At 38 weeks pregnant and knowing izzy could be here any day now, I definitely know two things: first, I do notttt want to be slaving away in the kitchen trying to come up with various lunch and dinner recipes 5-7 days out of the week until she’s here, and second, I sure as heck don’t want to do that after she’s here either, because really who has the time and energy to take care of a newborn and be in the kitchen making yummy meals every day AND want to clean up the mess afterward?! Psh! So earlier this week I decided I would try my hand at making 2-3 crockpot meals a week for the next two weeks – as well as prepare some make ahead crockpot freezer meals that I could throw together in less than 5 minutes while holding a baby.
Here are the 4 meals I chose to try out the next two weeks:
honey soy pork tenderloin
broccoli beef
Asian chicken lettuce wraps
quinoa enchilada bowls
Today is the first day of this experiment, and I decided to start with the Pork Tenderloin 🙂 I mentioned my excitement about crockpot meals on my Instagram stories a couple days ago, saying that I spent about $150 on all the ingredients needed to make each meal – also saying that I would let everyone know how much it comes out to per serving per dish, whether or not I think it was worth the cost, and how it came out in the end.
THIS recipe was definitely worth all the money!!! It came out SO so good, only took minutes to throw together, and John gave it a 10/10 when he tried it for dinner tonight. Winninggggg! <3 The pork literally falls apart, the seasoning is SO easy and yummy, and we both gobbled it up off our plates in 2 seconds. It took 6 hours to cook on low in the slow cooker – I started it at 11:30am then left it to cook while John and I went out for the day. By the time we got home, it was ready to serve at 5:30pm. I paired it with dinner rolls from Costco (with the option of spreading with honey or butter) and I probably could have done a side salad too – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 😉 Here’s the recipe!
– 1/4 cup Olive Oil
– 1 cup Chicken Broth
– 1/4 cup Soy Sauce
– 1/2 cup Honey (I used Organic Tropical Blossom)
– 3 Tbs Montreal Steak Seasoning
– 2 Tbs Minced Garlic
– Small pinch of Ground Ginger
– 2.5 lbs Pork Tenderloin
- Either spray the inside of your cooker with non stick spray, or use slow cooker liners (like I did! WAY less mess to clean up)
- Place Pork Tenderloin into slow cooker
- Combine together all ingredients and mix thoroughly
- Pour ingredient mix over pork tenderloin, coating evenly
- Set slow cooker on LOW for 6 hours
- Serve with Costco dinner rolls (like I did!), and/or a side salad
We absolutely LOVED this recipe – it’s filling, super delicious, and leaves enough leftovers for both of us to have seconds and thirds. The good thing about serving this dish with rolls is that those are also super easy to “prep” – I got the giant pack from the bakery at Costco, froze half of them, and saved the other half for meals this week and next. Hope you try this one out – and let me know how much YOUR family loved it! <3
