Your crockpot… use it!
Do you ever feel like a broken record when it comes to meals? Whenever I try to think of something different for Sunday lunch (I mean something dressier than a frozen pizza), my great ideas are always weeded out by “Nah, I’d have to get up too early” or “No, that needs basted while baking and I won’t be here” or “I’d never have time to make that AND get us out the door in time” etc. So, it often ends up being the good ol’ roast, potato, veggies in a crockpot meal. Not that I’m complaining… we love that meal! I’m just sayin’ I do feel like a broken record sometimes when I say, “I guess we’ll do a roast in the crockpot for lunch tomorrow”, even though I try to use a different voice inflection and wording than I did the week before.
One thing I LOVE about this meal is I don’t make it. Who wouldn’t love that?! Really, that’s even better than that meal that I said, “Seriously, I spent no longer than 35 min on this meal!” Here’s the secret: I have a husband who cooks better than I can. (I am NOT kidding about that!!!!) Anyway, he puts the frozen roast in the crockpot before we go to bed Sat night. He tries different things with seasonings and flavorings. Yesterday, it was Parmesan cheese, bay leaves, seasoning salt, and b-b-que sauce…
He puts water in with the roast and seasonings and onion wedges
and turns the crockpot on Low. 
In the morning, around 7:30 or 8:00, he put in potatoes, whole fresh mushrooms, and carrots.
When we get home from church, everything is perfectly done.
I usually put some crescent rolls from a popable can (speaking of a broken record, you may know by now that I’m a big fan of those too!) in the oven and set the table and dish everything and… lunch is served!
Crazy thing is, as easy as that meal is, we still opt for a frozen pizza or grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch sometimes. Or something on the grill in the summer.
What do you usually do for Sunday lunch?
Note to Kitchen Scrapbook readers: There were some interesting comments on this post and I wish they would’ve copied over from my old site when I copied the posts onto Kitchen Scrapbook. It was surprising how many people have a roast on Sunday! Other common lunches were quick things, like leftovers or breakfast foods.
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Valentine’s Day is coming up! Stay tuned for a Valentine’s meal post in a few days!
What’s for supper?
Here is what we’re having this evening (my husband reads my blog, so now he’ll know what to get in the mood to eat 
):
Turkey loaf, steamed broccoli, baked potatoes, and crescent rolls
We eat at 6:30, so around 4:00, I’ll get the meat in the oven (30 seconds). Around 5:00, I’ll scrub the potatoes and wrap them in tin foil and put them in the oven (5 min). Then around 6:00, Lexi and I will set the table, Lexi will make the crescent rolls, I’ll get the broccoli to cooking, and we’ll get ‘extras’ on the table like butter, jelly, S&P, and sour cream. Around 6:15, I’ll get the meat and potatoes out and put the rolls in, pour water, dish stuff out, and we’re ready to eat!
This is one of the easiest meals there is! I’ll get a picture of it on the table this evening, edit the post to add it in, and see if you think it looks like I fussed over it for longer than 35 min! 
And, another good thing, cleanup is a snap because even with 4 things, I’ll only have dirtied one baking sheet (rolls) and one kettle (broccoli). The potatoes will have tin foil and the meat has it’s own disposable container…
Edit:
Here’s my plate at mealtime…
And it actually didn’t take 35 minutes. I had time to kill hit-n-miss between 6:00 and 6:30.
Frying pan? Who needs a frying pan?!
You flat-top stove owners, have you ever done this? Works like a charm! I’ve been doing this for years and my stove top still shines up as good as new. Turn the heat pretty low… you can actually see where I have it.
I am still using a kettle for the tomato soup though. Ha. …although, I’ve had boil-overs of unwatched tomato soup that would look like I was trying it without.
This is the only thing I do right on the burner though. What about you?
Are you a busy mom/wife/person?
And, oh yeah , that’s right, you have to cook too! 
Well, here you go…
This meal takes about 5 minutes of your time 2 1/2 hours before supper, then you don’t need to do anything else till about 15 minutes before suppertime!!! And the clean-up is a snap!
Turkey loaf
Baked potatoes
Cooked veggies
Brown & serve rolls
(Bird’s eye view because the others were already sitting down.) That’s iced tea in the glasses.
2 1/2 hours before suppertime , turn the oven to 350, take the turkey loaf out of the freezer, get it out of the box
and slide it in the oven. Then, get as many potatoes as you need, scrub them under running water, wrap them in tin foil,
and put them in the oven. 
Yeah,ok, admit it, your oven isn’t always clean either!
15 minutes before serving, get the brown & serve rolls out of the cupboard and put them on a baking sheet.
Turn the oven up to 425. Get a bag of frozen veggies out of the freezer and get them to cooking. Take the potatoes and meat out of the oven
and put the rolls in. Get the kids to set the table (that’s why the silverware is set wrong).While the rolls are baking for 8-10 min, get out the tea, butter, jelly, ketchup, sour cream, and serving dishes. Dish up the potatoes, meat, and veggies. Call everyone to the table while you get the rolls out. And there’s your supper!
Note: There is also condensed gravy in with the meat, plus directions to make more. I do that if I’m serving mashed potatoes with it.
This meal cost me about $5 or $6, plus we had leftovers, so it’s not like you pay alot for it for as quick and prepared as it is. I actually mixed up a batch of cookies and slipped a pan of them in the oven when I took the rolls out. During the meal, I got them out and by the time we were done eating, they were cool enough to eat. A can of peaches (or other fruit of choice) completes the dessert.
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On another note: I’m curious what you all do for bread at each meal.
What I do is have fresh-baked bread/rolls/breadsticks at pretty much every meal. I lean on the popable cans and brown and serve pretty hard. In the popable cans, you can get crescent rolls (our most popular), breadsticks, and French bread. I’ve tried the frozen dinner rolls, but they never get right for me. Frozen bread dough works though. I do make biscuits from scratch. (Yeah, I know, wow.) Confession: I actually haven’t taken time to try yeast breads of any kind since you guys left all those great helpful tips! But, someday I want to… I just think I should really have more than just a little hand mixer to do it though.
When I was still at home, we always just got out the loaf of bread, stacked some pieces on a plate and that was our bread. On Sundays, we’d usually have fresh-baked homemade rolls though. I don’t know if that’s still what Mom does or not.
So, I know from before that alot of you are pros in making yeast breads… what type of bread do you put on the table each night? Or do you not have people in the family that will holler if there’s no bread on the table?
About Me
Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! My name is Kay. I'm from central Ohio. I love cooking and baking. Especially baking. It's therapeutic for me. I'm not a professional or gourmet cook by any means. I'm a Christian homemaker who happens to take pictures of some of the food I make. I have 2 little 'helpers'... Lexi (9) and Tiffany (5), who are young cooks in training. And I should mention Megan (born in June 2010), altho' she's not in training yet. She's more in charge of inside-the-cupboards demolition when she's in the kitchen. I don't do anything on the grill... that's where my husband Shannon comes in! He grills quite a bit, especially in the summer. So, sit back and enjoy browsing thro' the recipes. If you try some of them, I'd love to hear feedback on how you liked them! If you want to contact me, my email address is kay@kitchenscrapbook.com