I got four cookbooks for Christmas and you have no idea how incredibly happy that made Dave. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was pretty psyched, but Dave really likes food and really really likes the idea of me trying new recipes. He’s a good guinea pig.
3 of the 4 books are slow cooker books, which is fantastic as far as I’m concerned. I love my crock-pot (not to be confused with Crock-Pot® which is a brand name, but is often used regardless of the slow cooker’s maker. It’s like Kleenex®, and Band-Aid®, and Rollerblade®). It makes things so much easier to be able to toss everything in when the little dude is napping, or happily entertaining himself gnawing on a spatula, instead of trying to get everything done an hour before when we want to eat. Especially since the crystal ball I use to predict what sort of mood his highness will be in is on the fritz.
I spent some time last weekend going through them and marking recipes I want to try. I even poked around on the internet to see what I could find. There’s a website out there where a lady made something different in her crock-pot, every day for a full year. Insane. I don’t really want to be that lady, but I have no problems stealing recipes from her.
Last night we had Cheddar Cheese Soup and Chicken Caesar Salad (I did not cook the salad in the crock-pot (not Crock-Pot® since ours is made by Hamilton Beach). Dinner was a huge success and incredibly simple. So simple that some people might not even call it cooking – they might call it just making soup and putting together a salad, but I call it cooking because it makes me feel more domesticated.
I bought a bagged salad, caesar dressing, croutons, and precooked sliced chicken. Mixed the lettuce and dressing together in a bowl, heated up the chicken in a skillet, tossed it and some croutons on top and it was done. I know, I know, precooked chicken?! Here’s a little known secret about me. I hate, hate, hate touching raw chicken. It gives me the heebie jeebies. And here’s a little known secret about that – it’s not really “little known” a lot of people know and my sister is the same way. I am working on getting over this phobia. I actually did cut up and cook raw chicken for tonight’s dinner (and I only had to stop to wash my hands like 5 times during the process – but more on that later). If I ever win the lotto I am going to buy all of my chicken precooked, or even better hire someone to do all the cooking for me! But that probably will never happen since I don’t play the lotto.
The soup was slightly more complicated. It started with 1 pint of hot water and 2 chicken bouillon cubes. I had to put them in the crock-pot and stir until the cubes dissolved. Then the recipe said to add two cans of cheddar cheese soup. This is where I ran in to difficulties. See, I didn’t have two cans of soup, because I didn’t read the recipe (all 3 ingredients, 4 if you count the water) closely enough. I had one can. Dave stopped at the store on his way home from work to help me out there (we needed milk anyway and he’s a good egg).
So anyway, you stir it all up and set the slow cooker to low for 1.5 to 2 hours. The important thing is not to let the soup boil. If the soup boils a pixie dies. Or maybe that’s every time a child says, “I don’t believe in fairies”. Whatever. I’m sure if the soup had boiled something equally tragic would have occurred. So I didn’t let that happen, not on my watch (you know what they say, a watched crock-pot never boils, ha ha ha – I am cracking myself up tonight). Right before we ate I added 3 tablespoons of cooking sherry and stirred it all up. It was really good. Definitely something we’ll have again. I think next time we’re going to experiment a little and add some potatoes or maybe some broccoli (probably not on the broccoli).
After my rousing success last night I decided to try making Orange Chicken tonight. The prep work came together nicely – and there were 8 ingredients involved! I was so proud of myself. I even “dredged” the chicken (which was raw and slimely and cut into bitesize pieces by none other than yours truly). And yes, I had to google “dredge” to see what the heck the recipe was talking about. Sadly, the end result was not that great. It was a little too orange-y for us. The first couple of bites weren’t bad but we liked it less and less the more we ate. So Dave ended up with leftover salad and soup and I had cheerios. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
Tomorrow night I’ll be attempting another new recipe: Baked Ravioli (again in the slow cooker). Hopefully we’ll have better luck there. Then on Friday night I’ll be tackling Chicken Wing Soup. It has 12 ingredients! Wish me luck.
This post is little dude approved.
