I’m a huge fan of using slow cookers. I love waking up to a ready to eat breakfast and coming home to a dinner I only need to put finishing touches on. Of course, you have to do a little work ahead of time and a tiny bit of planning.

You will end up saving money by avoiding take out and make great meals from inexpensive veggies, whole grains and beans. Think clean out the fridge pasta sauce, lentil soup, or even Indian curries all made by you!

It’s easy to make beans from scratch in a slow cooker and you won’t introduce the BPA that’s in most canned beans. Plus canned beans cost 2 to 4 times as much as dry ones. Cooking beans takes very little of your time when you cook them overnight or during the day. You can make extra ones and freeze them for another meal.

My main time saver is to simply prep the food for tomorrow’s dinner while I clean up after that night’s dinner. Then just store the chopped veggies in the fridge overnight. Depending on the recipe it only takes 10 to 25 minutes, which is time you might not have in the morning.

You can also cook chickpeas the night before and in the morning add some veggies and some spices and make up your own slow cooker creation.

Keep your pantry stocked with some dried beans and a few bags of organic veggie mixes in your freezer. You’ll always be ready to start a healthy meal in the slow cooker.

Everyone loves a treat now and then and eating healthier doesn’t mean leaving everything you love behind. To start you just need to make a few substitutions in your existing recipes.

Whole wheat pastry flour is your new best friend. It’s a low protein soft variety of wheat that’s ground finer than regular whole wheat flour. This makes it lighter in texture and color than regular whole wheat flour, but it’s still full of fiber and vitamins. It’s also not as easily discovered by picky eaters.

Many cookie and cake recipes are still just as tasty with less sugar. You can also try switching up sweeteners and experiment with agave nectar or stevia that causes less of a blood sugar spike.

Pureed dates and applesauce do double duty as light whole food sweeteners that also can replace part or all of the oil in sweet recipes as well.

Sometimes you don’t even need an oil replacement. In the Baked Almond Donuts with Chocolate Glaze recipe, they taste moist without any added fat!

Whole grains is a buzz word but it’s around for good reason, because whole grains really are better for you.

Most grains are processed from their original form. For instance steel cut oats are cut in half and rolled oats are formed into their shape by milling as well. In these cases processing is not taking away their nutritional value. So, realize not all processing changes nutritional value.

White rice and white unbleached flour both lose nutritional value through the process of removing parts of the grain that are the most nutritious part. That’s why you hear that you should avoid processed foods.

Many white products try to add back some of the very nutrients that are stripped out, but it is still better for your whole family to eat whole grains to begin with.

Rice is a staple for many and substituting brown rice for white will make a huge nutritional impact. You are adding various b vitamins as well as fiber. If your family is resistant to trying new foods, try starting with long grain or basmati brown rice. The texture is the closest to white rice.

Making bean and grain patties or balls are a great way to add some extra veggies and to add whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, millet, or bulgar. Simply combine some cooked beans like pintos or chickpeas and mash with the cooked grain of your choice. You can spice them however you like and bake them for bite-sized snacks or a burger substitute. (You can also sneak in some leftover cooked veggies as well.)

Stews are also a good whole grain delivery vehicle that can burst with flavor and nutritious goodies. You can make this on the stove top or in a 4 quart slow cooker. I like to pick a bean, a grain, and a root veggie to start things out. So you could make a black bean brown rice stew with sweet potatoes and use some chili powder or a traditional split pea and barley soup with potatoes cooked with a bay leaf.

Here’s one of my favorites made with chickpeas, quinoa, and turnip

There are so many types of pasta available it’s easy to get confused. For me, it’s most important that I get a 100% whole grain pasta. If you’re gluten-free you can look for brown rice pasta instead of regular rice pasta to get in your fair share of whole grain too.

Whole wheat pasta does have a different mouth-feel than white pasta. My favorite way to introduce people to it is to use angel hair or capellini which is a long very thin pasta similar to spaghetti. I cook my whole wheat pasta an extra 4 or 5 minutes over the recommended time. This gives the pasta a mouth-feel similar to regular pasta.

If you are trying brown rice pasta, corn pasta, or even quinoa pasta make sure you don’t overcook it as non-wheat pasta tends to fall apart if over-cooked.

In addition to getting pasta that’s better for you, it’s the perfect place to add in a few extra servings of veggies. Play hide and seek by adding cooked pureed veggies to your usual tomato sauce. This works great with orange veggies like carrots, winter squash, and even sweet potatoes.

Instead of using plain basil pesto add in some kale, arugula, or even collard greens. It’s a great way to get your family ready for a side dish of greens sometime in the future.

Start the day off with a hearty breakfast and get some whole grains in your family from the moment they are up and ready. With some savvy label reading skills, breakfast can be ready almost instantaneously and healthy too.

There is nothing wrong with cold breakfast cereal for breakfast, but this is the place that often traps us with misleading packaging. Make sure the words whole grain precedes the main ingredient like whole grain oats or whole grain wheat. The Whole Grains Council even has a stamp on some cereals, but you can find a list of their approved products and see if your favorite is on the list.

You might get a shock from seeing just how much sugar is in many cold cereals. But there are brands out there that are chock full of whole grains and light on the sugar too. If your children are used to having candy-sweet cereals they may not be happy with an unsweetened one. To help them make the transition add a small amount of sweetener and add lots of fresh fruit. Each day use less sweetener until your child is happy with just fruit and unsweetened cereal. It’s an easy way to add one more serving of fruit into their routine.

A hot, steaming bowl of oatmeal is the quintessential way to start a winter’s morning. But you can have oatmeal any time of the year.

Instant packets are convenient but are expensive and usually have sugar added in. Save some money by buying plain rolled oats, pulsing them in a food processor a few times, and put into single serving containers. You don’t want to go to the point that you have oat flour, but you want them small enough to cook quickly with some added water. This is even cheaper if you buy your rolled oats in bulk.

You can use other nutritious whole grains just the way you would oatmeal. Mix it up with steel cut oats, brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, or other interesting whole grains. Make it even easier on your morning routine by cooking them in a slow cooker overnight. You can add applesauce to sweeten and other flavors to keep it interesting.  On my blog I have over 60 different oatmeal recipes. You can use quinoa, brown rice, etc. in place of the steel-cut oats to give your mornings even more variety!

I use a 1 ½ to 2 quart slow cooker which makes enough oatmeal for 2 to 3 servings, but you can use a 4 or 5 quart slow cooker if you double the recipe. Some slow cookers cook hot so you will need to add up to a ½ cup extra liquid. This also depends on how long you cook it. So add extra liquid if you put the oatmeal on early too.

If your child is oatmeal resistant try this purple monster oatmeal, this might be the one to get them to give in and they get a serving of veggies in it too!