Second Chances

When we got married, I thought, we're supposed to have a Crockpot, so we got one. The biggest one we could find. For the future family we were going to feed, of course. Little did I understand about slow cooking, and that two people will get sick of whatever's made in that large capacity Crockpot pretty quickly – even if you freeze it for later. Our first few (and only) attempts at slow cooking were okay, only really tasty on the first day in an overly optimistic sort of way. For one thing, our cooker had one of those knobs, so whether you were cooking on high or low, you had to be your own timer, which didn't work so well for grad students who were out of the house for 8-10 hours of the day. I remember being so disappointed at how overcooked some of our attempts were. Needless to say, our slow cooker didn't survive long and at some point went into the donation bin.

As you know, I got a new Crockpot (left) for Christmas, this time with one of those timers that will automatically switch to "warm" when finished with the cycle. The trouble is, and I don't mean to look the maternal Christmas gift horse in the mouth, it's only got the four timer settings, which means if you've got shorter cooking times, you still have to be around to switch it manually. So I might be getting ahead of myself here, but if this works out, I could get a second smaller round Crockpot (for desserts or soups) with an adjustable timer. Anyway I borrowed a few slow cooker recipe books from the library (this one, this one and this one) and, aside from dabbling in a rice porridge and a turkey broth, my debut recipe last week was lasagna, which I pulled from the first book. (Her recipes appealed to me the most, and come to find out, she's also the author of this blog, which Elizabeth had told me about last year.) Though the spinach was a little distastefully discolored (as opposed to what comes out of the oven), I was really pleased with the outcome. So I followed up the next day with a loaf of banana bread (with regular flour) and falafel for dinner. Results: the loaf didn't achieve the same heights as the oven baked version, but it both smelled and tasted pretty darned good; and while we did a rush job on the falafel – they didn't get to cook as long as prescribed because of hungry tummies –, the ones that were cooked to perfection (along the edges) were, in my opinion, fantastic. (Drew's convinced they need to be fried, however, so we're going to try another batch of the same recipe on the stove top for comparison sake.)

This week, I've got Indonesian peanut butter chicken and a simple crockpot ziti planned for two dinners; and this hashbrown casserole for a weekend breakfast.