What a crock...of deliciousness!!
"I am not a cook." - Leslie Goldman
This is what Richard Nixon would have said it he had a fabulous sense of humor and was making fun of moi. And he'd be right. I don't cook. My time spent in the kitchen usually involves assembling salads, microwaving soups, and pouring martinis. No stove required for any of these. On occasion, when I'm feeling particularly benevolent, I'll boil some pasta for my husband or even - yes, it's true - slap some BBQ sauce on a few salmon fillets and cook 'em up for din-din. But these heat-related events are few and far between.
Until.
I was recently introduced to the concept of slow-cooking. I always imagined this to be a, well, slow, laborious process that involved burdensome amounts of chopping, dicing, stirring and cleaning. But I am here to tell you that my new slow-cooker is a gift from the culinary gods, and I feel as if I have been saved.
I cracked open my Crock-Pot (the original brand, but all spiffed up in stainless steel) and set to work on a chicken and corn chowder recipe I'd found ridiculously easily by Googling "healthy, slow cooker, recipe." All I had to do was cube a potato (surprisingly easy - I've never actually used the BIG knife we got when we were amrried three years ago), chop up some green onions (*tear*) and cut up some chicken. I literally dumped it all in the pot with some creamed corn, chicken broth and pepper and put the lid on. Then I opened the direction packet and started to freak out because there were, like, eight different languages and lots of diagrams and other cooking-related stuff that scares me. So I popped a Valium (OK, it was a handful of Red-Hots) and calmed down...especially when I realized that the only directions I need to follow were:
Plug in appliance.
Use arrow button to enter time (six hours for me).
Press start.
Walk away.
Seriously, people, this is lazy woman's cooking at its best. Or, should I say, busy woman's cooking, because you can plop in all your ingredients at 7:30am, cook a delish meal while you're running around at work, and come home to a bubbling stew or veggie chili or a freaking entire pork roast if you want.
(This is what I looked like as I cooked. Cute, no?)
And...as they say in the commercials, clean-up IS a breeze!! You just stick the inner container in the dishwasher and let Mr. Cascade work his magic.
The chowder was yummy and filling (I added some instant mashed potato flakes and skim milk at the end to thicken it up) - perfect for these 88 below zero artic evenings we've been having in Chicago. Next I'm going to try a chicken and sweet potato dish, and if I feel particularly ambitious/PMSy, an apple and berry cobbler.
So I guess it looks like I will be spending a lil more time in the kitchen now that I have the culinary equivalent of a 10-years-younger boyfriend: It's eager-to-please, it lasts for hours, it puts a little skip in your step and it gves the impression that you're a huge catch.
Comments
oh you've just gotten me really excited about getting a crock-pot. i too can only "cook" salads - and i always thought crock-pots only made stew. i'm definitely going to get one! oh and i found this - great recipes that are LOW SODIUM which is important!
http://busycooks.about.com/od/healthycrockpotrecipes/a/healthycrockpot.htm
My mother in law got me a Crock Pot for Christmas, and---I can only say this about a few things---it has, literally, changed my life. What did I ever do BCP? (Before Crock Pot?) Healthy cooking was never so easy...
I used my crock pot today too!!! Now I feel like I'm in the cool-girls club;) I hardly ever use it but I think you've inspired me to try it more often! The problem for me is that it requires forethought... I'm not very good with the planning ahead part of life.
I think you may have just helped sell a crock pot. Now I know the rumors are true.
