A few weeks ago, I put out a plea for slow cooker recipes. After one bad night of cereal for dinner eaten over the baby’s head while I nursed him, and a few other bad dinners of whatever I could put together hurriedly, we decided to figure out this slow cooker biz. While it is very convenient to cook your dinner in the morning and it’s ready by dinnertime, I think Jeffrey has liked the meals more than I do.
So far, we have only done chicken dishes in the slow cooker. I think I would like to find a cookbook or website with some more ideas. They all seem the same to me–put raw chicken down, make sauce and pour it over. Then add vegetables and have rice on the side. It is a square meal, but I’m not much of a chicken fan to begin with.
One day I made a chicken tortilla soup from a Cooking Light recipe, June issue. We thought it was ok. I have done other tortilla soup recipes that we liked much better.
The chicken two pictures above was an Oriental chicken, the one right above is BBQ chicken.
The top picture is tortellini, roasted vegetables in the oven, and…chicken.
Then one Saturday night, Jeffrey came to the rescue of us needing something really good cooked at home. He made his own recipe for skillet potatoes, and cooked steak in the cast iron skillet. I made some green beans with a bell pepper and water chestnuts…and they were a little rubbery. I’m really losing my game! Jeffrey’s meat and potatoes were delicious!
No matter if our meals are from the slow cooker, stove, or oven, I am trying to get better at planning them for the week. I am pretty worthless if I don’t have food in the house for dinner, and we end up scrounging around for something. Now we try to write down 2-3 recipes for dinners for the week and I’ll buy ingredients on my Sunday grocery trip. Other nights are for leftovers or picking up something, or maybe a trip to Whole Foods for something from the prepared cases.
Organizing dinners with a newborn are harder than I imagined, but the slow cooker and planning ahead has made it manageable!
What are your go-to dinners?
Some sites I find helpful:
http://fix-itandforget-it.com/blog/
http://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2007/12/alphabetical-listing-of-recipes.html
Hopefully you’ll have some time to look through these! Good luck!
I enjoy your blog and love reading about your baby, he’s growing so fast!
Thanks for those links, I will check them out. Glad you’re reading!
I saw this on Pinterest this morning:
http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/search/SearchResults.aspx?searchtext=crock+pot&scope=kr-memberrecipes&rsort=MR-RATING*1
We looooove pulled pork in the slow cooker. I’m not sure if you guys eat pork but this could easily be adapted with chicken.
1-2 lbs Pork tenderloin
12 oz root beer or dr. Pepper poured over pork
Slow cook for 6-8 hours on low
Pull apart with two forks
Coat with BBQ sauce (8 oz)
Keep warm on low for up to an hour
I like to serve with sweet potatoes or corn on the cob.
So easy! Good luck!