A Slow Cooker Week...

After a successful "chicken" Thanksgiving dinner and my first entire cooked bird, I decided to try my luck with another form of cooking I have not ventured into much.  The famous Crock Pot dinners.  I believe fall and winter is a popular time for slow cookers.  I have been receiving numerous emails from my fitness websites with a wide variety of slow cooker recipes.  Women have also been featured that used a slow cooker for each meal for an entire year.  I decided to dedicate a week to the slow cooker.  Unfortunately, I did not bring a slow cooker and the slow cookers in Russia are quite odd looking (so much that I cannot convince myself to buy one).  Luckily, my friend, Kim brought a Crock Pot in her shipment.

Slow Cooker....Check
Transformer in order to use Crock Pot....Check
Recipes.....Check (I had recipes, but, of course, I did not follow them)
Hungry Husband.....Check :)

First Dinner: Potato and Ham Soup

Below all the toppings (bacon, chili peppers, cheese and croutons), I promise there is a lovely bowl of ham and potato soup.  This was a low calorie recipe (shocking, I know) so Ryan felt it was only acceptable to add even more toppings.  We had a dinner guest this evening, Graham, one of the gentlemen that joined us for Thanksgiving.  Apparently my dinner was delicious enough for him to return again.

I was officially "pumpkined out" but I wanted to have a dessert to serve.  I found a light carrot cake cupcake recipe.  Rather than the typical cream cheese frosting, I decided to go with a basic sugar glaze.  Oh, but wait, I wanted to take it up a notch, so I added a splash (large splash) of Amaretto to the glaze.  Fantastic addition!!  I have decided to spike all future sugar glaze.

The guys added a scoop of ice cream and topped it with, as Graham refers to as "hundreds and thousands" (the British term for sprinkles).

Second Dinner: Turkey Vegetable Stew

I found small turkey medallions and wanted to make something with turkey.  I pulled a Mama Pagels and basically started throwing random things into the Crock Pot, hoping for a good turnout.  I diced some extra potatoes and carrots I didn't use in the Potato Soup.  Threw them in with the turkey, onion, some diced tomatoes, frozen peas and corn.  It became a throw in whatever you have around that you want to use up.  Upon first taste test, it was very bland.  I decided to start dumping in a variety of seasonings and what do you know, it was delicious.  Hungry Husband went crazy over this culinary creation.

Final Dinner of the Week: Chicken Vegetable Curry

This dinner may have won me "Wife of the Year" if Ryan were the only judge.  Again, I threw the recipe out and started throwing things in.  Why did I even collect recipes?  I wanted to use the can of coconut milk I found, so that started the dinner, add chicken, onion and tons of curry and various spices.  Let simmer all day (very tender chicken) about midday I decided on my vegetables and threw in cauliflower and green beans.  I didn't want to add potatoes or beans since we were going to have this over rice (too many carbs).

The curry was fantastic, but what really earned me wife of the year, was the homemade Naan (I know, I limited carbs in the curry, but then add bread to the dinner).   Ryan went crazy when he walked into the kitchen and saw what I was making.  Again, major thumbs up from Ryan.

The conclusion I have come to is that slow cookers are nice to have.  They are easy to use, but I did not really get a huge feeling of the so called "quick meals."  Maybe it's because I try to use lots of fresh vegetables, so they add time with cleaning and chopping.  Regardless, all dinners were yummy and hungry husband now has lots of frozen containers in the freezer to feed himself when I am still back in the States.  That brings up another point, Crock Pots are great when making large amounts of food.

Feel free to share any Crock Pot recipes, I may not follow them exactly, but they may inspire a dinner idea.