Pressure cooked potatoes are quick and easy, and a life saver when you’re short on time! Per our menu for Wednesday nights, we always have baked potatoes with fixings along with a salad. We are in a rush to get ready and out the door and this is a tasty, filling, healthy meal with almost no clean up.

Pressure Cooked Baked Potatoes

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time under pressure: 15 minutes

Approximate time to build up and then release pressure: 40 minutes

• Up to 12 baking potatoes depending on the size of your pressure cooker

• 2 cups water

Wash and wrap each potato in aluminum foil, then pierce with a fork. Place the metal trivet that came with your pressure cooker in the bottom. Pour in the water and layer your potatoes into the pressure cooker.

Set your pressure cooker to cook for 20 minutes. When done let the pressure release on its own naturally.

Top with butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon, or whatever is your favorite topping. Enjoy!

Have a favorite pressure cooker recipe you’d like to share? I would love for you to link up to your post in the comment section. If you don’t have a blog, send it to me and I will consider featuring it in a future post, or feel free to post it below!

While the kitchen was certainly a mess yesterday, it is so rewarding to know that I have quick breakfasts for the next 3 mornings, dessert for 2 nights, bread for sandwiches today and they are all healthy!

Here are some of  the recipes I cooked up:

5 Ingredient Granola Bars

Breakfast Cookies

Whole Wheat Millet Muffins

Whole Wheat Bread

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

And for supper we had chili…from Wendy’s!

Hey, what can I say? We all need a break!

Yep…buns aren’t for me.

Here is the first recipe in The Pressure is ON! series. This is a recipe that I have adapted from the slow cooker to the pressure cooker. It is a favorite of the family, children included, and makes a fantastic dish for company. If you are not cooking for a large family, count on leftovers for lunch and supper too!

All recipes you will find in this series will be prepared with an electric pressure cooker with a stainless steel insert. If you haven’t yet invested in a pressure cooker, I recommend starting with at least a 6 quart cooker, but an 8 quart is even better. Keep in mind that you cannot fill your pressure cooker more than ¾ of the way full.

And now for the recipe!

Pressure Cooker Pork Chalupas

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time under pressure: 1 hour

Approximate time to build up and then release pressure: 1 hour

Set your pressure cooker to cook under pressure for 1 hour. An additional hour is added to allow for time to build up pressure and then to release the pressure after cooking.

Pork Chalupas

• 1 lb. or 2 ½ c dry pinto beans – washed and sorted
• 3 Tbls olive oil
• 1 -2 lb. lean pork roast or boneless tenderloin
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ½ chopped onion
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 2 Tbs chili powder
• 1 Tbs cumin
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 4 oz. can green chilies, chopped
• 7 ½ cups water
• 1 Tbs salt (adding salt before cooking can toughen the skins on the beans)

Combine all ingredients -except salt- into the pressure cooker. Set or time pressure cooker to cook under pressure for 1 hour, following the specific cooking instructions on your pressure cooker. Allow steam to release on its own if time allows. The beans can benefit from the extra time in the cooker.

After steam releases naturally, open your cooker. Sometimes it can have a little too much liquid and I will scoop out any excess water before mashing. We’re not going for soup here. Don’t worry about losing flavor with discarding the excess water- it will still have plenty of flavor.

Remove any bones from the meat and mash! Mash the beans and shred the meat until it looks like something you would want to put in a taco.

And don’t forget to add the salt! You don’t know how many times I’ve forgotten to add the salt to my beans!

Serve over a plate of corn chips, tortilla chips, or in warm flour tortillas and pass the toppings!!

Toppings:
chopped tomatoes, chopped avocado, chopped red onions, shredded cheese, lettuce, taco sauce, sour cream, you get the idea…

This recipe makes a LOT! Can easily serve 12+ hungry folk or is great as left-overs! This recipe feeds my family of 8 twice.

This recipe linked to

The Grocery Cart Challenge’s Recipe Swap

Raising Mighty Arrows’ Proverbs 31 Thursday

For more great link-ups visit my Meme page for a listing of over 40 memes!

We can all remember our grannies or moms cooking with a pressure cooker, warning us to stay out of the kitchen for fear of it exploding.

We’ve come a long way since those days of complicated, clunky, and possibly dangerous pressure cookers. Now, there are electric pressure cookers that you can dump in your ingredients, plug in, and press a button. Voila – a one pot supper in an hour or less! I use my pressure cooker weekly and it has become one of those appliances I can’t live without.

So I am thrilled to be bringing you this new series on cooking with a pressure cooker! Whether you use a stovetop or electric pressure cooker, never cooked with one or use one regularly, I hope you will find a recipe here to add to your collection.

Each week I will feature a new and exciting recipe here, so you can cook something other than beans in your pressure cooker. And if you have a pressure cooker recipe I would love for you to link to your post here in the comment section. If you are unsure of cooking with a pressure cooker or don’t own one, join me each week and see if you can afford to not have one! So, stay tuned and look for our first recipe using the pressure cooker this week.

6 hungry children pulling on the apron strings, a husband who just called with a reminder that he’ll be home early, a desk full of schoolwork to be graded, a sink full of dishes, Legos everywhere, and it’s countdown to supper time…The pressure is on!

 Sometime last year our family watched the documentary Tapped, and while I knew that using plastic was not best, I didn’t really know why. I had heard not to put plastic in the microwave because it caused cancer, but had never really given much thought to it beyond that.

So, why go plastic free and how do you get started? Head over to The Marathon Mom where I shared today on plastic alternatives in the kitchen.

A friend of mine stumbled across this cleaner while rubbing her counters down with rubbing alcohol. How appropriate, right?! Rubbing counters with rubbing alcohol…?

Anyway, she then got the idea to put it in a spray bottle, add water and dish detergent to make it easier to use.

• Equal parts water and alcohol
• Few drops dish detergent

After she posted the recipe on facebook a couple weeks ago, I mixed up a batch. I’ve since made several batches! It works great on any surface and leaves no streaks or residue! We still use vinegar and water, but it does seem as if the alcohol cleaner leaves metal and glass especially, sparkling. I have also used it on my laminate floors with great results.

*Note: If you don’t like the smell of alcohol you won’t like this cleaner. Although, like vinegar, the smell evaporates, it is still strong at first. Which I personally like!

Do you use homemade household cleaners?

This is our family’s daily to-do list. I hung this 2’ x 3’ board in a very visible place in our kitchen and we all use it to put what we want to accomplish (or want accomplished by another family member), appointments, calls needing to be made etc. The goal is to have a clean board by bedtime.

It is very handy for us all to be able to see at a glance what needs to be done. It also helps my husband to see at a glance how he needs to adjust his plans for the evening based on how full the board is. He will often pitch in and help, so we can be free for the evening.

Often, I use it for listing important information for the children and my husband for when I am not home. I will list nap times, bed times, supper instructions, acceptable or non acceptable activities while I am gone, phone numbers, jobs I would like to see done while I am gone etc .

How do you remember to get it all done? Are you a list maker? Does your family have a to-do list?

You all know how it is.

You’ve got an appointment (who cares WHERE?) sometime before noon, but not only do you have yourself to get ready – there are little munchkins needing to be roused, bathed, dressed, fed, etc. Exasperatingly, aforementioned Little Munchkin does not understand the concept of time therefore “Please hurry” has no more meaning to them than “caña al mono.”

So you are frantically thinking of everything that needs to be done, making sure everyone has what they’ll need for the outing. Inevitably you forget something…I know. I’ve SO been there.

There’s the time that we all loaded in the van in a rush to be somewhere and 1/2 way there someone realized that we’d forgotten to eat breakfast.

Then there’s the times that someone announces they forgot to brush their teeth and we’re feeding them mints hoping no one will notice.

Oh, and I almost forgot the time we were going on a picnic and in the rush out the door arrived at the picnic with no food.

So over the years I’ve realized that the better prepared you are the day/night before, the smoother the morning ritual will be.

Things to do the evening before:

1. Be sure the outfit each child (and yourself and the husband) wants to wear is clean and ironed if needed.
2. Don’t assume the outfit they want to wear will be the outfit they will walk out wearing. Always have a 2nd choice for when in the event they spill something rendering the outfit a total loss for the day.
   
3. Lay each child’s clothing out on a couch, unused bed, or in the floor complete with socks, undershirts, and shoes. This will make it so very simple for them and will alert you if laundry needs to be done. Sometimes I even have them sleep in the undershirt and socks they’ll be wearing to save even more time. Hey, with 6 kiddos, every little idea helps!
4. I knew a mom that always bathed her children on Sunday mornings before church. While that might work for some, it would not be happening here. So, I suggest the children take their baths the night before. Saves time and keeps the squabbles for the bathroom at a minimum.
5. Breakfast on mornings like this should be kept super simple. Muffins made the day before (or earlier in the week perhaps and frozen) are a popular choice. Then there’s always breakfast bars or PB sandwiches. I am not fond of cereal for my brood on busy mornings. They tend to dawdle for some reason when eating cereal. So while they’ve had cereal plenty of times on hectic mornings, I much prefer them to grab something they can unload the dishwasher or watch the baby and eat.
6. If you’re like me and dislike having the house in disarray, involve everyone the day before to clean house to whatever degree will make your departure AND coming home as peaceful as possible. Then just before bed do a general pick-up.
7. If you have a dishwasher (or even if you don’t) just take a few minutes to put away the clean dishes before bedtime. That will make clean up a breeze and you’ll feel better coming home to a tidy kitchen.
8. Have each child pick the toy or book they want to take the night before and either have it waiting by the door in a bag or backpack or already in the vehicle.
9. There’s nothing more irritating to my husband than getting in the van and finding he has no place to set his coffee because it’s already full with glasses of curdled milk or old tea. It’s a good idea to have the van cleaned out the day before if you’re like my husband. {smile}
10. I also have an unwritten rule that if we are needing to leave for an extended amount of time (for instance church on Sunday): once you are dressed and have eaten, you are to sit on the couch and read until time to go. This prevents individual messes being created all through the house. Obviously they can’t all sit there and read for 4 hours, but rarely is there that much time to waste in the mornings. Usually anywhere from 20 – 40 minutes.
11. If you have a little one you need to pack a diaper bag for try and pack it with all the essentials the night before and have it in the car already. Nothing like having a blowout only to realize the baby wipe holder is empty!
12. Have a chat with everyone the night before and explain what you expect of them in the morning. They cooperate so much better when they know what is going on. Include them in preparations and make an enjoyable time of it.
13. One last thing, we moms are often so busy taking care of everyone else, we need to remember to pamper ourselves. No, I’m not suggesting we go to the salon for hours necessarily, but just taking the time to shave our legs and paint our toenails. To save time the morning of, see if an older child or your husband will hold down the fort while you take a few minutes to pamper yourself. I know we moms deserve more time than that, but just trying to keep it real. For a lot of us having smooth legs is a real mood lifter. And we all know that if Momma aint happy, aint nobody happy.

Hopefully these tips are as helpful to you as they are to me. And I certainly could use more. Do you have something that saves you time in getting the little ones out the door halfway presentable?

… than just washing dishes.

That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands,

to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good,

obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

Titus 2:4-5

This post linked to

5 Minutes for Mom’s Wordless Wednesday

Internet Cafe’s Word Filled Wednesday