Did you know?

Did you know you can cook a whole chicken in a crock pot and get the same kind of goodness that a store bought rotisserie chicken offers? Well... it's true! My mom said that many of her friends in New Zealand cook their chicken this way and I thought I'd give it a shot.

It was SO EASY! All I did was buy a whole chicken, put it in the crock pot, sprinkled on some salt and dried basil, added 1/8 of a cup of water (which I'm not sure was really needed) and turned it on HIGH. Three hours later I had a completely cooked chicken that I can make several meals from. It was SO moist and had soaked up the flavor of the salt & basil perfectly! And a plus for the summer time ... there was no heat pouring from my oven! Hooray for crock pots!

My mom also suggested dividing the chicken pieces up into measured amounts (2 cups, 4 cups, etc) and freezing them for later casseroles/recipes that call for cooked chicken.

Thanks to my mom for a money-saver, time-saver, heat-free tip! :)

Another question, no recipe

Sorry...
I don't have a recipe to go along with my question either.

So here's my deal ... (and maybe I'm over analyzing cooking here and so you can just let me know that too)...
I want to make nutritious and healthy food ... every meal... every day. But the majority of things being sold are full of preservatives and additives. But those are the cheaper things to buy. Even the easy recipes call for things that have a lot of sodium and fat. So as a steward of my family's resources and of their health, here is my question.
How do I plan for healthy, rich, yummy, and relatively inexpensive food with out driving myself insane by worrying that I'm not using all "organic" natural foods and making everything from scratch? Is there an easy way to meal plan in making all food from scratch without going to school again to learn about nutrition? How do you ladies do it?