Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Slow Cooker Love!

So sorry for the total lack of posts in the past month and a half or so. You all know how crazy the holidays can be, and then when you add in the stress (and fun!) of moving to a new place, it's quite an adventure. Mr. C and I are slowly but surely getting settled into San Antonio, and we've both fallen in love with the city already! It's such a neat place with lots of culture to it, and the food is absolutely to die for. I'm a huge fan of Tex-Mex (especially since it's so corn based and usually pretty gluten-free!) and San Antonio is the Tex-Mex capital of the world. Now, I just need to find some good Pilates classes to make sure all of this great food doesn't go straight to my butt!

Speaking of food, one of my resolutions this year is to use my slow cooker more often. I love the fact that you can plop everything in there, turn it on and forget about it while you go about your day. There is nothing more satisfying than coming home after a long day out and about to dinner already cooked and waiting for you! Even better, I've been using the Reynold's Crock-Pot Liners, so when we're done I can just pitch the liner and not even have to clean the pot. Really, the main reason I hadn't used my crock-pot more than a handful of times in the first year of marriage was simply because I thought all crock-pot recipes involved boring old chicken in some bland sauce. Totally not the case!

I found the most amazing blog called "A Year of Slow Cooking" where Stephanie, the blogger, made a resolution to use her slow cooker everyday in 2008. The result is this wonderful blog filled with outside the box recipes for everything from main courses to drinks and desserts, all made with the crock-pot! I've already made quite a few of her recipes, and have the Margarita Chicken cooking as I write. I think my favorite so far has been the Thai Beef. This took literally five minutes to put together and was as simple as opening the can of coconut milk, opening the bottle of peanut satay sauce, pouring both onto the beef and making sure it was good and saucy, and finally dumping in a bag of baby carrots. Then I hit "cook" and walked away for eight hours. Like magic, that evening I had a delicious and healthy meal. When we were done eating, I pitched the liner, put the crock-pot away and my kitchen was still completely clean. That was the moment I fell in love with my crock-pot.

Do yall have any good slow cooker recipes? I'm always on the hunt!