What's for Dinner?

I don't know about you guys but my kids start asking me what's for dinner before we've even left the house for school!  I try really hard to plan meals and know ahead of time what we're having for dinner. 

I'm always looking on Pinterest (you can follow my recipe board here) and blogs for easy meals that most of my family will eat and love.  I've fallen in love with Six Sisters' Stuff.  I love their blog posts, meal plans, and recipes.  They recently started a 4x4 Family Dinner Challenge for March.  Even though March is almost over, I really like this challenge and you can start anytime.

Basically the challenge is to eat dinner together as a family 4 nights a week for 4 weeks.  My family does eat dinner together at the table almost every night.  Occasionally, we'll eat pizza in front of the TV.    I'm super glad we have this ritual in my house, because there was some interesting research brought up in the blog post about the challenge.

Family dinners are more important than play, story time, and other family events in the development of vocabulary of younger children (Harvard Reserach, 1996).

Kids who eat most often with their parents are 40% more likely to get mainly A's and B's in school than kids who have two or fewer family dinners a week (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University).

One tradition, we've started at dinner is that everyone goes around and shares one good thing and one not so good thing about their day.  Usually the kids like sharing a whole list of good things about their day.  One lesson we've learned the hard way is to make the rule that you can only share ONE not so good thing.  Or dinner turns into a big whine fest.  It's really good hearing what the kids have to say about their day, and it's taught them to listen to others while taking turns.

My real dilemma is getting dinner on the table.  Since I'm commuting with my new job, I've really had to rely on my crock pot.  I wanted to share with you guys some of my favorite crock pot recipes.  Seriously, these recipes are all easy and taste good.  My family approves of them all.  Click on the pictures to see the recipes.

Kailua Pig is a local favorite here in Hawaii.  I make the same recipe only I don't cook it for 16 hours and I just use regular sea salt.  I  just cook it all day on low while I'm at work.  We use the pig for bbq pork sandwiches, Kailua pig tacos, or quesadillas.  Yummy!

Whole Chicken - We love a roasted chicken in the crock pot.  I usually serve it with brown rice and a veggie.  If there leftovers, I use the meat for quesadillas.

These pork carnitas on corn tortillas are awesome!

This is a new one I just discovered, but we've already had it twice.  The first time we ate it with potatoes.  The 2nd time we used the meat to make french dip sandwiches.  So good!

Do you have any easy recipes to share?  I love trying new ones!