Crock Pot Cooking
Last week, we ended up eating out on Tuesday and Wednesday instead of cooking the meals we bought (mainly because I was uninspired by the meals we chose, and I kept napping longer than usual). Thursday morning, I woke up with new resolve. I put our sheets in the laundry when I woke up at 5:30am (it’s part of my weekly chores, and I’ve been trying to do more stuff during the week so I free up more time on the weekend) and decided to throw together our crock pot meal.
By “throw together,” I mean that I simply chopped up an onion and dumped it, two cans of white beans (I didn’t even have to drain them!), a can of chilies, a bag of frozen corn, some vegetable broth, and some spices into the crock pot–following this recipe from A Year of Slow Cooking.
Sadly, I forgot to turn it on before I left for work and ended up staying late for a team meeting, so we ate out again(!). But then we decided to stay in on Friday night. We made grilled cheese and salad and ate the white bean chili. It was tasty! I’m definitely going to add it to the collection of recipes that I started in Springpad (thank you for the suggestion, kc!). I’m enamored with the Springpad system. I can collect online recipes and generate a shopping list from the ingredients. It’s exactly what I was looking for–and it’s free!
I’m also eager to try this Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Artichokes (which I found thanks to another one of your comments).
And I need to find more vegetarian recipes to cook in the crock pot. I can’t wait!
8 Comments
Catherine
There is a really great crockpot recipe here:
http://marriedtotheempire.blogspot.com/2010/08/lentil-rice-casserole-mexican-style.html
That we love. Most of the time, when I serve it for dinner we make nachos with it. But I also take it for lunch with just a little cheese on top. If you are going to cook it over 8 hours (which I have done), I suggest pre-cooking the lentils just a tad and then you can do it for 8 hours on low.
Kate
I love love love my copy of "Fresh from the Vegetarian Crockpot." If I can find your contact information, I'll send you a couple of recipes that I have typed up.
kc
I'm glad you like SpringPad! And thank you for reminding me to pull my crock pot out and start using it. We are trying to eat at home 6 days a week and I never think to use the crock pot to save us time.
Carolyn
Sara, Springpad is genius for wedding planning! Please share this over there!
After reading your post here, I signed up, er, today (expecting to use it for recipes). In the last two hours, I have started organizing wedding web links into a "wedding" list. I was having a heck of a time keeping inspiration organized. Since I can link photos from the post as media, it comes up as a little thumbnail.
I haven't tried it yet, but I feel like this will be good to organize bookmarks for vendors, possible wedding dresses etc.
Organized, accessible and FREE…
Roxanne
I love my crockpot! I hope I can find some new recipes, I would love to use it a few times a week.
I had a question about the baby thing too. Since your a planner, how far in advance did you start reading up on and planning for fertility/getting pregnant?
saracotner
@ Roxanne: I started 8 months in advance. I wrote a post over at Offbeat Mama about some of the things I did to prepare for conception. If you google "Offbeat Mama Sara Cotner" you should be able to find it easily.
And you should sign up for my course (shameless plug, I know). I think I'm going to run one more course before the baby comes, starting at the beginning of January.
saracotner
@ Carolyn: Yes! There is a post in the making for 2000 Dollar Wedding about Springpad. Thanks!
jjaner
Hi, I'm Jeff Janer; Springpad co-founder. Just wanted to say thanks very much for your mention. Also, with regard to wedding planning, we have a major upgrade to our web app coming next week that you may find interesting. Here's a blog post about the virtual cork-board we'll be introducing: http://blog.springpadit.com/2010/10/coming-soon-to-springpad-the-board/