my little crockpot experiment

So, if you haven't found the "crock pot blog" you should! It's linked on Laura's blog or go here. This lady, Stephanie, is using her crockpot every day for a year. She has some really neat recipes (including making shrinky-dinks in the crockpot instead of the oven). You can search pretty easily for what you're looking for - vegetarian, light & healthy, chicken, side dishes, etc. Some of the breakfast stuff looks pretty good too. I tried out several recipes last week and thought I'd share my results. One of the reasons - I'm doing a lesson on crock pot cooking next month and thought I'd do a little "research." I think I just wanted to cook something!

The absolute best one was the "creamy crock pot risotto!" I've made risotto the usual way and it takes time and effort (but is well worth it). But this stuff is easy AND yummy!!!! YUMYUMYUM. Even my coworker Keith (I'd guess he was a meat & potatoes man, who usually looks at my cooking rather skeptically) loved it and had me email the recipe to his wife. I didn't use the chopped garlic - I was lazy and used garlic powder (and not as much as called for).

Next I tried out the Jalapeno Corn Pudding because I figured it would go well with the leftover BBQ, beans, & not-much-left-potato salad from lunch. I prepared it pretty much the way she said, but I would probably use a little less jalapeno to suit my tastes - I didn't chop it up either because I was in a hurry. I didn't find any of the frozen roasted corn, no surprise there.

I made Vegetarian No-Noodle Crock Pot Lasagna on Thursday. I knew by then that I'd want some veggies instead of the steady diet of meat, starch, and ice cream. I don't have the larger size crock pot recommended for this recipe, but I improvised. Quite a bit. I used all of the pasta sauce, about half the ricotta cheese, half of the other cheeses, half an eggplant, 2 squash, half the mushrooms, half the spinach. This was pretty good, but most people didn't want to try it and it made a lot. I'd try this again, and tweak a bit more. I just layered and layered, very hurriedly, but I still really liked it.

Mom & Patti came for the week-end, so I took my crock pot home and made Mediterranean Chicken Crockpot on Saturday (I figured the weather would be bad and we'd want to stay home for dinner). So they picked up salad at Harp's (what a chore!) and I cooked brown rice to go with this. I did finally find frozen artichoke hearts at Harp's (in the organic frozen foods). They weren't cheap and Stephanie says you can just use the canned/jarred ones also. We decided that this one needed something else - maybe onion, more seasoning, salt, etc. It was tasty and it got better after sitting in the frig (or maybe I was just hungry and didn't have anything else to eat and put enough salt on it). One of the reasons I picked this one though - easy and no chopping or anything! Just open and dump it in! AND, I used my last crockpot liner which really helped with clean up.