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Instant Pot Bacon Chicken Pasta

July 21, 2021 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Want to know what my husband said when eating Instant Pot Bacon Chicken Pasta for the first time?

“People pay big bucks for food like this at a restaurant!”

What went through my mind all at the same time when he said that is:

  • Aww, shucks.
  • But this didn’t cost big bucks to make.
  • Why eat out when we can make this at home in 30 minutes, start to finish? 
  • Instead of paying $15/plate, this cost less than $15 for all of us!
  • I pretty much threw this together last minute.
  • My husband likes me more than Olive Garden.

But out loud, I simply said…

Ok, I totally said almost all of that out loud in one sentence without taking a breath and with additional thoughts and twenty to forty more words.

What can I say? I’m home with a bunch of small children all day, which means that for around 10 hours every day my conversations consist of saying things like, “Come over here so I can change your diaper” and “Please don’t let Sissy put that in her mouth.” By the end of the day, I HAVE A LOT OF WORDS LEFT and I love it when they have more to do with grown-up subjects instead of choo-choo trains and wet wipes.

Ultimately though, when Matt said, “People pay big bucks for food like this at a restaurant!” I knew I’d found a winner. It’s so, so true. This meal is restaurant quality for a sweet at-home price. It’s perfect for company and completely easy to make.

If you have an Instant Pot.

Don’t have one yet? Here’s what I have and love and use all the time!

And now, it’s time to get out the simple ingredients that you likely already have on hand and make this awesome “restaurant food.”

Instant Pot Bacon Chicken PastaYum

Instant Pot Bacon Chicken Pasta
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs or breasts
  • 3 Tablespoons homemade dry Ranch Dressing mix
  • 16-ounces pasta, any shape, uncooked
  • 4 cups (32-ounces) chicken broth
  • 1 cup shredded cheese (Colby jack is our favorite)
  • 8 ounces softened cream cheese
  • 3-4 handfuls of baby fresh spinach
  • 8 slices cooked bacon, made into bacon bits
Instructions
  1. Use kitchen shears to cut chicken directly into your Instant Pot.
  2. Saute chicken in olive oil for a few minutes until chicken is no longer pink.
  3. Add ranch dressing, pasta, and chicken broth. Do not stir.
  4. Put lid on Instant pot and seal.
  5. Cook on Manual, High Pressure for four minutes.
  6. Quick release the pressure (I usually hold a towel a few inches above the valve to keep steam from spraying all over my kitchen.)
  7. Open the lid and add cream cheese, shredded cheese, spinach leaves, and bacon bits.
  8. Stir until creamy.
  9. Serve!
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You are going to love how flavorful and easy this is!

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Grilled Pizza Tortillas – a 10 Minute Meal!

June 27, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

I shared a similar idea a few years ago, and it’s good enough that I’m bringing it back! Not sure what to make for dinner? Have everyone build Pizza Tortillas. Then throw them on the grill!

Yum

This isn’t even a recipe. This is all too easy. You can look at the picture and know exactly what to do because it is self-explanatory.

Laura answers the hard questions about making Grilled Pizza Tortillas below:

  • What is the base of this Grilled Pizza Tortilla you speak of? That would be a…tortilla.
  • How many tortillas should we use? However many your family can eat.
  • What should I put on top of my Grilled Pizza Tortilla? Whatever you want. I suggest pizza toppings. Those make the best kind of pizzas.
  • How much of the toppings should I use? As much or as little as you like.
  • What kind of cheese should I use? What kind of cheese do you like? {Laura answers a question with a question}
  • Where do I cook Grilled Pizza Tortillas? On the grill.
  • How long do I cook Grilled Pizza Tortillas? Until they are done.
  • Sauce or no sauce? Now that’s a good question. I mean, they were all good questions. 

But about the sauce…

I skip the sauce on these Grilled Pizza Tortillas. I think they cook better and taste better when they are sauce-less, with the cheese directly on the tortilla, then toppings on top of the cheese. But THEN. After you cook them, you can dip them in pizza sauce as you’re eating. Perfection!

So now you know all about making Grilled Pizza Tortillas. Your family will love this!

Want more super fast food ideas for this summer?

  • Fast No-Brainer Stir-Fry
  • 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken
  • Grilled Burgers with this Easy Tasty Topping
  • Simple Honey-Glazed Pork Tenderloin
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Simple Honey Glazed Pork Tenderloin or Roast (Crock Pot Recipe)

June 20, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Here we are with another super fast meal for summertime! This Simple Honey Glazed Pork Tenderloin will wow everyone!

Yum

There’s something about the combination of flavors poured over this pork tenderloin (or pork roast) that makes it so very good. It slow cooks all day, so that makes the meat extra juicy and the flavor extra amazing. Simply put a Pork Tenderloin in your crockpot (these are inexpensive, by the way!), stir together a few ingredients to pour over the top of the meat, turn on your crockpot, and walk away!

What’s great about a meal like this is that well, a Pork Tenderloin or Pork Roast just feels like a special meal. You can serve it with:

  • a salad
  • a steamed veggie
  • and some fresh fruit

and your meal will be amazing!! But you will have worked very little to pull it off.

Meals like this are my favorite. Or have you figured that out about me by now? :)

Tip for choosing a cut of pork:

  • Check for meat mark-downs! Our local grocery store often has a high quality brand of pork marked down when it’s getting close to the “freeze-by” date. When I see these, I grab them! They are usually between $2-3/pound at this point, making for some very affordable and delicious meat options for our freezer!
  • Pork Tenderloin, Pork Butt (he-he-he, Pork Butt…I’m in middle school), and Pork Roast are my favorites. They turn out tender and juicy every time with this recipe!

Simple Honey Glazed Pork Tenderloin or Roast (Crock Pot Recipe)

Simple Honey Glazed Pork Tenderloin (Crock Pot Recipe)
 
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Author: Laura
Serves: 4-6 servings
Ingredients
  • 2 pounds Pork tenderloin
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • ¼ teaspoon black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • ¼ cup honey
  • ¼ cup balsamic vinegar
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
Instructions
  1. Place the pork tenderloin in the crock pot.
  2. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients.
  3. Pour the mixture over the pork tenderloin.
  4. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or until pork is tender and falling apart.
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I hope the recent meal ideas I’ve shared recently have been helpful to you this summer as you figure out what to feed your family when it’s too hot to care about cooking. I’ll keep the recipes coming!

What I’ve shared so far:

  • Fast No-Brainer Stir-Fry
  • 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken
  • Grilled Burgers with this Easy Tasty Topping
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Fast No-Brainer Stir-Fry!

June 13, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Don’t feel like cooking? Here’s how to make Fast No-Brainer Stir-Fry!

Yum

I promised you meal ideas for the hot summer days when you just can’t find inspiration to cook.

Did you try our 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken yet? It truly only takes 5-minutes of effort to make. Perfect for this summer (or next winter, obviously).

And now, I encourage you to spend a few minutes putting together some Stir-Fry Packets so that you can quickly make stir fry on a busy evening.

It looks something like this:

  1. Gather Veggies.
  2. Rinse Veggies.
  3. Chop Veggies
  4. Baggie Up the Veggies.
  5. Freeze the Veggies.
  6. Pull Out the Veggies on an “I Don’t Wanna Cook” Day

Oh, and while you’re at it, make several baggies at once. It only makes sense!

Having baggies of chopped veggies like this truly has been a life-saver for me. It makes for very quick meals, and does it go without saying that these meals are full of veggies? What a perk!

My favorite ways to use Stir-Fry Veggies are:

  • Stirred into cooked spaghetti noodles like this.
  • Stirred into Stick-of-Butter-Rice.

With gardens in full swing right now, it’s a smart idea to chop and freeze excess garden veggies anyway.

  • Carrots
  • Zucchini
  • Summer Squash
  • Asparagus
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Onions
  • Green Beans
  • Any of your favorites!

Use these veggies for a side dish!

Here’s another idea: Use these stir-fried veggies as a side dish with this 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken. Or with any meat that you might throw on the grill.

What are your favorite Stir-Fry Veggies? Have you put together Veggie Packets for your freezer like this?

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5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken

June 9, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Can you really make 5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken in only 5 minutes? Try it and see! Maybe you can make it in only 4 minutes? :)

Meals like this are my very favorite:

  1. Throw chicken in a crockpot.
  2. Dump something on top of the chicken.
  3. Turn on the crockpot and come back at dinner time.

Add a simple vegetable, a salad, some fruit, and your meal is complete. It’s so easy and delicious and perfect for summertime right?

That’s why I’m going to share several days worth of 5-Minute recipes in the coming days! I’m always looking for quick meals in the summertime that don’t heat up the house. As much as I love to cook, I don’t enjoy it as much in the summer. So if we can have meals that both:

  • Take very little prep time and
  • Don’t heat up the house

We love it, right?!

Right.

So subscribe if you haven’t already so that you don’t miss any of these 5-Minute recipes!!! And now for our first one:

5-Minute Crock Pot ChickenYum

5-Minute Crock Pot Chicken
 
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Author: Laura
Serves: 4-6 servings
Ingredients
  • 4-6 boneless chicken thighs or breasts
  • 2 cups Italian dressing
  • ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
  1. Place chicken pieces in a crock pot.
  2. Pour Italian dressing over the chicken.
  3. Sprinkle cheese over the top.
  4. Cook on low for 8 hours.
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I try to keep Homemade Italian Salad Dressing on hand if I can, which works great in this recipe! But any Italian dressing will work. So open a bottle and pour it on!

More 5-Minute Recipes coming. Stand by!

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Simple Spaghetti Squash for Delightful Sapiens

March 29, 2021 by Tasha Hackett Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

This is a regular (albeit amazing) spaghetti squash recipe. It’s intended for all people, mankind, and sapiens. However, WordPress informs me that titles with uncommon words perform better. Sapiens fits the bill. Ha!

Simple Paleo Spaghetti

I’ve been eating a paleo diet for over three months! Simple meals are slowly making their way back into my life. I spent the first month floundering and relearning how to use my kitchen. The second month I discovered all the “junk” food I could make with honey and maple syrup and and ate an insane amount of homemade chocolate. But I’m rocking this new diet now. My crowd-pleasing, feed-the-people meal is either a ginormous salad with Almond-Orange Dressing or spaghetti squash. (Or both.)

The spaghetti squash topic has already been covered by Laura. 

spaghetti squash

Yum

If you search on this sight you will find multiple spaghetti squash posts. Like how to cook it in an instant pot. (Highlights: Gut it. 5 minutes. Or leave whole and 20 minutes.) But, I had more information to share. I’ll see your spaghetti squash and I’ll raise you sausage. At first I was afraid this idea was too simple to even bother sharing, but after our great dinner last night with friends, they encouraged me to please share. Mostly because she wanted the “recipe.” 

Make it now. Eat it later. It’s a no-fuss dinner. 

Here’s how it went down. One morning I remembered I had a meeting scheduled at my house the next day. This meeting would last until suppertime. Therefore, I wanted to make something I could pop in the oven at four o’clock and then feed the delightful sapiens at five o’clock. No prep. No mess. 

While I was overseeing third-grade math and language arts I baked two spaghetti squash in the oven (In short, slice in half, gut, bake “bowl-down” at 350* for 40-50 minutes. Or use the instant pot. Or bake whole and gut later). I chopped romaine leaves and other vegetables for a nice salad and put it all-together in a bowl in the fridge to be served with the amazing Almond Orange Paleo Dressing. Next, I cooked two pounds of pork sausage. 

When the squash was thoroughly cooked, I pulled it from its shells with a fork. This next part is where it gets exciting. THEN I mixed it with the sausage and a can of pasta sauce and spread it all into a 9X13 pan. Done. Mostly. 

A pre-made simple meal!

The next day, I simply popped the pan into the oven and re-heated it at 350° for an hour. At five o’clock the smell filled the dining room and I remembered I had completely forgotten to extend the invitation to dinner to our friends. “Oh, hey. You guys wanna stay and eat with us? Dinner’s already in the oven. We’re having squash and salad and stuff.” Haha. Who could turn down an invitation like that? They stayed. A good time was had by all indeed. Especially by my four-year-old, who cleaned his plate and spent the majority of the meal explaining, in detail to fresh ears, everything he knew about dinosaurs. 

looking at books

Simple meal prep is the best kept secret for the ease of serving other sapiens.

I want to be able to host and feed the people at a moment’s notice. When I first switched to paleo, I wasn’t able to do this. How could I bless others when I was following detailed recipes that included ingredients I wasn’t used to and only had enough on hand for four servings? After weeks of learning new skills, I’ve been able to put Laura’s good advice to work with my new diet requirements. I have pre-formed Salisbury steak (fancy burgers) in the freezer. I have riced cauliflower and shrimp on hand for quick and fun stir-fry. My fridge is usually full-to-bursting with fresh vegetables for snacks and salads because that’s fast food around here. Homemade chocolates, almond flour muffins, and green smoothies are a new staple. Whatever your diet needs, there are ways to make it simpler. I’m sure of it! 

Premade Spaghetti Squash Dinner
 
Save Print
Prep time
5 mins
Cook time
1 hour
Total time
1 hour 5 mins
 
Author: Tasha
Serves: 8 servings
Ingredients
  • Two Spaghetti Squash
  • Two Pounds Pork Sausage (or regular ground beef or pork)
  • 24 ounces of pasta sauce of your choosing
  • If using a plain pasta sauce, add salt, pepper, garlic, and Italian seasonings to taste.
Instructions
  1. Slice the squash down the middle to make two bowls and discard the seeds with a spoon.
  2. Oil the cut rings and place bowl-down on a pan with edges. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes.
  3. To check for doneness, a knife should easily slide into the squash.
  4. Brown the sausage in a skillet, pour off the extra grease if desired.
  5. Mix the squash, sausage, and sauce together. Add any extra seasonings to taste (salt, pepper, garlic, etc.)
  6. Serve immediately, or spread in a 9x13 and refrigerate up to three days.
  7. To reheat, put the cold pan in the the oven and then set to 350 for an hour.
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Have you ever given spaghetti squash a chance? 

I double-dog dare you to make it for dinner this week. Only mix in some great sausage and pasta sauce and voilá: Simple dinner for the masses. Just to be clear: viola is a musical instrument (played by skilled sapiens). Because I already knew that, I did not *ahem* need to search the web for the proper spelling of the French term “to suggest an appearance as if by magic.” Ya learn something new every day!


Tasha HackettTasha Hackett, friend of Laura and author of Bluebird on the Prairie, a Christian historical romance releasing Spring 2021, is fueled by sunshine, paleo pudding, or hot chocolate—whichever is more readily available. Though she often pretends to be a ballerina while unloading the dishwasher, her favorite thing is writing with hope and humor to entertain and encourage women. Her time is spent with four chatty children and an incredibly supportive husband. They give her the kind of love people write books about. You can connect with her at www.TashaHackett.com or Instagram @hackettacademy

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

How to Make Quiche for a Crowd

March 10, 2021 by Laura 4 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Making quiche for a crowd is a great and easy meal option. I’ll show you all my tricks for making this as simple as possible!

Yum

On the particular day I chose to serve quiche to my family and a living room (I prefer to call it my loving room) full of college students, I took about half an hour to put together six quiches. Truly, that’s all the time it took!

Cut into eight pieces each, this makes 48 servings and in our case, fed about 13 people. (We had a couple of pies leftover.)

I loved how easy it was to make this meal, and all of our guests felt like I was serving them something extra special!

Now, if you don’t have your very own 2-year-old to help you crack all the eggs, I’m very sorry because this endeavor will be less of an adventure and much more predictable. Egg cracking is one of Keith’s greatest kitchen pleasures. Thankfully, only 1 out of 36 eggs landed on the floor on this particular day.


Along with a helpful two-year-old, I also utilized another fantastic resource: frozen pie crusts. From the store. Someday maybe I’ll make pie crust again. Though when making this many quiches at once {Laura pauses to look up if quiche is plural of quiche}, I may always enjoy the ready-made crusts that the store provides so that I can instead use my time to love people rather than floury countertops.

Here’s another trick I enjoyed: I put all the eggs into my Blendtec and let this appliance do the work (in 7 seconds, thank you very much) to whip all the eggs for me. This was extra helpful because once whipped, I could then easily pour the eggs from my blender into my prepared pie crusts. Oh! Because I’d already filled each crust with a variety of quiche ingredients. Then I added eggs and stirred it all around.

How did I fill my quiche? Quiches? (Turns out, either one works as a plural form of quiche. Ya learn something new every day, thank you Google.) I filled them with a variety of goodies to give our guests lots of options. Some were filled with veggies like broccoli, sweet peppers, and onions. Some had ham and cheese. Some just had cheese. All of them had salt, eggs, cheese, and cream.

But I loved that I could set the crusts all out like an assembly line and fill them quickly with whatever I intended to put in them. Then after the eggs were prepared, I poured it in and stirred it around, then boom. They were ready to bake!

How to Make Quiche for a Crowd

5.0 from 1 reviews
How to Make Quiche for a Crowd
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 8 per pie
Ingredients
  • Per Quiche, which makes 8 pieces:
  • 1 unbaked pie crust
  • 6 eggs
  • ⅓ cup heavy whipping cream
  • sea salt to taste
  • ¾ cup shredded cheese
  • 1½-2 cups other fillings like diced ham, cooked sausage, cooked bacon bits, broccoli, onion, sweet peppers, spinach leaves, etc)
Instructions
  1. Place fillings into each pie crust.
  2. Whip eggs, cream, and salt together in a bowl or blender.
  3. Pour egg mixture over the pie fillings and stir.
  4. Bake quiche in a 425 degree oven for 45-55 minutes or until a knife poked into the middle comes out clean.
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Quiche is great served with a salad and fresh fruit. :)

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Paleo Southwest Crockpot Chicken Supper

February 7, 2021 by Tasha Hackett 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Since when does Laura care about paleo foods? Oh, dear. Well, she doesn’t. But Tasha is trying a new thing with surprisingly great success. Paleo Southwest Crockpot Chicken Supper has been a favorite and it will definitely be added to the regular rotation.

I bet you’re wondering what’s with the trendy diet we’ve jumped on. Here’s the thing… I’ve never been inclined to jump on any type of diet because I didn’t believe in the idea of cutting out entire food groups. Let’s not even get into the details about how jumping is a high impact exercise and could be harmful if you are dealing with chronic achy joints and headaches. (I recommend yoga and stretching for beginners.) But elimination diets? I’m not here to argue the case of the paleo food choices. Except I will tell you, I paid a good amount of money to a doctor to get to the root of my achy joints and headaches and weird mood swings. He is making me eat paleo. At first, I was incredibly discouraged. I ranted and raved about how much I disagreed with the concept.

What is Paleo?

NO Dairy and NO Grains (including corn, oats, rice, quinoa, etc) and NO Legumes (including peanuts and soy) and NO sugar. WHAT IS LEFT!?!?!? BROCCOLI AND CHICKEN!? Poor Tasha. She can only eat broccoli and chicken. I was at Laura’s house (and we should have snapped a picture to document the momentous occasion) and I pulled a Laura and ate the spinach leaves directly out of the tub because I was so stinking hungry, but a few days later an amazing thing happened.

First, I must have gotten over the sugar craving hump because I wasn’t starving all the time anymore. Secondly, I discovered recipes that included a variety of flavors and foods I had never tried before. Dressing recipes with fresh squeezed orange juice, almond butter and garlic. Say whaaa? But it was amazing. I began making my own nut butters because all the ones I found in the store were too expensive and had added sugars.

Paleo supper isn’t always simple . . . so far.

paleo chicken supper

Yum

Because I’m still in the newish phase of this paleo food thing and I’m following a lot of other people’s recipes, food prep has been a priority of my life lately. Slowly I have been adapting the recipes I like to fit the simple standard that Laura has been teaching us. But the amount of chopping and sautéing that I’ve been doing the last 45 days is more than I would prefer. One important thing I’ve been learning is to start seeing onions and peppers as a solid filler, not a seasoning. Many of the paleo recipes call for a hefty amount of vegetables.

Southwest Crockpot Chicken Supper

paleo chicken

From start to finish this recipe took 5 hours. 10 minutes of chopping (but I use my nifty food processor for onions and garlic), leave it in the crockpot for four hours. Another 10 minutes of work to shred the chicken, chop the peppers and then let it simmer together for a few minutes. Work time for this paleo chicken supper? Perhaps 15 minutes. I served with avocados on top and ate it as-is. You could serve on top of a bed of greens or if you’re not on a restrictive diet, then you can add chips or tortillas and sour cream.

Paleo Southwest Crockpot Chicken Supper

Paleo Southwest Crockpot Chicken Supper
 
Save Print
Prep time
15 mins
Cook time
4 hours
Total time
4 hours 15 mins
 
Author: Tasha
Recipe type: Main
Cuisine: Southwest
Serves: 8
Ingredients
  • 4 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs
  • 2 red onions, chopped
  • 4 cups salsa
  • 6 garlic cloves, minced
  • 3 Tablespoons homemade taco seasoning
  • 2 jalapeño peppers (optional)
  • 4 bell peppers, chopped
  • 2 avocados, chopped
Instructions
  1. In a crockpot, combine everything except the bell peppers and avocados.
  2. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours.
  3. Remove chicken and shred with a fork and return to pot.
  4. Chop peppers and sear in a skillet for 4 to 5 minutes until roasted.
  5. Add peppers to crockpot.
  6. Stir and cover.
  7. Let simmer on high for another 20 minutes, adding water if needed for desired consistency.
  8. Top each serving with chopped avocados.
  9. Reheats well for left-overs.
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Paleo tricks

Did you know Laura already had a ton of paleo recipes on her blog? Or at least ones that are easily made paleo by adjusting only a few ingredients. Here are three treats that I have returned to a few times this year.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups (subbing almond butter and I use double the cocoa powder and a pinch of salt)

Simple Almond Flour Muffins (either cheat and use the butter or sub coconut oil)

Vanilla Pudding (Sub coconut milk and top with fruit and nuts for a full breakfast)

Do you have any favorite dairy-free, grain-free, legume-free, sugar-free recipes?


Tasha HackettTasha Hackett, friend of Laura and author of Bluebird of the Prairie, (a Christian romance releasing Spring 2021), is fueled by sunshine or hot chocolate—whichever is more readily available. Though she often pretends to be a ballerina while unloading the dishwasher, her favorite thing is writing with hope and humor to entertain and encourage women. Her time is spent with four chatty children and an incredibly supportive husband. They give her the kind of love people write books about. You can connect with her at www.tashahackett.com or Instagram @hackettacademy or for Laura @heavenlyhomemaker.

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

How to Make Chicken Wings

February 3, 2021 by Laura Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Here’s how to make chicken wings at home. You’ll wonder why you never tried this before!

Truly, this is as easy as the “Just Dump Some Sauce on Some Chicken” idea I shared a while ago. I’ll share a recipe below, but if you don’t even want to read that far let me just give you the simple instructions now:

How to Make Chicken WingsYum

  1. Put chicken wings in a crock pot. Who cares if they are still frozen?
  2. Dump on some sauce. Use whatever sauce you have. The final plops of three different bottles will work just fine.
  3. Cook this on low for a few hours.
  4. Eat the chicken as it falls off the bones.
  5. Smile and wipe yo mouth.

Chicken wings seem to be something we only order at restaurants. They seem like one of those hard-to-make special foods when in fact, all you have to do is dump some sauce on some chicken and let your crock pot do the rest.

I love fun food like this. {Sheds a tear.}

Oh, and if you serve your Chicken Wings with some Homemade Sweet Potato Fries, you will make your family feel like they’ve gone to a restaurant when in fact you’ve all stayed home and spent a total of $5.78 to feed your entire family.

Other great side dishes to serve with your Chicken Wings

  • A tossed salad
  • A steamed vegetable (such as green beans, peas, broccoli, cauliflower)
  • A roasted vegetable
  • Cream Cheese Corn
  • Honey’d carrots
  • Baked beans

How to Make Chicken Wings

How to Make Chicken Wings
 
Save Print
Author: Laura
Serves: 4-8
Ingredients
  • 2-5 pounds of chicken wings
  • 8-16 ounces of sauce (barbecue, teriyaki, sweet and sour, anything you like!)
Instructions
  1. Put chicken and sauce in a crock pot.
  2. Cook on low heat for 6 hours or until chicken is falling off the bone.
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I wish I could give more specific instructions but truly there are no perfect measurements for such a simple recipe idea. Just put your chicken in your crock pot. Cover it with sauce. Let your crock pot do the rest. You’re going to love this!

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

The Easiest Pulled Pork

October 28, 2020 by Laura Leave a Comment

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Need a meal to feed a crowd? Make the Easiest Pulled Pork!

You know I’m not a gourmet cook. I’m not even super eager to try new spices in my recipes, simply because I like to stick with basics that I always have on hand. It’s just easier for me this way and saves brain energy and effort.

The food is still delicious!

One of the first times I made this Easiest Pulled Pork and fed it to our YC soccer teams, one of the coaches told Matt, “I don’t know what your wife does to season that meat, but it is so good!”

Truth: Matt’s wife barely does anything to season the meat. But shh. Don’t tell!

I just find that food can really taste great without going to a lot of trouble and taking a lot of time. Since it was a hit last year, I made pulled pork again for the teams this year. I made 20 pounds of pork, and I’m pretty sure it only took 5 minutes of prep.

How I make pulled porkYum

  1. Put the pork butt in the slow cooker (when I make huge amounts, I use a large roaster instead of a crockpot).
  2. Sprinkle on salt and garlic powder.
  3. Peel a few onions if I have time. Cut them and throw them in with the meat.
  4. Cover and walk away.
  5. Well yeah, plug it in and turn it on low first. Then cover and walk away.

The meat slow cooks for hours then falls apart at the end of the day. It practically shreds itself. Then it can be served on buns with barbecue sauce and that’s that!

Now, those of you with smokers can surely turn out much better-tasting pulled pork than I! But this is a method that any of us can do if we have a slow cooker of some kind. And pulled pork is an inexpensive and easy way to feed a crowd!

The Easiest Pulled Pork

The Easiest Pulled Pork
 
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Author: Laura
Serves: 24 servings
Ingredients
  • 6-8 pound pork butt
  • sea salt
  • garlic powder
  • 2-3 onions (optional)
Instructions
  1. Place the pork in a slow cooker.
  2. Sprinkle on seasonings liberally.
  3. Peel onions and chop them on top of the meat.
  4. Cook on low for 10 hours.
  5. Use a knife and fork to shred the meat, which pulls apart quite easily after the meat has cooked slow and low!
3.5.3251

Don’t need to feed a crowd, just your family? You can still make this easy meal and then freeze the shredded meat in meal-sized portions to pull out and rewarm as needed. SO EASY!

Feeding a crowd and want to get ahead? Make this meat days or weeks ahead. Put the shredded, cooled meat into freezer bags to save in the freezer until you need it. Then thaw and reheat as needed.

Great Sides to Serve with Your Pulled Pork

  • Buns and Barbecue Sauces
  • Party Potatoes
  • Simple Cream Cheese Corn
  • Simple Baked Beans
  • Raw Veggies with Dip
  • Fruit like grapes, watermelon, or cantaloupe
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