Now what?

So we've decided to try for another baby!  How exciting!!  Now what?
First off we took a long hard look at our bank account.  We don't operate on a standard budget per se, but it is not difficult to see where we can cut back.  In our family it's food.  We buy junky groceries and then end up eating fast food all week.  Oh look, double spending.

So step one is to cook more, eat out less. That should be easy enough, right?  I like to cook, I just don't like to clean up afterwards. Ok, step 1A is get better about doing the dishes more.  (Ugh!) Then I looked in our pantry.  (Double ugh!)  Remember all those stupid grocery purchases?  Well, they're still here.  Payday is coming up on Friday, so no real grocery shopping until then.  That means step 1B is to use up all these weird mismatched pantry and frozen foods.  So for lunch it was off-brand Hamburger Helper and last night we fired up the grill.  Three tiny chicken breasts, some hotdogs (without buns), hush puppies, and a handful of steak fries.  Ok, not a terrible start.   If we had headed to our favorite fast food place to blow food money, we'd have spent around $18.00 on dinner for the 3 of us.  Our grill fest, while not very healthful, was closer to $8.00 for the 3 of us.  Look!  We already saved 10 bucks!

Lucky for us, I am an avid researcher.  Once I get onto an idea I slurp up as much info as I can.  That means step 1C now includes internet searches and library books for easy, relatively inexpensive recipes with as little clean up as possible.  :D  I found a recipe book called Slow Cooker by Taste of Home at our local library; the slow cooker, or crock pot as my mom would call it, is only one dish to wash so I foresee lots of slow cooker action in our future.  Furthermore, I really like chicken so there will be a lot of that.  Pork seems to be rather inexpensive also so I intend to try some pork recipes even though I'm not really a fan of that other white meat.

So far I have found several recipes that look promising:
From the Slow Cooker book:
-Pepper Jack Chicken
-Asian Chicken
-Sweet Pepper Chicken
-Italian Pork Chops
-Slow-cooked Southwest Chicken

From Allrecipes.com
-Slow cooker Adobo Chicken
-Chicken Parmesan Bundles

Any recipes you want to share?  I'll let you know how these turn out!