Slow Cooker - Curly Creamy Meaty Pasta

It seems we might be trying a bunch more slow cooker recipes, judging this school year's schedule.

For this one we first prepared 1 lb. of curlicue pasta and stuck it into the fridge.

Then we tossed the following into the slow cooker: 2 lb. stew beef, dried oregano, dried basil, salt, pepper, 1 quart of vegetable broth, 3 tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce, 2 minced cloves of garlic, and 1 tablespoon of mustard.

Then we mixed roughly 4 tablespoons of flour with a bit of water and added it as well. We turned the pot on low for 8+ hours and went about our day.

When we came home we looked into the pot, added the pasta and 1 cup of sour cream, set the table, and ate. Yummo!

Slow Cooker - Chili

Okay. Here is another attempt at this slow cooker business. Our unfounded reservations remain and so does our packed schedule and the hungry crowd. And, admittedly, this chili wasn't bad and truly ready to serve 8,9 hours later.

All we had to do in the morning was to fry or rather sear 1 pound of ground beef.

We chopped up 1 pepper, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 sticks of celery, and half an onion.

All this we mixed up in the slow cooker with 2 cans of red kidney beans, 1 can of canellini beans, 1 big can of crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, and 1 of the small cans worth of water. We turned the beast to low for 8 hours +, went to school, work, gymnastics, etc., and ate.

A loaf of bread and Tabasco sauce added the right flair. Not bad. Right?!

A Slow Cooker Chicken with Carrots and Potatoes

We are going to try out a few slow cooker dishes since we have a day in the week during which cooking will be tough. We haven't had the best success with the slow cooker yet. Stews are the only ideas that seem to work. Everything else so far has just turned into a tasteless mush. But we shall try. In fact this dish wasn't half bad.


The night before our busy day we chopped 1 1/2 lb chicken thighs into chunks.

We also cut up 1 lb carrots and 1 lb yellow potatoes.

All that we placed into the slow cooker, the meat in the center, and stored it in the fridge.

Next 4 cloves of garlic were minced.

We added  the garlic to 1 cup of vegetable broth, a glass worth of white wine, salt, and pepper and brought it all to a boil.

In the meantime we busied ourselves with mixing 1 egg, 2 egg yolks, and the juice of 1 lemon;

mixing it all nice and foamy. Then we set aside most of the wine-broth, placing it in the fridge.

The rest, about half a cup worth, we mixed with the egg mixture and

gently cooked it for about ten minutes, periodically whisking it up. When it had thickened some, we placed it also into the fridge.

We cut up 1 jar worth of artichoke hearts and placed them into the fridge.

As well as some fresh dill.

The next morning we poured the wine-broth over the veggies and chicken and turned the slow cooker on low. When we got home, we added the egg sauce, the artichokes, and the dill and turned the slow cooker to high while we set the table.

It turned out tasty and we all were thankful for a warm dish waiting at home for us.

Pulled Pork

We gave a pulled pork slow cooker recipe from the blog 100 Days of Real Food a try. And it was yummy. Our apologies for a few changes. We had to adjust it a little to fit our pantry, purse, and palate. I hope we weren't too sacrilegious. Especially since we have no measuring stick as far as pulled pork is concerned. Nor for a slow cooker for that matter. As it was all the yummy flavors were wafting through the house for the entire day, making us continuously hungry.

For the marinade we mixed up 2 tbls salt, 1 tbls paprika spice, 1 tbls pepper, thyme leaves, and 2 minced clove of garlic.

Then we added about half a cup of honey, a quarter cup of  red wine vinegar, and a couple glugs of olive oil and stirred it all up.

We cut up a big onion into chunks and tossed about half of it into a slow cooker.

We placed the first half of 2 pounds of pork chops  on top of the onions and smothered it in the marinade. (The recipe calls for pork shoulder, but we got a good deal on the happy pig chops and went for it.)

Then we repeated the procedure for a second layer, turned the slow cooker on low, placed the lid on top, and waited for eight hours.

Half an hour before dinner time, we chopped up some veggies for a salad. Since dinner was about ready and we didn't have anything better to do we added the vinegarette to the lettuce and dished up everything else seperately, so everybody could create their own perfect picky salad. (chopped salad).

We also mixed up a little bit of butter with parsley, tarragon, thyme, chopped onion, salt and pepper.

To serve we pulled the pork apart with a fork, warmed up some crusty bread, and offered the salad and herb butter. We tip our hats to  100 Days of Real Food. The food was scrumptious. The girls loved the pork. It was Mama's pick. Thanks. We'll try it again.