Crockpot Tuesday

except that it's Friday.

I did actually make this on Tuesday I think. It may have been Wednesday. Who could say? Not I. I'm just happy that I am posting food stuff again. Food stuff. That's right, I'm fancy.

We do bountiful baskets co-op for our produce and since you never know what you are going to get, it forces us me to get creative with our meals.

We got hatch chiles last weekend and I have never prepared them before. Eaten them?  Yes. Never prepared them though. I spent about 13 seconds online finding how i roast them and set to work. They came out beautiful...especially considering I did them in the oven instead of on the grill. It's too hot outside and i'm too lazy. 

broil as close to the element as possible. 15 minutes on each side or until they get all
blistery and blackened. Put in plastic bag for 20 minutes to steam. pull off all blistery skin, remove
seeds and stem. You'll be left with the actual pepper meaty goodness

Jeff and I both love chili so I decided to use the chiles for a big batch since we usually have all the ingredients on hand. 

how did the Del Monte corn make its way into the pantry? Clearly, we only buy Kroger brand.

chopped up onion, can of tomato sauce, couple tablespoons of minced garlic, can of peeled tomatoes, corn (drained), couple cans of black beans, hatch chiles, three lbs of ground beef.  I don't brown the meat before dumping it in the crockpot. I don't see the point in cooking something just to dump it in the crockpot. I will however, mix garlic along with a couple tablespoons of chili powder into the meat before i put it in the crock. Dump all ingredients into the crockpot and cook for 4 hours on high or 10 on low.

You'd think that after I took the time to photograph ingredients and chiles, I'd have thought to take a quick pic of the finished product but nope. I do however have this:

it was good.

 

Do you have a favorite chili recipe?? Do you like yours sweet or spicy?

Crockpot Friday

whoa blogger, it's been a while since i've posted a crockpot recipe on here. i'm home today with bear...another post for this part...so I figured I'd have the luxury of being able to start it mid-day instead of 6:30 in the morning. What, you aren't ready to eat dinner at 3pm? oh. my bad.

We buy basics like cream of whatever soup, frozen veggies, stuffing, etc when they are on sale. Jeff came home from the store this week with something loco like 8 boxes of stuffing. I saw a recipe long ago with stuffing and pork chops in the crock pot so I went in search of that. Couldn't find it so I am doing what I normally do and screwing around thinking I'm betty flippin crocker. I make no guarantees that this will turn out well, but I'm sure it will at the very least be edible. Pretty sure.

I didn't have pork chops. Didn't have any more chicken breasts. I dug around in our deep freeze and found only steaks, roasts and ribs. Then I remembered that we bought a bag of frozen chicken strips at costco this weekend and grabbed those. Here's what came of it:

Chicken strips - mine were frozen
1 can cream of something soup - mine was chicken
1 cup milk
a few slices of cheese - swiss here yo
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 box stuffing
1 cup chicken broth - I didn't have this so I used plain water and seasoned the chicken a bit more
s&p to taste

Cover the bottom of crockpot with chicken strips. Pour broth/water over chicken and then cover with the cheese slices. Mix up the milk and soup and pour over cheese. Dump the stuffing in there now and pour melted butter over stuffing. This is a crapshoot so use more or less depending on how it looks to you. Cook for 5 hours.

i love cheese

This turned out really yummy. I think that next time I'll add more water/broth so it's not so glue-like and gloppy. Tasted great, just looked gloppy.

Crockpot Tuesday...on Sunday

There's no way I'm able to bring back Crockpot Tuesday right now...though I really should. Our eating has been hit or miss since Noah arrived, so having a bit more structure would be amazing. But...it's just not going to happen at this time so why lay on the pressure, right? :)

So even though I don't know when I'll be able to have weekly crockpot posts happening, I have a new one today. We did a pot roast last week and bought one of those 5lb bags of red potatoes. We do this every time...I buy the bag because it's cheap and we need the potatoes for the roast and then we don't use the rest of the bag and a couple weeks later I remember but it's too late...they look like this. gross.

so i decided that this time around, we'd use the potatoes. since i'm home during the day right now i can start the crock pot at a convenient time and that helps. here's a super simple recipe we came up with tonight.

Chicken & Potatoes

4 chicken breasts
6 red potatoes, sliced thick
equal parts of the following spices:
basil
thyme
oregano
rosemary
1 Tbsp italian dressing

After I sliced up the potatoes, I put them in a plastic bag with some of the spices and the dressing. Close it up and shake it up so that the mixture saturates the potatoes. Dump them in the bottom of the crockpot. You can use as much or as little of the spices as you want to. Then use the rest of the spice mixture to season both sides of the chicken. Drop that in the crock and cook on hi for 4 hours. No liquid is needed for this one. If there are other spices you like, use those...I just use what I have on hand.

This turned out great and the chicken was so tender. Next time the only thing I'll change is that I'll puncture the chicken so that the spices soak in a bit more. The potatoes were fully cooked and had good flavor from the spices too. This was stupid easy and could be changed up easily with different seasonings. Maybe I'll use a bit of an italian seasoning packet next time. yum.

Anyway, no pics of this one because I didn't even think about posting it until after we ate it.

Let me know if you try this and if you changed it up at all. I'll try to keep it up with the recipes!

Crockpot Tuesday

Today's recipe is a side item. I love carbs. and potatoes.

Baked Potatoes

potatoes

salt and pepper

butter

poke potatoes a few times with a fork to vent. rub some butter on skin of potato and sprinkle with salt and pepper--or whatever you'd like. wrap the potato up in aluminum foil and drop into crock pot. Cook on high for 3 hours.

Careful! These will be super hot--as will the tin foil. Perhaps this goes without saying. Well, i burnt my finger so maybe it has to be said. We did about 5 potatoes at one time and they turned out really well. I slathered mine with some garlic butter, cheese and some turkey chili. We served them with a salad and had a great, simple meal.

Added bonus--Zero cleanup in the crockpot!!

Crockpot Tuesday

I completely spaced out on uploading the pics of this delish meal so I have none :( boo me. I'll do it when I get home and get them up here though.

I'm craving meat. All kinds...beef, pork, etc. We had some ribs in the freezer and I decided we'd try those out and see if they calmed the craving. Yums.

Sweet & Spicy Ribs

2 lbs ribs-ours were bone-in
1/2 cup coke-we used caffeine free diet coke because it's what we had
your favorite bbq sauce-we used devils spit from famous daves-it's no joke spicy!

Dump ribs in crockpot and season with salt and pepper. Spoon coke over top of seasoned ribs being careful not to splash the seasoning off. Cook for 6 hours. After 6 hours, pour liquid off and dump lots and lots of bbq sauce over ribs. Mix it around to be sure they are coated so they don't dry out. Heat for one more hour and you're done.

We served this with green beans and some mashed potatoes. The ribs were Amazing. So tender and delicious. I had them again for lunch the next day and they were really just as good as the night before. We'll def make this recipe again so let me know if you ever see ribs on sale!! :)

Crock Pot Tuesday

i see recipes that call for brown sugar all the time and always want to try one out but I don't seem to have all ingredients on hand so I've skipped some. This recipe has 3 very random ingredients - things I wouldn't ever really put together typically. But I did. And it came out great.

Sweet & Spicy Pork Chops

2-3 bone in pork chops - though boneless would be fine too
1 cup italian dressing
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
s&p to taste

Combine dressing, brown sugar and mustard in bowl and mix well. Lightly season chops with salt and pepper and then place in crock pot. Pour liquid mixture over and cook on hi for 2 hours. **I decided to marinate the chops for a bit so I poured my mixture in a bag and let the chops soak for about 5 hours. Overnight would be fine too.

we had our chops with green beans and some bread - so easy.

That's really it. Simple. The chops were really great. I've never been a big pork chop fan, so you've got to dress them up a lot for me to like them. I'll certainly have them again. The recipe I found called for 4 hours but after 2.5 they were looking a bit parched. I pulled the plug and they were great at that point...even though we ate dinner at ten minutes to five (blah). Next time I'll do it for two hours and just let it stay warm for a while until we're ready.

Bonus - Connor even ate some. Miracle.

Crockpot Tuesday

Italian Chicken

2 large chicken breasts

one 28 oz can/jar of pasta sauce

1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning (or whatever-see below)

1/4 tsp minced garlic

1/4 tsp black pepper

Spray slow cooker and place chicken in pot. Combine all other ingredients and pour over chicken. Cook for 6 hours.

This was really good. The chicken ended up really tender. I didn't have any of the Italian salad dressing packets left so I used an onion soup mix packet for the Tablespoon of seasoning. Italian seasonings are really made up of equal parts of oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, sage and savory. Do you have savory in your spice rack? I don't. You can really dump anything in there, so no worries.

We had it with a box of rice a roni and some yummy carrots. It was a pretty great meal all around. Connor on the other hand had a hotdog, pineapple and a couple slices of cheese. Super.

Crockpot Tuesday

Ham & Cheese Casserole

1 lb of cooked ham, cubed

1 can of cream of whatever soup-i used mushroom

2 cups of shredded cheese

1 can of green beans

1 pint of sour cream

12-16 oz cooked pasta

super simple ingredients - all of which we had on hand. that's a deal breaker with me

Spray bottom of crockpot. Dump a third of the ham, cheese and pasta in bottom. Next layer green beans over that. Spread another layer of ham, cheese and pasta. Continue layering until ham, cheese and pasta are all in crockpot. Combine the soup and sourcream until smooth. Pour this over last. Heat on Hi for 2 hours.

Because this is such a quick cook, I came straight home from work and started this rather than cook it while I'm gone for the day. Since I'd be rushing to get it going after work, I did lots of prep work the night before. After I cooked the pasta, I cut up the ham and combined them. That made the layering process lots easier. I combined the soup and sour cream ahead of time too. This was a really simple recipe and it was really good. I think next time I'll vary the type of soup I use...maybe go for cream of asparagus, broccoli or celery since those are my favs. I'll also add seasoning like minced garlic or something to it for more flavor. It was nice and simple as is though and great to mix it up with the ham.

Crock Pot Tuesday

Ranch Chicken

3 chicken breasts, halved
1 can cream of whatever soup
1 envelope ranch mix
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sour cream
2 Tbsp ranch dressing
2 Tbsp flour

Spray bottom of crock with non-stick cooking spray. Drop chicken pieces in crockpot. Mix together soup, dry ranch mix and water and pour over top of chicken. Cook on hi for 4 or low for 8. Remove chicken from the pot and stir in sour cream, ranch dressing and flour. Once it's all mixed together (watch those flour clumps) put the chicken back in and cook for last 30 minutes.

This turned out really great. Our family is big on ranch dressing and so this was an easy sell. Connor even ate it and he rarely eats anything not shaped like a nugget or hotdog. or a yogurt. The chicken was really tender and so creamy. I used cream of broccoli soup but really anything would work here. If you wanted, you can always substitute chicken broth for the water for added flavor. Enjoy.

Crockpot Tuesday

Here's another yummy chicken recipe we did this week. Super simple and all items we had on hand, which is my favorite part!

Lime & Oregano Chicken

2 huge chicken breasts, quartered

1/4 C melted butter

1 packet of Italian seasonings

2 Tbsp dried oregano

1 Tbsp lime juice

Place cup up chicken in bottom of crockpot. Mix butter, lime juice, oregano and ------ together and then pour over top of chicken. Cook on Hi for 4 hours. Since this recipe doesn't have a lot of liquid, I would open the crockpot and baste the chicken with the sauce every hour or so. If you won't be home while it's cooking, maybe add a cup of water, or better yet, chicken broth. If you're doing that, add extra lime, butter and oregano so the flavor isn't diluted.

This came out really, really great.. The chicken was tender and the flavor was perfect. I wouldn't change anything. The sauce was so amazing on this, so have some on the side so you can dip!

Crockpot Tuesday

We totally blew it with the crockpot this week. we kept forgetting to get meat out to thaw and then when we finally remembered...we left it out all night. i was going to just say screw it for this week but managed to throw together a casserole...not quite a crock pot meal but just about as simple. I did this Tuesday night too...but just never got the pics off the camera so I give to you Crockpot Tuesday, but as a casserole...on a Thursday.

2 large chicken breasts cut in quarters

1-16oz bag of frozen veggies, partially thawed

2 cans cream of whatever soup - i used one brocolli and one chicken

2 cups uncooked pasta

1 tsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp melted butter

spray bottom of 9x13 casserole. Cut up chicken in quarters and line bottom of dish with chicken. dump pasta in next, and then the veggies. Mix the rest of the ingredients together separately and then dump that over the top. All done. Cook for an hour at 350 and enjoy!

Crockpot Tuesday

Today I decided to assemble all kinds of randomness that was about to expire and make a meal from it. I recommend this. We always buy junk when it's on sale really cheap and then find it in the back of our pantry 8 months after it expired. hate that. So, here's a hodgepodge of a recipe that turned out pretty great.

Chicken/Pasta Goodness
2-3 chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
box of pasta roni and everything it calls for including:
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup milk
1 Tbsp butter
s&p to taste

Spray crockpot with cooking spray. Dump Chicken into pot and then pour dry pasta over top. Mix all other ingredients together and pour over chicken and pasta. Heat for 6 hours.

This was good, but there were a couple things I'd change. The pasta got a bit goopy so I think instead of cream of chicken (or cream of whatever) I think I'll do something like chicken broth or even chicken noodle soup next time--keeping the flavor but losing the dumpling-like consistency. It was also a bit bland. I think next time I'll add some additional spices like 1/2 a packet of italian seasonings or onion soup mix. I used fetuccini alfredo pasta roni and really liked it.

Crockpot Tuesday

One of Jeff's favorite foods on earth is a pulled pork sandwich. We got a great deal on a pork loin and decided to try it. This recipe is so simple it's crazy!

Simple Pulled Pork Sandwiches

3-4 lb pork loin

18 oz bbq sauce

Put pork loin in crockpot and pour bbq sauce over top and sides. You can never do too much bbq, but you can certainly do too little. Cook on hi for 6 hours or on low for 10. If you do the slower cook, it'll tear apart much easier. Place meat on buns and enjoy.

This was so good, especially for something with only 2 flippin ingredients! You could add spices, seasonings or various bbq sauces to mix it up but it's great just the way it is too. We had it with corn on the cob and some cole slaw and loved it. I think I'll have it for lunch and then again for dinner tomorrow night.

Crockpot Tuesday

I love soup. Jeffrey doesn't. I made something that is kinda soup, kinda chili. Here it is:

Beef & Bean Soup (kinda)

1 lb ground beef

14 oz beef broth

1 bag frozen veggies

1 1/2 cups water

1 Tbsp onion powder

1 tsp minced garlic

1 can tomato paste

Put frozen veggies in bottom of crock. (Veggies always go in bottom, as they take longer to cook than meats.) Dump all other ingredientes into crock pot and cook on hi for 4 hours or low for 8.

Well, I didn't have beef broth laying around, so i disolved 3 beef boullion cubes in 14 oz water instead. I also didn't have onion powder, but I did have onion soup mix so I used that instead. Figure it has more spices in it anyway, so why not? The recipe I found only had veggies, beef and water so I added the other items. Really any frozen veggies will work, this is just what I had around.

I made cornbread and corn on the cob and it was all great. The flavor was wonderful. If you wanted something a bit creamier for a soup, you can add a 1/2 cup of sour cream before serving and mix it well. You could also bulk up the soup by adding some pasta during the last 30 minutes or so of cooking. Next time, I think I'll mix the ground beef with the spices before putting it in the crockpot to pump up the flavor of the beef. I thought it was great as is though and we'll have this again.

Crockpot Tuesday

ugh. today's Crock Pot tuesday was a big hot mess. I wasn't going to even post it, but then decided that not everything will be great, so why not post the fails too?? so here you go...a total crock pot disaster...

Honey Mustard Chicken with Lime

2 large chicken breasts

3/4 c Honey Mustard

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp lime juice

1/2 Tbsp melted butter

1 tsp minced garlic

s & p to taste

Lightly season chicken with salt and pepper, and place in crock pot. Combine all other ingredients together and mix well. Pour over chicken and cook for 6 hours.

As soon as I walked in the house I knew I was in trouble...the smell of scorched mustard is so nasty - trust me. so bad. I scooped the cajun-like chicken out of the completely charcoaled mess that was my crockpot and tried to see if it was salvagable. negative ghostrider. I found some places in the chicken that were tender, but it just wasn't worth scraping all the nastiness off. This is what I found:

i swear this photo doesn't even do it unfortunate justice

The crockpot had to be soaked for hours to get all the crusted mess off. I typically fill the crock pot with warm water, add some dishsoap and set it to low for an hour and anything caked on just slides off...not this time. The heat just continued to cook all that burnt junk and the house smelled like funk.

So I ended up scratching that plan and headed to the freezer. We always try to keep lots of frozen veggies and meal options handy in case we don't plan anything for dinner...or in this case if dinner plans go horribly wrong. so we ended up making a bag meal thingy and some green beans...not the most interesting meal but it did the job and we didn't have to scrape the charcoal off to eat it :)


I think that this went wrong in the liquid area...next time i'd add a cup of chicken broth...not too much so that it would dilute the flavor, but enough to have liquid in the crock. live and learn!

connor was thrilled-he got to eat mickey chicken nuggets with multiple dipping options...plus apple sauce with hidden sweet potatoes.

Crockpot Tuesday

Aahhh. I took a quick pic of our meal last night and then my camera died immediately after the flash went off...wtf...nothing there when I just downloaded. damn. so, i have no photo but that's ok. This is a really simple one so it will be pretty easy to imagine i suppose.

i definitely stole this photo from google images

Teriyaki Chicken with Veggies & Fried Rice

2-3 chicken breasts, halved
1 box fried rice - rice-a-roni
1 bag of frozen veggies-partially thawed
enough teriyaki to nearly cover chicken

Spray crock pot with nonstick cooking spray. Halve chicken breasts and place in bottom of cooker. Pour enough teriyaki to almost cover chicken. Cook on Hi for 3 hours. With 90 minutes to go, dump the box of rice-a-roni and the seasoning package in over chicken. Mix well and recover quickly. (I think I heard somewhere that leaving the lid off for 1 minute is the equivalent to losing 10 minutes of heat - it's possible I made that up.) With only an hour left, dump the semi-frozen veggies into crock pot and stir some more.

This was really good. the chicken was really tender and because the breasts were halved, the chicken really soaked up the teriyaki sauce well. Great flavor and the rice and veggies really made it a complete meal. We had this for leftovers the next night too and paired it with a simple green salad. Easy peasy. The only thing I'd change is that the rice and seasoning were really strong. The typical preparation of the rice is with a couple cups of water i think so the way I dumped it in there was no dilution. Next time, I'll add a cup of water at the time I add the rice and seasoning so that it's not quite as intense. When we had it as leftovers, I reheated it on the stove with some water and it was much better i think. Super simple and great tasting.

Crockpot Tuesday

I have been sick this week so there wasn't any food handling this week really! Instead, I thought I'd post the recipe I use when friends have babies. I remember how much of a struggle it is to take care of a newborn, yourself, the house, etc. when you bring the baby home. It's too easy to forget to eat so I like to make casseroles for friends so they don't have to worry about it.

This one is my all time favorite I think. Super easy, super yummy and nothing spicy so as not to upset the whole mamma's milk issue...

Swiss Chicken Casserole

4 chicken breasts

6 slices swiss cheese

1 can cream of whatever soup

1 (8oz) box dry stuffing mix

1/4 cup milk

1/2 cup melted butter

1 bag frozen veggies, mostly thawed

Preheat oven to 350. Grease baking dish and place chicken in bottom of dish. dump veggies around chicken. Place cheese over the chicken and veggies. Combine milk and soup and pour over top of items. Spread the dry stuffing mix over everything and top with melted butter. Cover with foil and cook for 50 minutes.

Crockpot Tuesday

I did a meatloaf recipe a while ago here. it was good, but could have been better. Last week I shared the breakfast recipe we had for Father's Day morning. Today, here's the new and improved meatloaf recipe from Father's Day dinner.

New & Improved Meatloaf

2lbs ground beef

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup catsup, separated

1-6oz box of chicken stuffing

salt & pepper to taste

1/2 tsp garlic, minced or powder

1/2 a packet of Italian seasoning mix-the type you can use to make salad dressing

Mix all ingredients together and form into ball. I think it's best to be sure that it's really well mixed so that it's not too dense. Drop the mixture into the crock pot and pour the remaining 1/4 cup over top of formed meatloaf. Heat on High for 2 hours.

The only thing I added since the last time I did this recipe was the half packet of Italian seasoning...but it really made a big difference. Also, I really like to let the uncooked mixture sit in the fridge for a couple hours-or overnight even. The flavors really mix great that way! I also really love that it only takes 2 hours to cook. I think that's the best part of all. Anyway, adding the additional seasoning really added so much flavor so this is how I'll do it from now on.

My dad is a great judge of meatloaf and he was loving it! He said that he was going to use this recipe for his meatloaf from now and I think that's a pretty huge compliment. :)

Happy Father's Day Dad & Jeffrey. You guys are so awesome that I spelled it out for you in ketchup. yup, i did that.

Crockpot Tuesday-Fathers Day Part 1

There was a whole lotta crock pottin' going on this Father's Day at the Barnes hood. My dad and Corliss came over for breakfast in the morning and I made a yummy breakfast casserole. It was a hit! Next Tuesday I'll show what we had for dinner that night.

Spicy Breakfast Casserole

1lb bag frozen hashbrowns

12 eggs - yeah, 12

1 cup water (sub for milk for richer taste)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

2 c shredded cheese

1lb ham steak

8oz can green chilis

Cut up ham into small cubes. Whisk eggs, salt, pepper and milk together and set aside. Spray crockpot with nonstick cooking spray. Pour 1/2 of the hashbrown into bottom of cooker, spread evenly. Sprinkle 1/2 of cheese next. Dump ham and chilis in next, followed by another layer of hashbrowns and cheese. Pour egg/salt/pepper/milk mixture over top. Cook on HI for 2 hours.

I found a recipe for a breakfast casserole somewhere and wanted to spice it up. My dad and I have always been big fans of chilis and I know that Jeffrey and Corliss like it too. I decided to add ham and green chilis for flavor and spice and subbed milk for the water for richness. You can always do more cheese, or even different types of cheese to mix it up if you want to. My dad was thinking that swapping the ham for chorizo would be good too and I agree. We topped it with some salsa and enjoyed!

The recipe says this yields 8 generous servings. After the 4 of us ate, we had quite a bit left over. For dinner tonight, Jeff and I put some of it in tortillas and it was good too.

Breakfast was complete with bacon and yummy cinnamon rolls--and several mimosas. Not exactly a healthy breakfast, but Father's day comes only once a year!

Crockpot Tuesday

we've had a frozen package of those lil' smokies in our freezer forever so we pulled them out today for dinner. Since cocktail wieners (both funny words-two points) aren't really enough for an entire meal we added some baked beans to the crock and some cole slaw and fries on the side.



1 lb lil' smokies
1/2 c brown sugar
1 c catsup
1 c bbq sauce
1 can baked beans

Mix brown sugar, catsup and bbq sauce together well and pour into sprayed crock pot. Pour lil smokies in and mix around. Cook for 2 hours. I added the baked beans about halfway through cooking. The brown sugar/catsup/bbq mixture had great flavor and so did the sauce from the beans. We'll certainly do this again this summer, since this felt like a real summer-like meal.

These were really yummy. Most recipes I find for meatballs, cocktail wieners, etc include grape jelly. This sounds great and I'm sure I'll try it but we didn't have any jelly - grape or otherwise - and I wasn't going to go out to the store just for jelly!!