JoaS

So, one of the ways we work our grocery budget is by buying proteins in bulk at Costco. Their Kirkland's Smoked Pulled Pork is a little strong in the smoke flavoring, but we've found several recipes that could not be easier and provide a variety of flavors and dishes to get us through a week or so. Without further ado, here they are. The first, and easiest, dish is to just heat up a helping of pork, roast some veggies, and serve the whole thing with BBQ sauce. The pork comes fully cooked, so all you have to do is heat it. The photo above is the pork simply heated. We actually do prefer to cook it further in the other dishes, but this is easy and good, too. I also love a good BBQ pork stuffed sweet potato, or baked potato. One of my favorites is this Slow Cooker Pork and Apples dish I discovered on Pinterest years ago. The original recipe from katheats.com calls for pork chops, which I don't particularly love, but I used this shredded pork as a...

I am not a traditional resolution maker or goal setter. For the past few years I have felt an overwhelming tug on my heart and mind to really be intentional in one area of my life and make it my goal to pursue that one concept throughout the year, or as long as it takes.  Last year, God really laid on my heart that I needed to “simplify.” Just that one word. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant at the outset, but we ended up purging our house of furniture we didn’t need, clothing, old belongings we’d been dragging around each move without real purpose. I ended up leaving a job that had me sick and drained of energy all the time and took a huge leap of faith opening my own shop—a long time dream that had failed once before when I wasn’t ready yet. I ended up really simplifying my diet and routines, just ridding my life of excess. We eliminated some debt, lots of bad spending habits, and released ourselves from many unrealistic expectations. It was truly a year of simpli...