, and corn. Cook on low 8 hours.
4. When you get home from work, prepare Spanish rice according to package instructions.
5. Stir ground turkey mixture, breaking up ground turkey as you go.
6. Stir in Spanish rice.
7. Top with cheddar cheese and place lid back on slow cooker until melted.

That’s it! We usually add a little salt and sometimes add hot sauce, sour cream, or lettuce on top. I hope this helps your evenings go a little smoother and that you enjoy this recipe!

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