Snacks in the Crockpot?! Awesome!

This was one of those things that I'd seen several recipes and always thought, "I should try that" and then never did. Today I did it. I made sugared (also called spiced) nuts in the crockpot! Verdict: so good that I'm making walnuts this afternoon after making pecans this morning! Fantastic snack addition to the Friday night family movie night snack lineup! Seriously, these were very easy to make. This recipe could easily be adapted to various spice/seasoning combinations, and it could definitely be used on a wide variety of nuts or nut combinations. To store, I would think they would keep in an airtight container for a month or so with no problem, and longer storage would be easy in the freezer. Go ahead, try these. They're easy, delicious, and basically nuts so good for you, right?

The recipe came from Recipezaar (Charmie777), and the one problem I had with the recipe is that it neglected to say what size crockpot to use. I used my big, oval, 6 quart crockpot, and that is definitely a great one to use, as it allows for very even heating. If you double the recipe, maybe tweak the amount of butter used or be prepared to let it cook a little longer since you have more liquid to cook off.

Crock Pot Sugared Nuts (I'll save this one as Spiced Nuts)
1 lb nuts
1/2 c. unsalted butter or margarine, melted
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger

1. Preheat crockpot on high for 15 minutes (lid on).
2. In preheated crockpot, stir together the nuts and butter until mixed well.
3. Add the powdered sugar, and stir to coat evenly. Cover and cook on high for 15 minutes.
4. Reduce the heat to low and uncover, and slow cook for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally, cooking until the nuts are coated with a glaze and there isn't any liquid left in the bottom.
5. Transfer the nuts to a bowl, a sheet of waxed paper, or a sheet of parchment paper.
6. In a small bowl, combine the spices, then sift them over the nuts, stirring to coat them evenly. Cool before serving.

Soup is on! Serving Beef Fajita Soup from the crockpot!

Two weeks ago, a slip on the ice landed me square on my shoulder and gifted me with some sprains and strains that have made cooking tricky. Thank goodness for the freezers and the pantry, but they are starting to look a little bare in the ready made foods department!  I had planned on making beef fajita soup in the crockpot on Monday and then realized that I couldn't reach the meat in the bottom of the chest freezer without using my injured arm, so that was postponed until today. Having asked A to get a packet of venison out of the freezer before he left for work, I was able to easily put together this soup with minimal arm movement. It's a new recipe for us from *The Slow Cooker Bible*, and after having tasted a small bowl of it in anticipation of dinner, I'm going to say it's one we'll do again. In fact, if the leftovers freeze well, I'll definitely be adding this soup to our list of core soup recipes! The flavor was very nice, the textures were good (onion was tender crisp, meat was tender, peppers were tender but held their form, the beans were the same as the peppers, and the diced tomatoes added a nice smoothness. The colors were beautiful, even with me using a large green bell pepper instead of a small red and a small green pepper. Tonight I'll serve this soup with piping hot cornbread muffins and local honey, but next time I will have dishes of shredded cheese, sour cream, fresh pico de gallo, and chopped cilantro to allow diners to add these to the top of their soup. This would be a very interesting soup course to precede enchiladas or to serve with a taco dip or empanadas. The success of this recipe also is a good omen for trying more recipes from this collection of recipes!

Beef Fajita Soup
1 lb beef stew meat (I used 1 lb 7 oz venison roast cut into bite sized pieces)
15 oz can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
15 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes with roasted garlic, undrained (I used a can of petite diced tomatoes and add 1 tsp garlic powder)
14 oz can beef broth (I used 2 tsp better than boullion and 16 oz boiling water)
1 small green bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 small red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 small onion, thinly sliced (we love onion, so I used a medium yellow onion, peeled and cut into thin wedges)
1 1/2 c. water
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp seasoned salt (I used Lawry's)
1 tsp black pepper

1. Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker. (I used my 4 qt round crockpot.)
2. Cover; cook on low for 8 hours. (Who really does 8 hours? You're at work for at least 9! I started mine at 9 a.m and served it at 6:30 p.m. and it was fine. This one has some flexibility but don't go too long or the peppers will be mush.)
3. Serve with desired toppings.
Recipe from *The Slow Cooker Bible*.

Cherry Oatmeal in the Crockpot

I had made oatmeal in the crockpot once before, and while I love the convenience of wake up and breakfast is hot and ready (and I'm a wake up hungry kind of girl), I didn't love the crust around the edge of the crockpot and it was a bit creamy for my liking. So here was my try number two. The first time I used steel cut oats, didn't spray the crock with cooking spray, and used a newer crockpot (they run hotter than the older ones). This time I used old fashioned oats, sprayed the crock, and used my older one. No crust, no sticking at all, but still pretty creamy. I'm seriously considering getting a light timer to plug my crockpot into and setting it to start cooking only a few hours before breakfast since I like my oatmeal more firm. In the meantime, this recipe yielded 9 cups of oatmeal (not the 7 it said it would), so I have quite a few baggies in my freezer of 1 cup portions of cherry oatmeal, just waiting for me to heat and eat. I don't see why this oatmeal couldn't also use other fruit pie filling varieties such as mixed berry, strawberry, or apple. Warning, though: this was obviously pink oatmeal studded with red cherries. Not for people who don't like eating pink food.

Cherry Oatmeal
6 cups water
1/4 tsp salt, optional (I didn't use it)
3 c. old fashioned oats, dry
1 tsp almond extract (alas, wasn't a noticeable flavor)
21 oz can light cherry pie filling (used regular)
3/4 c. strawberry flavored or regular powdered sugar (now why would you need the extra sweetness, and why use powdered sugar when you just used light pie filling? Obviously, I didn't use this ingredient.)

1. Spray a slow cooker (I had to use my round 4 qt crockpot) with cooking spray.
2. Mix the ingredients in the slow cooker.
3. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. (Yeah, well, if you don't have a timer, and you sleep longer than 5.5 hours.... I cooked mine for 8.5 hours out of basic necessity.)

Recipe from *Busy People's Slow Cooker* by Dawn Hall.

A Reminder to Love Your Freezer

Yesterday was Thursday, which meant that it was my normal Thursday (read: mild chaos). Honestly, I cooked nothing fresh yesterday. Breakfast was pancakes and bacon from the freezer. Lunch was tater tots and bananas for C and leftover macaroni and cheese for me. Then work with a snack of cranberry pumpkin bread baked on Tuesday, and when I got home late and my tummy was growling, I pulled an already grilled small burger and a bun from the freezer, microwaved for a minute and a half, and had myself a snack that was faster (and cheaper) than drive-through. I love my freezer!

I've also been feeding my freezer. Bags of cubed ham and mashed sweet potatoes from Monday, pureed pumpkin from a pumpkin I baked on Tuesday, macaroni and cheese on Wednesday, another ham (this one 8 pounds) in there too yesterday. For as much as I pull out, I put in too, and my freezers are always full.

Tonight is pizza night, and I even remembered to get a bag of baby spinach and some other fresh veggies at the store, so we can have salads with our pizza, completely justifying the pizza. Sort of. I pulled a couple of pizza kits minus the dough from the freezer this morning, and they will be thawed by this evening and ready for the fresh dough I'll have ready and waiting. Tonight I'm also experimenting more with oatmeal in the crockpot, using a new recipe for cherry oatmeal. I really didn't care for the crust that formed the last time I used the crockpot, and the fact that my 2 quart crockpot doesn't have a removable crock made clean up a pain in the rear. This time I'll be trying out the more old fashioned method of hot water bath in the crockpot and see how that turns out. I'll post the results tomorrow! And as a side note, the recipe makes 7 cups of oatmeal, and since A doesn't like to eat much breakfast and S and C are suspicious of oatmeal, I'll be freezing my leftovers, ready to microwave for a snack or breakfast anytime!

Baked Macaroni and Cheese, Wait, Make That Spicy Baked Macaroni and Rice Cheese!

Yesterday I was in the mood for comfort food, and all my comfort food cravings involved cheese. That can be a little tricky since I have a dairy allergy! I was out of "cheese" slices so no grilled cheese sandwich, out of my mozarella so no lasagna or pizza or any of that, out of my cheddar so no macaroni and cheese or scalloped potatoes. Wait a second! I had pepper jack style rice cheese already shredded in the freezer! And so a dish was born. I took a recipe I printed off 8 years ago (yes, 8!) from http://www.cooking.com/ and had never tried, then elminated or substituted almost all the ingredients and messed around with the directions. How's that for following a recipe? I'm really going to have to say that I was inspired by the recipe. Regardless, I prepared it in the afternoon, getting 5 mini loaf pans and one regular bread pan of baked macaroni and cheese (this recipe will make one 9x13 pan of baked macaroni and cheese). The regular loaf pan I made for dinner that evening, and I put the 5 mini loaf pans on a cutting board and sat them in the freezer (I'll double wrap them in foil and label them today) so that I can semi-thaw, bake, and have homemade baked macaroni and cheese 5 more times! Bliss. I can even take some of that chopped ham from Monday night and stir that in later for baked ham and macaroni and cheese. I'm drooling already.

The recipe turned out very good. It was slightly creamy but thick, just like baked macaroni and cheese should be. The flavor was excellent. Most homemade macaroni and cheese recipes call for good quality sharp cheddar cheese for good reason - use a bland cheese and end up with super bland macaroni and cheese (face it, the milk, flour, butter, and pasta aren't really the stars tap dancing on the taste buds for this). This is a problem I sometimes face with using cheese alternatives, as none of them ever really have that sharp bite. Still, if that's all you have.... The peppers in the cheese gave it some zing without overwhelming the tastebuds, and I really love how rice cheese melts so smoothly (really, far superior to soy cheeses many times). I baked the macaroni and cheese at 375 for 40 minutes, so that's what I did for our Italian sausages too - pull from the freezer, thaw, place 4 in an 8x8 baking dish, and bake them uncovered right next to the macaroni and cheese. Serve with some steamed whole green beans and some piping hot stewed tomatoes, and it was comfort on a plate.

(I messed with this so much that I'm writing this exactly as I did it - if you want to use dairy, just substitute in the appropriate items.)
1 lb elbow macaroni
12 T Blue Bonnet margarine (that's a stick and a half)
6 T flour
1 tsp onion powder
1 T dried parsley
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
4 1/2 cups Silk plain soy milk warmed to gently steaming (a few minutes in the microwave)
6 c. shredded pepper jack style Rice Cheeze
1 1/4 c. coarse bread crumbs (I used flax and fiber bread crumbs - I make bread crumbs with whatever stale bread we have and then freeze, and this was in the freezer.)
3 T. cold Blue Bonnet margarine
1/2 c. Parma Zaan sprinkles by The Vegetarian Express (usually, these don't really have much flavor, but added to the topping was a nice touch)

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 9x13 baking dishes (or other chosen baking dishes).
2. Cook the macaroni according to package directions until just done (should be 9 minutes). Drain well.
3. Melt the margarine in a medium saucepan over medium heat. In a small bowl, combine the flour, onion powder, parsley, salt, and pepper.
4. When completely melted, add the flour mixture and gently whisk it in. Continue to gently whisk and to cook over medium heat (medium-low if you feel that medium is too high) for 2-3 minutes until your mixture goes from golden brown to a more light brown color. This is important! This is the roux, and if the flour in the roux is not cooked, you will get a paste flavor until of the spices.
5. When your roux is done, start slowly adding the warm soy milk. I add 1/2 cup, whisk it in thoroughly, add 1/2 cup, whisk it in thoroughly, then 1 cup, whisk, 1 cup, whisk, last 1 1/2 cups and whisk.
6. When all the soy milk is incorporated, turn the heat to medium-high and cook at a simmer or just below for a few minutes until the mixture starts to feel slightly thicker when you stir it gently with the whisk (it's as if the whisk has just a tiny bit more resistance on it as you stir with it, not actually whipping with it). At this point, add all of the cheese and switch to a spoon (the cheese shreds will get caught up in the whisk!).
7. Lower the heat to medium-low and continue to stir occasionally and heat the mixture to melt the cheese. It's okay if there are bits that aren't melted, but it should be definitely more of a cheese sauce on the thin side Remember that the pasta will soak up the extra liquid and some will evaporate during baking.
8. Put the macaroni in its cooking pot, then pour the cheese sauce over the macaroni and stir to combine. Pour it into the prepared pan(s).
9. In a medium bowl, cut the cold margarine into the bread crumbs and parmesan cheese substitute until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. This can be done using the back of a fork, a pair of knives, or alternatively a food processor on pulse. It helps if the margarine is cut into bits or tsp sized slices before starting. This can be done while the sauce is being made; it doesn't have to be done at the end.
10. Sprinkle the bread crumb topping evenly over the macaroni and cheese. Bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes in the preheated oven (everything is cooked, so this is just a browning on top, absorbing liquid, heating through kind of thing), covering with foil if the bread crumbs start to get too brown. Let it rest for 5 minutes to allow the liquid to absorb into the pasta.

Ham and Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Yes Please!

I managed to get a regular ham for only $1.03/lb, and sweet potatoes were a manageable $0.98/lb, so tonight is ham and mashed sweet potatoes! Going with it will be steamed peas and a warmed loaf of Italian bread, remainder from the bakery bought at 1/3 off the price. Who says I have to bake everything from scratch!

It turns out that 10 pounds of bone-in ham does *not* fit nicely into a 6 qt crockpot no matter which way you lay it, so I cut that big ham in half and put one half into the 6 quart oval crockpot and the other half into my 5 quart round crockpot. I had read up on cooking ham with ginger ale in the crockpot, and several reviews on several recipes said about spreading a paste of brown sugar and dijon/fancy mustard on top after ginger ale is poured over and around, so I gave it a try. The verdict is don't waste your time. The soda was good, as it draws out some of the salt while maintaining or adding a touch of sweetness, but it imparted no flavor and the brown sugar and mustard paste did absolutely nothing, just a waste of ingredients. Also, doing it in the crockpot instead of the oven did absolutely nothing to glaze the ham, just an FYI. I'm really considering getting another ham and trying the soda and baking method (any soda works well with this, and if you bake the ham instead of crockpot cooking it, basting every 30 minutes, it will glaze the ham). As it is, I have ham for dinner, and more than a dozen baggies (each 1 cup of cubed ham) of meat in the freezer to use in omelets, stir fries, hashbrowns, scalloped potatoes, macaroni and cheese, stuffed potatoes, baked potatoes, bean soup, and more, plus I have the bones to make either split pea or ham and bean soup later this week.

1 ham (I used a 10 lb ham hacked in half, using two crockpots)
ginger ale - enough to put an inch of soda in the bottom of the crockpot
crockpot
1. Remove as much fat as you can from the ham. Put it in the crockpot.
2. Pour the ginger ale over the ham. Cover, and turn on low and cook for 8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Heck, the ham is already cooked, so 3-4 hours on low should do it. I did mine for 8 hours, and it fell apart as I pulled it out.

Now for the luscious mashed sweet potatoes. I'm sorry to say that I do this to taste every time, and whenever I try to do exact measurements, I end up fussing and fixing it anyway. These are my rough measurements.

9 medium sweet potatoes
1/4 c. honey
1/4 c. butter/margarine, melted
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp fresh cracked black pepper
1. Bake the sweet potatoes: 400 degrees, 1 hour, don't forget to prick them so they don't explode from steam build up and don't forget to put foil under them to catch the sweet juice drips (which would turn into smelly burnt sugar drips on the oven floor).
2. Cut the sweet potatoes in half lengthwise and just kind of shake the insides into a mixer bowl - the skins slip right off, so I just grab the ends, flip it cut side down over the bowl, jiggle, and watch the meat of the potato fall right away.
3. Add the remaining ingredients, and mix until the consistency of mashed potatoes. Melting the butter not only ensure even dispersal but also means that the butter isn't cooling the sweet potatoes prematurely, changing the starch reactions (this is why you should warm your milk and butter before adding to white potatoes when mashing them too!).
I serve this just the way it is, although diners might want to have a pat of butter, drizzle of maple syrup or honey, or a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. To freeze, I put 1 cup portions in baggies, lay flat on a cutting board, freeze, and bag in a gallon freezer bag. Reheating is simple in the microwave, and they are great paired with grilled venison, ham, herbed pork chops, barbeque chicken, peas, broccoli, aspagaragus, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, green beans, almost any vegetable. Try serving with lemon herb chicken and a simple salad of fresh spinach, dried cranberries, candied pecans, thinly sliced red onion rings, crumbled chevre, and a cranberry vinaigrette. Wow!