9 tips on how to Cook Every Day and save $ Money $

Cooking our meals at home has done two things. First saved us a ton of money and Second has kept us eating healthy. BUT it is not easy to make every meal at home, it is easier to pick up a pizza, do take out, or swing by a fast-food joint or a restaurant. It took practice and living on a low income to train myself and this is how I've accomplished it.

Find these RECIPES HERE

Have a Meal Plan-if you don't have a plan, dinner time will sneak up on you and you won't know what to cook and you will most likely go out to eat

Only plan meals that you want to eat- if you are dreading something on your meal plan then you can bet you are going to skip it and go out to eat

Try new things- I noticed I need to have variety in my meal plans so I don't get sick of my own cooking. I watch cooking shows, surf pinterest's food section, and thumb through cook books at the library. Variety gives me something to look forward to.

Have a few easy quick meals on your meal plan- have easy meals for busy days. I have freezer meals I prep days or months ahead, crockpot meals, something for my husband to grill, or something that is just super fast to put together.

Keep your house stocked with food- take your meal plan, write out all the ingredients and have them in the house, if you don't have an ingredient to make your meal, you might be tempted to go out and eat instead of go to the store and cook.

Prep for the next day- for example when I am cooking dinner I pull the meat out of the freezer to defrost for tomorrows meal, and if I am chopping onions and I also need chopped onions for tomorrows meal I will chop them at the same time and reserve the rest for the next day

Give yourself time to cook- Don't wait until everyone is starving to start dinner. Give yourself time enough time to cook.

Have a back up plan- I have a back up plan in place for the times when dinner just didn't get done, or if dinner gets burned (sad, but it does happen) On our back up plan we can have sandwiches or eggs and pancakes, which are things I always have at our house for breakfast and lunch.

Give yourself a day off- Once a week I have a day where I don't have to cook dinner. On that day we either have a church or community event that is offering free food, or I make a bit extra throughout the week and we have leftovers.  It helps me from getting burned out.

Just so you don't think we are crazy, we do go out to eat every now and then! but we don't depend on that for our meals :)

What are your tips for cooking?

and if any of those dishes up top look good, find the recipes here

Ground Turkey Stroganoff-with a kick!

I took two of my favorite recipes, combined them and then made a few substitutions.... turkey for ground beef and greek yogurt for sour cream. Then I added a surprise ingredient that really gives your stroganoff a pleasing kick of flavor....are you ready..... I added...... Relish!

Get my RECIPE HERE

I love using my Magic Recipe for many reasons, but one of my new favorite reasons is the have a rewards program, where they reward me just for using their website!

Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken

My husband said, "I love this dinner, It makes me feel like I'm rich and dinning somewhere expensive"

Enough said! This is going to be a regular at our house ;)

The recipe is on MyRecipeMagic. Get the RECIPE HERE

One thing I love about this website is you can search for recipes with certain ingredients. It comes in handy when I buy something in bulk (like 5 lbs of ground turkey) and need some more dish ideas for ground turkey!

Award Winning Turkey Chili

This Chili has won awards at chili competitions and it will be a winner in your home too!

Get this award winning RECIPE HERE

I have all my recipes on myrecipemagic.com I love having a digital copy of all my recipes. One time when we were moving we temporarily lost my recipe box, and I was devastated. I just started cooking a few years ago and have hardly any of my recipes memorized. I can't cook without my recipes! Thanks to my recipe magic, I can access my recipes anywhere there is an internet connection.

Roasted Sausage Apple and Veggies with hearty gravy

This dish for us was new and exciting. It is also a good way to convince the kids to try new veggies. You can use pretty much any veggie, but we found this one to be our favorite combination ;)

Get my RECIPE HERE

One reason I love putting all my recipes on myrecipemagic.com is because they figure out the Nutritional Facts for you. Which makes counting calories on my home cooked meals 100 times easier!

Here are the nutritional facts they put together for this recipe, thanks guys!

Philly Cheesesteak Mac N Cheese

I love Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches but my kids won't eat them. They don't have the palate for sandwiches yet. BUT NOODLES.... that is a different story they will eat almost anything that has noodles! So this dish makes everyones belly happy ;)

Get the Recipes HERE!

I love storing my recipes on this website. It is my virtual cook book, so I have my recipes with me on my phone wherever I go!

Braised Beef Tortellini

I LOVE OLIVE GARDEN! It always sounds good, the food is always amazing, I just can't get enough of it. The Braised Beef Tortellini is our favorite dish there, and was the inspiration for this dish, for when we are snowed in or kidded in (that's when your kids are sick or fussy and you can't leave the house)

CLICK HERE FOR RECIPE

My Magic Recipe is a great website, where you can collect recipes and make cook books. All my recipes are on this website. (It's also cool because they calculate all the nutritional facts for my recipe so I can look at that and better estimate how much I should eat)

Ninja Turtle Date

We love making pizza, and wanted a fun themed date to go with it, so we all dressed up as characters of ninja turtles. Then we made and ate pizza together.

We decorated with pizza box's, and pizza slices made out of construction paper. We put man holes on the ground. When we were done we hoped on the old sega set we have and played a teenage turtle, ninja game, I am so lame at any type of video game so the pizza part was defiantly my favorite part.

The Best Pizza Crust Recipe

Heat oven 425 degrees

2 cup warm water (not hot)

2 TBS Honey

2 TBS yeast

I let that sit while I prep some of the toppings

Then I add

1TBS oil

3-5 cups flour

1 tsp salt

kneed that and let it rise for 5-10 minutes while I prep more toppings

Roll it out on a pizza dish or a PIZZA STONE (worth the investment if you love pizza, put mozzerella sticks around the edge and roll in to make stuff crust.

Throw it in the oven 5-10 minutes, pull it out put toppings on and put it in for another 10 minutes.

TOPPING IDEAS

BBQ- chicken, pineapple, purple onion with some mozzarella cheese

ALFRADO- chicken, bacon, onion, tomato, with a white cheese

PIZZA SAUCE- with all the classic combinations, Supreme is our favorite

BREAKFAST- whipped up eggs, with sausage, italian seasoning, cheddar cheese (make sure crust is thinner for this dish)