Monday's Menu and Reviews: (a little early)

I promise this isn't going to turn into a food blog.

I sort of got swept up in the crock pot lady blog, A Year of Slow Cooking. In all honesty, Levi and I are not meat-cooked-in-crock-pots kinda people. Everything turns out pulled or with the texture of boiled meat. Gag me with a spoon. But, Onward Ho!

-CrockPot Brown Sugar Chicken, rice, peas *Let me make it known that I think this will be a flop..my heart and tongue and stomach are begging me not to make this but with her description...I just have to try it.

-CrockPot Pasta Fagioli, (olive garden copy cat) breadstix that I forgot to cook with the chicken spaghetti last week
-Slow Cooker Cheese Enchilada Stack, with slow cooker chips and queso (I got a teeny tiny adorable crockpot for Christmas and I need to break it in with some queso!)
-Breaded Baked Italian Chicken, butter beans, Bacon Wrapped Asparagus,

Just for fun:
Cupcake Surprises (Cookie dough inside!) And let me make a note that I will NOT be making the cookie dough to then freeze b/c NEWSFLASH you can buy that. Can't wait.

Reviews: I'm not going to link back to the original recipes but you can get the links by clicking HERE and view the original post.



I would like to ask why someone didn't SLAP me when I posted that I would be making that hashbrown casserole. Apparently I wasn't paying attention enough to notice that it calls for cream of potato soup. Now that stuff is gross. The potatoes were grey. That can't be right. I had to use TWO huge bowls to mix it up in but it all fit into one casserole dish..that was strange. It cooked beautifully. It looked delicious. But anything that has cream of potato and chopped ham should kinda jump out at ya. You know? It was very salty. I took it to a family dinner as a side and nobody complained. It wasn't that it was so gross. It was just o.k. and weird. I just got to thinking about the ingredients after the fact and I was like...eww, no. I will be using a copy cat Cracker Barrel recipe for their hashbrown casserole the next time I get the hankering for that kind of thing. It's borderline depression era food. You know, when they dump a bunch of whatever is left in the kitchen in a dish and call it dinner.

Cordon Bleu:

Here's the deal on this one. The recipe was fine. It cooked up just like it was supposed to. We have just decided we don't like Cordon Bleu. And we don't like ham in things. Not chopped or sliced or diced. Now, we do love prosciutto but I was fresh out and it is pricey. It was fun beating up the chicken, though. If you have a history of loving cordon bleu...give this a try. It looks pretty fancy.

The were peeling garlic and were intrigued and grossed out simultaneously. Please notice Jules' first successful ponytail. Her hair is extremely fine and grows at a snails pace so this was exciting that it lasted all day. Barely.

Chicken Spaghetti:

The girls and I gave this two thumbs down. It wasn't creamy enough for me. I either put too much pasta in it, used the wrong kind (rotini instead of spaghetti), or the pasta was old. I didn't like it one bit. It kind of tasted like someone poured queso over noodles. Now I do realize there is velveeta in the dish but I've had it before and it was delicious and creamy and did not remind me of queso. So what gives? Levi, of course, ate it like a champ. I love my human garbage disposal.

Perhaps my judgment was askew but they each got to slice half a loaf of french bread. I think I said "watch your thumbs! watch your fingers!" about 50 thousand times. And I'm pretty sure they were beyond annoyed with me but you know my history with slicing things in the *kitchen....

Pork Roast, potatoes, carrots:


One of my very favorite things to make. An entire meal in one crock pot. This is one exception where we LOVE the meat cooked in the crockpot and you can use pork or beef, although, I can only speak for the pork in the CP.

I don't know if there is an easier, quicker, more rewarding dish than this. I season only with coarse salt, pepper, and Lowry's seasoned salt. This is the way my sister-in-law's mother-in-law makes it (did you follow?) and I love the simplicity of the seasonings so that the pork can speak for itself. Not to mention you can pull it apart and have pulled pork sandwiches which are awesome.

Put your roast (I used a shoulder roast but prefer not to refer to the actual body part so as to detach myself from the fact that it was, like, Wilbur) in the crock-pot and add the veggies all around and add 1.5-2 cups of water or so. This is where I'm no good and why I could never make a cook book. You don't want too much water or too little and keep in mind the roast will make it's own juices but it takes a while for them to release. Capish? Maybe to the point where the veggies are almost covered but not. If you have a good rule of thumb please feel free to advise.

I recommend cooking on low for longer...depends on the poundage of the roast. Just google that if you need an exact. I wing it. I cooked my 3ish pound roast for 8ish hours on low.

If you have any resistance whatsoever when trying to shred the roast, cut the roast, pull the roast apart...it is not ready. It might look ready. It might smell ready. You might be very tempted to turn your crockpot off but DON'T. It is ready when you can literally grab the bone and take it out without having to tug meat off of it. If you have a boneless roast then take two forks and begin to shred...if it's hard to do....not done. See how the bone is practically naked......

I swear the meat wasn't yellow. Swear. The bone is the top left thing. Meat totally fell right off it.

O.k., I guess the secrets out. I have zero ability to photograph food and that up there looks pretty gross (perhaps it was the presentation?...just slopped some on the plate?) but I assure you it was heavenly.

I'll let you know how the Red Hot and Blue potato salad and fries go next week. We are having that tonight.

*And if you don't know my history with slicing things in the kitchen then by all means...be informed.

And for the record I MADE it through that dreaded week in August where I do something stupid and have to get stitches. Deep Breathe OUT.