Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Taco Soup for a Crowd

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Here’s Taco Soup for a Crowd – an easy way to feed a lot of people!

What actually is a “Crowd?”

First question: What is considered to be a “crowd” anyway? I’m not sure how to define this.

We currently have 16 people living at our house and we often have guests. So pretty much every meal at our house “feeds a crowd” I suppose. :)

For the purpose of this post, we’ll understand the word “crowd” to be: If you’re feeding a lot of people (any number will do) and want to make it easy, here’s what to make.

Sound like a plan?! :)

Taco Soup for a CrowdYum

This soup is very easy to put together and can be made with either cooked chicken or hamburger meat. When making this for a large crowd, I like to make one crock pot with chicken and one crock pot with hamburger. This helps stretch the meal plus gives everyone the option of choosing their favorite meat.

If you have hamburger meat and chicken cooked ahead of time, then truly all you have to do is put it into crock pots, then dump in a few ingredients and that’s it!


Taco Soup for a Crowd
 
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Serves: 15 servings
Ingredients
  • 2 pounds cooked ground beef or shredded chicken
  • 32-ounces salsa (any variety)
  • 3 cups frozen corn
  • 2 15-ounce cans black beans
  • 32-ounces (1 quart) chicken or beef broth
  • Shredded cheese, sour cream, and fritos for toppings
Instructions
  1. Put all ingredients (except for toppings) into a crock pot.
  2. If you're making this soup for more than 15 people, consider making two separate recipes in two different crock pots.
  3. Cook on Low for 6-8 hours or on Hi for 4 hours.
  4. Serve with cheese, sour cream, and Fritos

 

You will love how easy this Taco Soup is – and it is a crowd pleaser for sure!

Fun Side Dishes to Serve with Taco Soup

NOTE: This Taco Soup can be made in a large pot on the stove instead of in crock pots if you wish. Simply heat until bubbly and serve!

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Simple Salmon Burgers – $1.00 Meal!

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Do you need a change from regular sandwiches? I made these Simple Salmon Burgers for my family a few weeks ago and they were a huge hit!

Canned salmon is something I always have on hand but almost never use. It’s one of those things that is great to have in the pantry as a backup meal option – yet I forget to actually use it. Silly!

Recently I was challenging myself to use up food we had in an effort to save money so I pulled out two cans of salmon to make Salmon Patties. As I was cooking, I decided that the kids might eat them better in the form of a sandwich. So I spread mayo on hamburger buns, added the cooked salmon patties, and they were a hit!

Here’s a quick picture I snapped on my phone after I’d taken round one of the sandwiches out to the kids to eat. It was a beautiful day so they were enjoying lunch on the porch! Playing outside makes them extra hungry, so I hurried to finish another batch of burgers!

You can add cheese, pickles, extra lemon juice, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, guacomole – whatever you would like – to your sandwiches. I love how mild these taste, so even those of you who aren’t huge fans of fish may still enjoy these as a great meal option!

Simple Salmon BurgersYum

Simple Salmon Burgers
 
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Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 14-ounces canned salmon
  • 1 egg
  • ½ cup bread crumbs or crushed cornflakes
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • oil for cooking (I use palm shortening or coconut oil)
  • Buns and your favorite condiments
Instructions
  1. In a bowl, mix together salmon, egg, bread crumbs and lemon juice.
  2. Heat a small amount of oil in a skillet.
  3. Spoon balls of the salmon mixture into the oil, flatten and cook for about five minutes, turning once.
  4. When the salmon patties are golden brown, serve them on burger buns.

How great is it that you can make these Salmon Burgers for such a low cost! Serve them with fresh fruit and raw veggies and your meal is nourishing and delicious.

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Easiest Crock Pot Pasta (5-Minute Prep!)

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This truly is the Easiest Crock Pot Pasta recipe. Ready to spend only five minutes making tonight’s dinner? :)

Here are the fine details about this Easiest Crock Pot Pasta dish and why it truly only takes five minutes to prepare:

  1. You can use whatever cooked meat you have in the fridge or freezer. Leftover hamburger meat, taco meat, cooked chicken, cooked turkey, diced ham, bacon, sausage…
  2. You can use whatever variety of pasta you like and have on hand.
  3. You throw the pasta into the crock pot UNCOOKED. This is my favorite.

Ready for the “recipe?” Such as it is…

Easiest Crock Pot PastaYum

Easiest Crock Pot Pasta (5-Minute Prep!)
 
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Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
  • 16-ounces uncooked pasta, any variety
  • 1-2 pounds cookied meat, any variety
  • 32-ounces chicken or beef broth
  • 2 cups water
  • 3 Tablespoons dried minced onion
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 2 cups shredded cheese
Instructions
  1. Stir everything except for the cream and cheese into a crock pot.
  2. Cook on low for 3 hours.
  3. Stir cream and cheese into the crock pot mixture.
  4. Serve.

Do you see how easy this is? Do you see how wonderfully this uses up leftovers you have in your fridge or random bits of pasta you might have in your pantry? Isn’t it lovely that you can dump all this into a crock pot and then walk away?

I suggest serving this dish with a steamed veggie or a salad, and fruit as side dishes. Miracle of miracles, all 10 of the people who eat food at our house loved this. This almost never happens, but with this dish, everyone eats it happily!

 

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Easy Make-Ahead Meatloaf

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This recipe for Easy Make-Ahead Meatloaf is going to look incredibly similar to our Easy Meatballs recipe. That’s because it’s the same recipe. Shhhhh.

I grew up eating meatloaf every single week for eighteen years if I remember correctly. My mom made it with baked potatoes and probably green beans (because we didn’t eat a lot of veggie variety when I was growing up, hehe). This was one of my favorite meals. But just like I said in my Meatball post, Matt isn’t a huge fan of meatballs or meatloaf. So this recipe takes a backburner at our house.

I just got a fantastic deal on ground beef though, so I decided to go ahead and make a few meatloaves for the freezer. This is a great meat to serve kids and well, we have a lot of them!

How to make this meatloaf ahead of timeYum

Make this meatloaf and freeze it without the sauce. Then when you’re ready to bake it, thaw it, add the sauce, then bake. It freezes so well! I typically make mine in 9×13-inch dishes, but making it into an actual loaf – in a bread pan – works great. Fun fact: my mom always made ours in a casserole dish so I was a lot of many years old before I learned that meatloaf was supposed to look like a loaf.

If you don’t make your meatloaf ahead and freeze it, at the very least, I recommend making this quickly in the morning, refrigerating it, then baking it later at meal time. This makes dinner prep so fast and easy!

Easy Make-Ahead Meatloaf

Easy Make-Ahead Meatloaf
 
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Serves: 6-10 servings
Ingredients
  • 2-pounds ground beef
  • 3 Tablespoons minced onion
  • ½ teaspoons garlic powder
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 Tablespoons rolled oats
  • Sauce for Meatloaf
  • ¾ cup ketchup
  • 2 Tablespoons minced onion
  • ¼ teaspoons garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
  • 2 Tablespoons brown sugar, molasses or honey
Instructions
  1. Mix first seven ingredients together thoroughly.
  2. Press the mixture into a 9x13 inch glass casserole dish or a 9-inch loaf pan.
  3. Stir sauce ingredients together in a small bowl, then spread over the meatloaf.
  4. Bake uncovered in at 350 degrees for one hour.

 

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Easy Meatballs with Sweet Sauce (Freezer Friendly)

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Ready to make these Easy Meatballs with Sweet Sauce?

This is a favorite recipe from our newlywed days. I’d given up on making them for a couple of reasons:

  1. Meatballs aren’t Matt’s favorite.
  2. I don’t have time to scoop out cute balls of meat anymore.

So I’ve been cheating and buying frozen meatballs at Costco. The kids LOVE those. But Matt (who doesn’t love meatballs anyway) and I (one who does love meatballs but NOT the frozen packaged kind) couldn’t stand it anymore. We would either go meatball-less, or I’d find a few extra minutes to make them myself.

Ah, and I suppose there is a third reason I haven’t been making meatballs as of late:

3. Ground beef has gotten pretty expensive.

We’ve been opting for more chicken and pork and less beef these days. Meatballs weren’t making the cut when it came to inexpensive meals we could make for our large family.

But doggonit, I was hungry for meatballs. The real kind. The good kind. And after the packaged variety, even Matt welcomed the homemade variety.

I’d “splurged” on some of the good ground beef one day at Costco, and I decided to use all six pounds of it to make these meatballs. This gave us three wonderful meals!! I baked two pounds the night I made them, then I froze the remaining 4 pounds of pre-made (unbaked) meatballs to thaw and bake another day. Wonderful!

This meal is a huge hit with our family, and having these meatballs premade in the freezer is a huge time saver!

Easy Meatballs with Sweet SauceYum

Easy Meatballs with Sweet Sauce
 
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Ingredients
  • 2-pounds ground beef
  • 3 Tablespoons minced onion
  • ½ teaspoons garlic powder
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 Tablespoons rolled oats
  • Sauce for Meatballs
  • ¾ cup ketchup
  • 2 Tablespoons minced onion
  • ¼ teaspoons garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
  • 2 Tablespoons brown sugar, molasses or honey
Instructions
  1. Mix first seven ingredients together thoroughly.
  2. Form into 1½ inch balls and place side by side in a 9x13 inch glass casserole dish.
  3. Stir sauce ingredients together in a small bowl, then spread over each meatball.
  4. Bake uncovered in at 350 degrees for one hour.

NOTE: I estimated our meal cost a total of around $22.00, which fed 4 adults and 7 kids that night, plus we had some leftovers. So a little over $2.00/person, even with “expensive” ground beef. Not bad! :)

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Easy Chili Cheese Dip

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Have leftover chili? Make Easy Chili Cheese Dip!

One of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is to clear out leftovers by making something new with them. This Easy Chili Cheese Dip is a perfect example of how to do this.

On the other hand, this dip is delicious enough that you might want to make chili just so you can have leftovers to make this dip. Or make the chili, skip eating the chili, and make lots of dip. OR, cheat as needed and simply buy a can of chili to use in this recipe!

Easy Chili Cheese DipYum

Easy Chili Cheese Dip
 
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Ingredients
  • 2 cups leftover chili
  • 8-ounces softened cream cheese
  • 1 cup salsa
Instructions
  1. Blend all ingredients together until smooth.
  2. Serve hot or cold with tortilla chips.

What’s great about this recipe is that it’s more than a snack. This can be your entire meal along with fruits and veggies on the side.

Serve it hot or cold, whichever you like!

This recipe works great for my family because I blend everything up which makes a smooth dip without chunks. If you prefer a chunky dip, just stir ingredients together instead of blending.

Need some chili recipes? Use one of these:

  • You can keep your costs for this dip to a minimum when you make this Lentil Chili.
  • This Hearty Chili is meatless, but feel free to cook hamburger or ground turkey to add more protein.

Here are more dip recipes to look through and enjoy!

  1. Easy White Queso
  2. Simple Bean and Cheese Salsa Dip
  3. Creamy Chocolate Fruit Dip
  4. Creamy Italian Veggie Dip
  5. Cream Cheese Salsa Dip
  6. Bacon Ranch Chip Dip
  7. French Onion Dip
  8. Bacon Tomato Dip
  9. Black Bean Salsa
  10. Easy Veggie Dip
  11. Healthier Cheese Dip 
  12. Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip
  13. Nacho Cheese Pretzel Dip
  14. Easy Guacomole
  15. Easy Cheesy Bean Dip
  16. Hamburber Sauerkraut Dip
  17. Cream Cheese Fruit Dip
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How to Make 5 Meals with 1 Pork Roast

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Here’s how to make 5 meals with 1 pork roast!

Yum

This might be one of my favorite Dollar Dinner menu items – x5! If you take a look at our 30 Days of Dollar Dinners calendar, you’ll see that these pork roast meals break down into these:

  1. Pork Roast and Potatoes $3.74
  2. Shredded Pork Tacos $4.08
  3. Pork Roast Melts $3.90
  4. Cheesy Mac and Pork $4.05
  5. Pork Sandwiches $3.90

The recipes for these five meals feed four people, which as you can see, divides down to just over $1.00 or just under $1.00 per person!

In my case, I had a 5-pound pork roast in the freezer that I’d picked up marked down to just $1.79/pound. So my $8.95 purchase was divided into four full meals.

Wait, just four meals, Laura?

Yes indeed, we have way more than 4 people in our house. 10 to be exact. And for a couple of our pork roast meals, we had guests. So I most definitely made our pork roast stretch, as it fed a LOT of people four different meals! But I just couldn’t stretch it into five. ;)

First, I made the roast (recipe below) with cheesy potatoes, green beans, corn, pumpkin bread, and cookies. For this particular meal, we fed 6 adults and 6 kids.

Everyone ate until they were full, then we still had this much meat left over.

With these leftovers, we made Pork Roast Melts, Enchiladas like this (with leftover shredded pork roast instead of ground beef), and Cheesy Mac and Pork. The night we had enchiladas, we had company again so there were five adults and six kids. Fruit and veggie side dishes really help the meat stretch throughout a meal, which is a huge money saver!

How to Make 5 Meals with 1 Pork Roast

Here’s how to make a Pork Roast:

How to Make 5 Meals with 1 Pork Roast
 
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Ingredients
  • 5-pound pork roast
  • 1 chopped onion
  • Sea salt to taste
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
Instructions
  1. Put all ingredients into a slow cooker and cook on low for 10 hours or until met shreds easily.
  2. Shred cooked meat and divide it into five equal portions.
  3. Serve one portion over baked potatoes.
  4. Save the remaining portions for four additional meals: Pork Roast Melts, Shredded Pork Tacos, Pork Sandwiches, and Cheesy Mac and Pork.

 

To make it stretch to last through five meals, you’ll eat one portion the night you cook it. Then you’ll save four portions to make other meals as detailed in our 30 Days of Dollar Dinners eCookbook. And hey, guess what?

The eCookbook is READY!!

We finished the cook a few weeks ahead of schedule, so we’re ready to offer it to you now!

This book contains all 30 days worth of recipes so you can make all of our delicious dollar meals! Here are the meals and recipes you’ll find in the book, as well as the dollar amount it takes to make each recipe for 4 people:

  1. Chili = $3.80
  2. Chili on Baked Potatoes $2.82
  3. Broth Rice with Veggies $3.77
  4. Grilled Cheese and Soup $4.59
  5. Pork Roast and Potatoes $3.74
  6. Shredded Pork Tacos $4.08
  7. Pork Roast Melts $3.90
  8. Cheesy Mac $3.09
  9. Cheesy Mac and Pork $4.05
  10. Pork Sandwiches $3.90
  11. Italian Honey’d Chicken Thighs $4.02
  12. Cottage Cheese and Pineapple Bowls with Toast $3.20
  13. Egg in a Nest $3.54
  14. Whole Chicken with Potato Wedges $3.99
  15. Parmesan Chicken and Rice $4.02
  16. Creamy Potato Soup $3.98
  17. Personal Cheese Pizzas $3.99
  18. Cheese Calzones $3.99
  19. Italian Chicken Legs $4.01
  20. Amazing Fried Chicken $4.32
  21. Crepes $3.44
  22. Biscuits and Gravy $3.32
  23. Lemon Garlic Chicken Thighs with Biscuits $4.19
  24. Seasoned Pork Loin with Roasted Broccoli $3.56
  25. Pork Loin Sandwiches $4.02
  26. Scrambled Egg Sandwiches $3.08
  27. Baked Spaghetti Nests $3.10
  28. Pancakes and Eggs $3.48
  29. Bean and Cheese Burritos $3.98
  30. Tex Mex Casserole $3.45

Amazing, right?!

Here’s how to get our 30 Days of Dollar Dinners eCookbook:

If you are a Heavenly Homemakers Club Member, simply log in and head to the eBook section. You’ll find it there so you can use and enjoy it right away!

Not a member? Please join us here so you can have access to all of our eBook, printables, eCurriculum, menu planning resources, and so much more!

Not interested in becoming a member of our club? Head to our shop here to buy the 30 Days of Dollar Dinners eCookbook independently.

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Quick Crock Pot Spicy Pasta Dinner

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This Quick Crock Pot Spicy Pasta Dinner came about on a day I was cleaning out leftovers. Therefore, this recipe is a winner that happened by accident!

Have you made my Cream Cheese Salsa Dip? It’s incredible, super easy, and our entire family loves it!

However, one of the recent times I made the dip, it somehow got shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten. I’d just gotten back from a big grocery run, so I was in major “make lunch with whatever food I find tucked away” so that I could make room for all the fresh food.

And there I found Cream Cheese Salsa Dip.

Aha, thought I. This is going to somehow turn into our lunch.

I was just about ready to take our littles out for a long walk, so I dumped some pasta and this dip into the crock pot to see what would happen while we were gone. Sure enough, the results were just like I’d imagined. The pasta was soft and ready to eat in just three hours without any effort from me! I added a shot of cream and stirred in some cooked meat, and we had our meal!

Here’s the easy recipe:

Quick Crock Pot Spicy Pasta DinnerYum

Quick Crock Pot Spicy Pasta Dinner
 
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Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
  • 10-ounces uncooked pasta, any variety
  • 8-ounces softened cream cheese
  • 32-ounces salsa
  • ½ cup heavy whipping cream
  • 1 pound cubed ham or cooked hamburger meat (optional)
Instructions
  1. Empty package of uncooked pasta into a crock pot.
  2. In a blender, whip together cream cheese and salsa until smooth.
  3. Pour salsa mixture over the pasta in the crock pot.
  4. Cook on low heat for 3 hours.
  5. Stir in heavy whipping cream and meat if desired.
  6. Serve.

Using up leftovers to create new meals is one of my favorite ways to be efficient in the kitchen!

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Least Expensive Burrito Recipe

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Is this the least expensive burrito recipe? Or is it a nifty trick teaching us how to use leftovers creatively? Hmmm….

I’ll give you a recipe. But I’m also going to give you a license. A license to use up what you have and stir it into a mixture and slap it into a tortilla. Roll it up and call it a burrito. It works deliciously every time!

This is what makes this recipe the “least expensive.” You’re using up leftovers that you’ve already prepared. You’re cleaning out your fridge and avoiding waste. You’re saving time and having fun and the best part is that you’re making something your family will love!

As an added bonus, you can make as many of these as you need and freeze them to warm them up as needed! My older kids love having these in the freezer so that they can pull some out for an easy lunch or a late night second-dinner. :)

Here’s the kind-of recipe. Later, I’ll give more of an actual recipe for those who would prefer more specifics!

Least Expensive Burritos – the Use Up Leftovers Recipe Version

  1. First, make a meal in which you offer cooked meat, rice, beans, salsa, cheese, corn, olives, tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream.
  2. Let everyone build a burrito bowl, a burrito, or a taco dip to eat with chips.
  3. After your meal, stir all of your leftovers into a dish.
  4. Use this mixture to make burritos for an easy-to-grab meal.

See how great this is? How easy? It’s how I make frozen burritos every time we have a burrito bar at our house!

Least Expensive Burrito (Actual) RecipeYum

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Least Expensive Burrito Recipe
 
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Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 1 can black beans
  • 1 can corn, drained
  • 2 cups cooked rice
  • 1 cup salsa
  • 2 cups leftover cooked chicken or beef (optional)
  • 1 cup shredded cheese
  • 12 soft tortillas
Instructions
  1. Mix together all burrito filling ingredients.
  2. Scoop mixture into tortillas and roll up.
  3. Serve right away or freeze and warm up later.

 

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The Easiest Way to Make Hamburgers

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This really is the easiest way to make hamburgers. I’ll grill them in the summertime, otherwise I will forevermore do this!

The Easiest Way to Make HamburgersYum

Short answer: Bake them.

Not because we’re afraid to fry them. But because we don’t want to stand at the stove to fry them. It’s messy. It takes maintenance. We don’t have time to maintain our patties, am I right? The patties must maintain themselves.

I love buying a package of hamburger patties at Costco. I set them out all afternoon and they are semi-thawed by 4ish. I cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper and place the partially thawed patties on the pan.

I bake them at 350 for about an hour. If I remember, I flip them all over halfway through their baking time. But if I don’t, I don’t. Why? Because we don’t have time to maintain our patties. Our patties must maintain themselves.

Now. My pictures are ugly. These patties do not look done, but they are done and you’ll be able to tell that your patties are done with they are sizzly and brown.

Right out of the oven, I put some sliced cheese on the hot patties for those who prefer cheeseburgers. Some in my family like Colby jack. Some like pepper jack. I like mine cheeseless.

Dinner is served with burger fixins, fries in our air fryer, carrot sticks, pickles, and baked beans.

Leftover patties (if there are any) warm up quickly for lunches, and I’ve been known to pull one out of the fridge and eat it cold when I simply need sustenance. Apparently, not only do I have time to maintain my patties, but I barely have time to maintain myself. So a cold leftover burger patty fills my belly. With a glass of this, of course. :)

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