I have so many things to be thankful for, starting with living in a place with great weather, good friends, fresh herbs in my garden, a view, and abundant local produce. I am also very thankful for the internet and Google which have helped my genealogy research enormously. I could go on endlessly with my thanks, but this holiday makes me think of food, so today I will blog about cooking.
About a year ago a friend gave me her old slow cooker, as she was getting a larger one. What a great gift this has turned out to be! This is such a convenient way to make dinner, almost no stirring over a hot stove, so little time to prepare it, and so wonderful to eat. Since I work out of a home office, I can throw the ingredients together in the morning or at lunch and then forget about it. Yes I love stew.
When my cousin was visiting last weekend I started Mexican beans in the morning before I left to take her to the ocean. I called my husband on the way home and asked him to put a bag of rice on. Another convenience to be thankful for! When I got home I made some cauliflower in the microwave and grated some cheese. An excellent dinner was ready in no time.
That Mexican bean recipe was an internet find at Mom’s Kitchen Handbook (click here), no soaking the beans overnight instead you just cook them on low for a long time. Good for three meals for us.
All my slow cooker recipes are from the internet. What I do is print them out, add any notes about changes I made, then if they work well, I add them to my book, one of those presentation binders with many clear pages that you can slip printouts into.
Most of the dinners that I cook in the slow cooker can feed many more people than the two of us, so I freeze up one and two person servings for another day. That way, when I am in a time crunch for a deadline I can just defrost my own cooking. Plus when I leave town, my husbands meals are all taken care of.
Warning, we have changed our diet over the last few years to be mainly plant based and full of healthful cancer fighting food (click here for Dr Li’s Eat to Beat disease website).
Here are some of my favorite slow cooker recipes:
My freezer is full of home slow cooked meals in glass containers
A staple is this chicken stew from Jeannette.
https://jeanetteshealthyliving.com/slow-cooker-chicken-vegetable-stew/
Since I am sensitive to nightshade vegetables I substitute yams for the potatoes. Then I use 1 cup white wine and 1 1/2 cups of my home made chicken broth, no tomato sauce or paprika, plus extra rosemary from my garden.
I also make these cheesy lentils regularly.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/slow-cooker-lentils-3051230
I substitute yams or nothing for the tomatoes and add extra liquid to compensate.
I like this vegetarian black bean chili (I use overnight soaked instead of canned beans).
https://www.thespruceeats.com/vegetarian-and-vegan-chili-recipe-3377016
This mujaddara recipe from One Green Planet that I use is not for a slow cooker although I have made it in the slow cooker and it was fine. I used a handy conversion chart from moms with crockpots (click here) now on the front page of my recipe book.
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/mujaddara/
But I think I will try this slow cooker mujaddara next, it sounds really good.
http://www.slowcookeradventures.com/2010/04/mjadra-lentils-with-rice.html
I do not want to see any comments about your instapots! I will never use one. Why? Because my mother cooked so many dinners in her pressure cooker that were limp and awful … except her chicken soup, that was great.
I love my slow cooker because it suits my life style. I am very thankful to have it and such a wonderful life. Plus I really enjoy the tantalizing smells that come wafting from the kitchen all afternoon while I work.
Cousin Susan with a sand castle in front of the Hotel Del
Thanks for the recipes particularly the one for Cheesy Lentils. My husband is allergic to tomatoes so I appreciate your nightshade issue. We substitute tomatillos for tomatoes and it has worked great so far. Provides a nice tangy flavor to every dish we add them to.
Thank you, I will have to try tomatillos! I just substitute yams which I love – soft slightly sweet as are tomatoes
update, no tomatillos for me, sadly there are also a nightshade vegetable
I will have to get one. Friends have been microwave converts for decades but I like set and forget. So a slow cooker would be good. Unfortunately my legs need to get up and move around every now and then. I use a sort of halfway house – a tagine.
This is originally a stovetop (or brazier top) item, using little fuel and part braising, part steaming, but with the steam condensing at the top and being mostly retained, as well as fragrances that are normally lost. And so perfuming the dish with herbs and spices. And that’s how I use it. Most things take 45-60 minutes and I add soft vegetables and top up the water about half to 3/4 through.
Mine’s ceramic from North Africa. We just happened to have an importer around the corner at one stage and I got it wholesale. Ideal for the two of us and, like the slow cooker, it’s a one pot effort – so, less washing up!
And like a slow cooker, it sheds little heat so I can use it in summer (like the 95F days we are having at present). But unlike the slow cooker, it won’t do pulses from scratch, so I do have to add canned beans unfortunately. Which is why I need a slow cooker. Santa!