Crock Pot Challenge Meal #14: Lasagna

I did it!  14 days of Crock Pot meals!  I'm pretty sure we could have fed about 10 more people over the course of the two weeks, but we haven't had to worry about lunch in a long time.  The last meal was the one I wanted to work the most.  Everyone loves lasagna.  I imagine having kids and they will love "mom's lasagna" and they'll invite their friends to come over for lasagna night.  I'm crazy.  I know.

To be honest, it was my first time making lasagna.  Ever.  I wanted it to work so bad.  I found a recipe on the blog Crockpot365 where the author used her Crock Pot every day of the year.  She's WAY more dedicated to the Crock Pot challenge than I am.  I applaud her.   Lasagna was Day 27 for her.  Click here to check out the original recipe.

Well, the lasagna wasn't horrible, but it was definitely overcooked.  I think I'm partly to blame, and I think the recipe is partly to blame.  The recipe says it needs to cook for 8 hours.  Well, when I came home at lunch after only 4 hours of cooking, on the right level, the noodles were already soft.  I turned it to warm for the rest of the afternoon, but I probably should have turned it off and put it in the fridge to heat up for dinner.  

The flavors were all there, but just a little bit took cooked.  It tasted like how I think the re-heated leftovers would taste.  Not bad, but not as good as it could be.  The spinach and mushrooms were delicious in the mix and the next time I make the dish, I'm definitely keeping them in the layers.

Lasagna in the Crock Pot is definitely a keeper, and maybe this recipe is for a weekend when I can watch the progress, but I'm not giving up.  We didn't take a serving to our friend's  house this evening, I'm not quite sure it's ready to share with friends.  I only make the person who loves me the most try my cooking.

So there you have it.  I finished the challenge.  Stephen can get back in the kitchen and cook again.  We can grill again.  My mornings won't be full of scrambling to chop veggies or layer lasagna noodles.  I will write blog posts on more exciting things than our dinners.

While Stephen and I were cleaning the kitchen over the weekend we found two more Crock Pot cookbooks!  Stephen forgot he even had them.  I'm not sure I'll ever do 14 days in a row again, but I have no problem using the Crock Pot once a week from here on out.  Maybe I'll try to cook everything in one of the books, or I'll try a different ethnicity each week.  What do you think I should try next?  The only way I'm going to try new things is to challenge myself and hold myself responsible to you, my readers.  (All 15 of you.)

Oh, and please take note of the Slow Cooker liner in the picture above.  Why did I wait until the last two meals to get these?  WHY?  I will never cook in the Crock Pot without them.  I'm in love with them. Get them and use them fellow slow cookers.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #13: Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup

Our refrigerator is starting to fill up with leftovers and I was struggling to find a large storage container yesterday when I was done with this meal.  I love how much food the past two weeks has given us.

Yesterday was Meal #13 of my personal Challenge, Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup.  I found the recipe on the blog Random Thoughts and Thrills.  The blog author, Debbie, posted the soup earlier this year, thank goodness she did!  This soup is one of my favorite meals I've made, maybe top 10 ever.

The first step is to put most of the ingredients in the Crock Pot and then cook it for 5-7 hours.  I used a small food processor to chop up the carrots (I used 4), celery (I used 4 stalks) and onion (I used half an onion) and it made everything go so quick.  Using the processor's blade to chop everything for me got the veggies into tiny diced bits which were great in the soup.  Before you're ready to serve you need to thicken it up with a roux and then add a few other ingredients and then allow it to cook for another 30 minutes.  Nothing complicated, everything delicious.

With the veggies, parmesan cheese and diced tomatoes the soup wasn't smooth, but just slightly chunky.  I'm sure you could use an immersion blender to smooth it all out, but I loved that there was texture to the soup.  We didn't have any bread or croutons with dinner, but I'll be sure to have those next time.

Stephen and a friend we had over for dinner loved the soup and we can't wait to make it again.  Of course the guys suggested adding some cooked, small bacon bits.  But can't that be said for almost anything?

Lunches this week are going to be great with so many great leftovers and I can't wait to fill the kitchen in the office with smells of this soup.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #12: Mac n Cheese

Mac n Cheese is one of my favorite meals.  I can eat it out of the blue box like I did when I was a kid and I'm even happier trying to find the best Mac n Cheese in Atlanta.  There are a lot of restaurants who server amazing Mac n Cheese, but I'm leaning towards Fox Bros. BBQ right now.

When I was doing research for my recipes to try during the Crock Pot Challenge I knew I had to have a Mac n Cheese in the mix.  I found a fantastic recipe on the blog Whisk and A Prayer written in 2010, check it out here.  I love that about blogs and the Internet - something someone wrote two years ago is still relevant and searchable.

Not your typical slow cooker recipe, this one only cooks for a total of three hours.  (I think we cooked ours about 30 min longer than that, we were running errands and just kept it going.)  A three hour slow cooker recipe is perfect for a weekend lunch or dinner.  The ingredients are mixed in the Crock Pot and then basically forgotten about until it's time to eat.

The recipe says to par cook the pasta before adding it to the crock pot.  I skipped this step, because I didn't read it.  While I was worried it would make the pasta too hard, it was actually perfect.  I think if I had cooked them they would have been too soggy.

Mac n Cheese still in the Crock Pot.  Not a creamy cheese and still delicious!

The recipe is absolutely a Keeper and it's an easy dish to bring to a pot luck party or to server to a large group of people.  I think we'll get 4 to 6 servings out of the dish.  If the Mac n Cheese was served as part of a larger pot luck style dinner, it could easily server 10+.

We will add some sauteed onions and probably some bacon next time around to add a little bit of flavor.  I think we'll try at some point with only one egg and we'll bump up the butter, too.  Besides that, the dish was just perfect.

After the Overnight Oats failure in Meal #11, I'm glad I redeemed myself with the Mac n Cheese.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #10: French Onion Soup

Not my soup - this picture is from How Sweet It Is

Man, I love French Onion Soup.  I've made it twice, from two different recipes and each time, success.  This time, with the Crock Pot I used a recipe from the blog, How Sweet It Is.  I'm telling you, check out this recipe.

This recipe was better from the last time I made this soup because I didn't have to slave in the kitchen while it cooked. Bonus! Isn't that the point of a Crock Pot?  This morning I had to make sure to start the caramelizing process before I added in the liquid, but I started before I started to get ready for work and added in the beef stock right before we walked out the door.  The recipe is super easy and the house smells amazing.  

This is absolutely a keeper.  We had a friend over for dinner tonight so we won't have as many leftovers as we typically would, but they wouldn't last long anyway.  So I guess we already served it to friends, and he loved it.  MMMM soup.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #9: Greek Chicken

When I was typing the title of this post I actually wrote "Green Failure" first then I realized what I typed.  That should give you an idea how Meal #9 went.

Today was the first time cooking a full chicken in the crock pot.  I was following a recipe from Tone It Up! Blog, click here to see all of their crock pot recipes.  The one I wanted to try was the Greek Chicken recipe, second on their list.

The failure could be 100% my fault. I missed two words in the ingredient list - "skin removed".  When I put the whole chicken in the crock pot the skin was still on the bird.  Here is how our meal looked when we got home.

Not too appetizing, but I still wanted to give it a shot.  It's a whole bird, that's a lot of meat and money to give up without trying it.  Luckily, the skin came right off the meat and the mead fell right off the bone.  We served with Quinoa and sat down for dinner.  Stephen liked it, even said it was a Keeper, but we disagree.  I thought the meat was far too dry.  Also, there wasn't much of a "Greek" flavor to it at all.  Is it called Greek Chicken because there is Greek yogurt in it?  Well, you don't taste it or much of anything else.

I won't be making this meal again.  Stephen made a good point, I didn't like this chicken because all of the chicken he makes is the best I've ever had.  He's probably right.  We have another whole chicken in the freezer, Stephen is going to cook it his way this weekend and I'm sure it will blow mine away.

I'm traveling tomorrow and I won't be home until after 8pm.  We have a ton of Buffalo Chicken left over so instead of me trying to put something together before I run out the door in the morning to catch a plane, we're just going to go with left overs tomorrow night and we'll pick back up the following day.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #8: Buffalo Chicken

Our Meal #8 night was exactly what I thought our crock pot nights would be.  Dinner was ready an hour after we got home from work so we had time to go for a two-mile run with Goose.  Mabel is feeling under the weather so she got to stay home and relax.  When we got home we sat down for dinner and popped in a movie, Ides of March.  We haven't done that in months.

After dinner was done, I cleaned the kitchen, checked on what I'd need to do for the following morning's meal and then we watched two episodes of Season 6 of Dexter.  Crock pot cooking finally paid off and we got to relax and run after work.  

Yesterday while at work our crock pot was cooking Buffalo Chicken from the Chef in Training blog.  The recipe was super simple and was just three ingredients into the slow cooker in the morning.  For dinner we toasted some bread and sprinkled some shredded cheddar cheese on top of the chicken and there you go - dinner!   We have a ton of chicken left over, so I see a few sandwiches in our future.  

The Buffalo Chicken was great, but I wish we had had some bleu cheese on hand.  Somehow that was left off the grocery list.  It's a healthy meal that we'll definitely make again, it's a Keeper.  The chicken was a little too juicy for us, but there are ways we'll try to reduce some of the liquid next time.  It would be a great way to server sandwiches at a house party.  I didn't take any pictures, I was too busy relaxing but if you go to the recipe's site, that's exactly how ours looked.   

We're nearing the end of the two weeks and everything has run smoothly.  We've come across some recipes that we can't wait to have again and a few that we'd like to throw away and others we need to tweak before we share with dinner guests.  I have a business trip tomorrow and I won't be home until after Stephen gets home from work.  It will be nice to start dinner in the morning and know that he's going to have food when he's home from work.  

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #7: Minestrone Soup

It won't last, but it's finally cool here in Atlanta.  The high temperature today wasn't even above 70 degrees.  That's a day after we were in the 80s.  Tomorrow will be a little chilly and then it will slowly warm up again.  But I think it's safe to say that we won't have any more 90 degree days.

Look at all of that veggie goodness!

With the cool weather, I'm so glad I have the Crock Pot Challenge to give us all these warm, tasty soups.  Tonight was Meal #7, Minestrone Soup from Skinny Taste. I had no idea we'd have a chilly night when I put together my 14-day menu, but I'm so glad we have a warm soup for Sunday Night Football watching.

Click on the link above for the full menu.  The only thing I didn't include was the Parmesan Rind because I forgot to add that to my grocery list and I don't keep one on hand.  I also used elbow pasta instead of small shells because, you guessed it, we had that in our pantry.  We were home all day and have been smelling the cooking soup for the past few hours.  My stomach hasn't stopped growling, even after a PB& J for lunch.

I'm glad I planned this soup for a day when we're home so I was here 40 minutes before we wanted to eat so I could add the spinach and zucchini.  (I didn't chop the spinach before I put it in the crock pot - oh well!)  The original blog post states that this soup can also be cooked on the stove top for 45 minutes before adding in the spinach and the zucchini.  If I chose to make this soup on a weekend, I'll probably do it that way instead of torturing us with the yummy smells all day.

As soon as Stephen took his first bite he said, "This is really good, it'd definitely a Keeper."  So there you have it, it's a keeper.  The recipe yields 6 hearty servings so we're each going to take some for lunch tomorrow and we'll freeze the rest.  It will be such a good, quick meal for another chilly day.

Minestrone soup typically doesn't have any meat in it, but I think one time we'll try some turkey meatballs in the soup, too.  We'll get even more servings out of it and it will be even more filling.  I love this soup!

Because more is going on in our lives than the Crock Pot Challenge, I wanted to share the biggest change I've made in my life since meeting Stephen.  I chopped off all my hair!  I haven't had short hair since 2006 and since then I've just let it grow.  Six years of growing it out and trims at the salon every now and then.  I loved having long hair, but I was pretty much over it.  It took so long to dry in the morning, it would get caught in my armpit when I was sleeping, Stephen would lay on it in bed and the ends were getting a little messy.  I had my appointment to color my hair already set so I added a cut to the afternoon.

 At the wedding of two, dear friends last month.

In the car right after my hair cut and color change!

I'm in love with the new cut!  I cut about 8 inches off - CRAZY!  I also darkened my hair a little bit with some auburn low-lights.  It's the Fall, I'm ready with shorter, darker hair!  In the picture above I had JUST walked out of the salon, so it will never look like that again, but this morning after I dried it it looked a little fuller, which is what I wanted.  The guy who cut my hair used a straight iron on it and I probably won't do that except for special occasions.

Walking by mirrors I still catch my self doing a double-take and I'm so used to playing with my hair and it's not there anymore!  I haven't gone for a run with short hair yet, or ever for that matter, I wasn't a runner back in 2006, so it will be interesting to see how I do with a mini, low pony tail.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #6: Egg & Broccoli Casserole

We're almost to the halfway point of the challenge.  My sixth meal was a breakfast meal for a chilly Sunday morning in Atlanta.  It should have been an easy set up - dump everything in the crock pot, cook for an hour, stir, cook for a few hours more.  Done.

Well, I dropped a glass bowl (well, it kinda launched at the puppy) and it shattered all over the tile and hardwood floors.  Mess #1.  Then I had to melt some butter, so I turned to the microwave.  I left it in for about one second too long and it exploded all over the inside of the microwave.  Have you ever had butter dripping from the top of the microwave?  The glass turntable coated in a layer of butter?  Mess #2.  Then, when I thought I was all good to go, I set the crock pot to LOW for the first hour instead of HIGH.  Awesome.

Well, while breakfast cooked I was able to vacuum the house to pick up all the glass, Stephen cleaned the microwave and all of the dog blankets are getting washed because they were in the shatter zone of the bowl I broke.

It was 10am and we still hadn't eaten, so we were entering the Brunch arena vs. the Breakfast arena.  Oh well.  We finally at at 10:30am.  It was delicious.

With only 2 of us eating together this morning, I cut the recipe in half.  To the crock pot I added 12 oz of cottage cheese, half a package of frozen broccoli (defrosted and drained - don't break the glass), one cup of shredded cheddar cheese, 3 beaten eggs, 1/4 cup of flour, 1/8 cup melted butter, small amount of onion and 1/4 tsp of salt.

The end product was a little bit fluffier than I thought it would be, but that's probably because of the backwards way we cooked.  While the meal was headed towards the trashcan early on, it turned out to be a Keeper on the Stephen Scale.  It's a wonderful egg dish for brunch.  It would be great for mornings with company, or Christmas morning.

I don't have any pictures, add that to the things I failed to do with Meal #6.  I'm going back in the bedroom to start the day over.  Reset!

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #5: Applesauce

We knew we weren't going to eat dinner at home Friday night because we had tickets to the Braves Wild Card game, I wanted to make a snack in the crock pot.  I'm a huge fan of Applesauce and when I saw the recipe in my slow cooker I had to give it a try.

Draining the liquid from the Applesauce

To make the applesauce I peeled and cored 8 organic apples and then chopped them up and dropped them into the slow cooker.  I added half a cup of water, half a cup of sugar and a tablespoon of cinnamon. That's it!!

MMMM - yummy

It was one of the easiest recipes so far, but the set up took some time.  Peeling the apples took the longest amount of time, but really, it was about 10 minutes.  Once the 8 hour cook time was over, the apples were the consistency in the pictures above.  There was quite a bit of liquid in the crock pot so we had to scoop out the applesauce and strain it.  We kept the liquid, it's delicious, like homemade apple cider.

Our homemade applesauce!

I was a little disappointed in the small amount of applesauce that 8 apples yielded, but it was perfect for two people. I didn't measure how much applesauce we had (I already ate it) but I think it's safe to say we had about two cups.  To make the applesauce a little smoother we used our new immersion blender for the first time and blended up the applesauce a bit.  It was smoother than what you get out of the jar and 100x better.

We are so excited we learned to make our own applesauce.  It is going to be a great addition to our Thanksgiving table this year and one day we'll have little kids running around the house.  Having homemade applesauce will be so much better than buying off the grocery store shelf - we'll know exactly what goes into our food.

On the Stephen Scale, the applesauce recipe is absolutely a Keeper and we'll be sharing with friends and family at Thanksgiving.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #4: Stuffed Green Peppers

It was bound to happen.  Today was the day.  We found a bad recipe.  The house smelled delicious when we walked in the house from work, we took the dogs outside to potty, topped the peppers with cheese and dug into our dinner.

Mixing the stuffing before filling the peppers

On a scale of 1-10 Stephen gave these a 7, I think that's generous.  I give them a 5.  I could do without the entire green pepper.  You can't give something more than 50% when the main part of the dish is gross.

Stuffed and ready to go

The recipe called for 9-11 hours in the crock pot on low which is perfect for our long days at the office.  I think this was about 2 hours too long.  The green peppers were totally soggy and flavorless.  We ended up eating the stuffing and not the peppers.

The recipe called for a cup of cooked rice, 2 lbs of ground beef (I used 1.5 lbs) two whipped eggs, half a cup each of milk and ketchup.  I think it would be better with uncooked quinoa.  Maybe we'll try that next time we attempt a similar recipe.

Pepper #1 out of the crock pot - success

The peppers that ended up touching the sides of the slow cooker were burnt and tasteless.  The rice was far too over cooked and the meat left a giant pool of grease at the bottom of the crock pot. 

Not all of the peppers could be removed in one piece... yum?

Needless to say, this recipe didn't make the Keeper list and it's not a recipe we'd ever feed to our friends.  I'm not even going to tell you the full recipe, it's not worth it.  

In better news, we have M&Ms that we can snack on for the rest of the night.  You win some, you lose some.  Does anyone out there have a Stuffed Green Pepper recipe that works in the crock pot?  

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #3: Sugared Pecans & Walnuts

Day #3 of my personal Crock Pot Challenge was a little bit different from the first two nights.  The "meal" I cooked wasn't started in the morning to cook all day.  It also wasn't a dinner, it's a snack.  I thought it was important to try a variety of recipes in the crock pot, so night #3 I went with Sugared Pecans & Walnuts.

The start of the cooking process - nuts in the crock pot with melted butter

I originally found the recipe on Pinterest and it linked me to the recipe on Food.com by user Gingerbear, added in 2003.  There are only two reviews of the recipe, one was positive, so that gave me a little bit of confidence.  Based on the smell that floated through the house halfway through the slow cooking process, they were going to turn out great.

Powdered Sugar added to the crock pot

You'll notice that the recipe calls for either Pecans or Walnuts.  Since I had some walnuts on hand, I doubled the recipe and used both the Pecans and Walnuts.  (Pecans were part of my grocery list for the challenge.) Yes, I have 2 pounds of sugared nuts.  Sometimes I act like a 10-year-old boy, and that sentence makes me laugh.  Read it again, doesn't it make you laugh?

They're done!  The spices have been added and stirred to coat the nuts

The whole process from start to finish is about 3 hours.  I started after our evening run and it was done before we went to bed.  While the pecans and walnuts were cooking it gave me time to prepare for the Stuffed Green Peppers that I'll be slow cooking tomorrow.

MMMM - so delicious.  I wish you could scratch and sniff the screen so you can smell what I'm smelling

On our very official Stephen Scale, these Pecans & Walnuts are absolutely Keepers and will be shared immediately with friends and co-workers.  These would be fantastic as a hostess gift or as a snack for Thanksgiving and Christmas house guests.  We'll definitely be making these again. And again.  And again.

I had to share this picture with you.  While I'm chopping veggies in the kitchen, it doesn't matter what veggies, and to be honest, I could just make a chopping noise in the kitchen, the dogs come running and wait for me to drop something.  They don't eat human food.  The closest they have come is a bit of carrot and they've never had that IN the kitchen.  I have no idea what Goose thinks I'm doing on the counter, but he's beyond excited to see if something drops.  At this point I was taking the caps off the green peppers and removing the ribs and seeds.  Silly puppies.  This is how they travel around the house, attached at the hip.

Goose and Mabel (in red) watching me chop green peppers.  Can you tell how fast their tails are wagging from this picture?

Goose is officially 8 months old now!  He is such a good boy.  It's cute to see how tired and cuddly he gets after 9pm when he wants to go to bed.  10pm Goose is a different dog than 6pm Goose.

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #2: Pork Roast with Apples & Sweet Potatoes

With the success of night #1 behind me, I put a lot of pressure on myself to have another great dinner.  Night #2 on the menu was a Pork Roast with Apples & Sweet Potatoes from the blog Amy's Cooking Adventures.  Stephen and I both love a good pork roast so anticipation was high.  Click on the link to the other blog for the full recipe.

Source: Amy's Cooking Adventures

The ingredient list was pretty short for this recipe and nothing was too weird, always nice when trying new recipes.  The above picture is from Amy's blog.  My meal did NOT turn out looking like this.  My pork was much darker and the sweet potatoes look like they were much soggier.  While my meal didn't look like the original picture, but it was delicious!  On the Stephen Scale this meal qualifies as a Keeper and good enough to serve to our friends.  The apple and sweet potato flavors mixed together were delicious.  We used apple cider instead of apple juice and I love what it did to the flavor.  I guess that could have made our meat a little bit darker, too.

I do think that next time I make the meal we'll cook it for a shorter amount of time.  The recipe calls for 6-8 hours on low.  I think we hit close to 10 because of work and that was too long.  Next time we'll stick to the recipe a little closer.  We got about 4 servings from the meal so we'll have dinner tomorrow night!

Tomorrow I'm not making a dinner, I'm making a snack!

Crock Pot Challenge Meal #1: Beef Stew

My first meal of the Crock Pot Challenge was the "Absent Cook Stew" from my Fix-It and Forget It cookbook, a recipe by Kathy Hertzler.  Basically the recipe told me what to put into the crock pot, there wasn't much cooking on my part.  

Awesome Beef Stew!

The recipe called for the following ingredients:
2 lbs of stewing beef, cubed
2-3 carrots (I used 4)
1 onion chopped
3 large potatoes (I used 4 medium baking potatoes)
3 ribs of celery (I used 4)
One can of tomato soup
One can full of water
1 tsp of salt
dash of pepper
2 tbsp of vinegar

I also added in two bay leaves and also 30 minutes before serving another half cup of water because it was pretty thick.  I like my veggies, what can I say?  Everything went into the crock pot in the morning and dinner was ready when I got home from work. Glorious.

The meal serves 6 so we won't have as many leftovers as I thought we would have.  There will be enough for us to have lunch tomorrow and then one other night this week.  I thought about freezing the two servings that we'd eat later this week, but maybe I'd like to have options for dinner and lunch later in the week.  And let's be honest, the stew was amazing.

Beef stew doesn't look too appetizing, does it?  It looks mushy - but I promise, it was perfect.

I asked Stephen if it was a "Keeper" or "Trasher" recipe.  He said it's definitely a keeper.  It may even rank up there with some of my top recipes ever, he said.  It has been classified as good enough to serve to our friends.  :)  I thought that was a good qualification.  We won't serve everything we have for dinner to our friends.  From now on we'll judge our crock pot recipes on the Keeper/Trasher scale and we'll note if it was good enough to serve to friends.  The only thing that I think I'll add next time is a bit of garlic.  

Night #1 done.  It was so great to have dinner ready as soon as we walked into the door from work.  It was/is a super rainy night and a warm stew was just what we needed.  Tomorrow I'm going to make Pork Roast with Apples & Sweet Potatoes from Amy's Cooking Adventures.  I already have the veggies cut and the spices measured so all I will need to do in the morning is cut the apple and layer the items into the crock pot.  

Crock Pot Challenge Grocery List

While my first crock pot meal of the challenge is cooking away at home I wanted to include the grocery list that I had for my 14 meals.  I am missing a whole chicken and a package of spices for one of the meals, so mentally add that to the below list.  Remember, this ran me $140 at Publix last night, no coupons.  Maybe one day I'll challenge myself to actually use coupons.  However, based on the deals at Publix yesterday, we did save $11 on the final bill.

Amount	Ingredient
15oz can	Tomato Sauce
1	Sweet Potato
7	Onions
2 lbs	Stewing Beef - cubed
24oz	Small Curd Cottage Cheese
12 oz can	Skim Evaporated milk
3/4 cup	Shredded mozzarella Cheese
6 cups	Shredded Italian cheese (fontina?)
2 cups	Shredded Cheddar Cheese
1 contain.	Ricotta Cheese
20 slices	Gruyere Cheese - sliced
1/2 cup	Grated Parmesan Cheese
1 box	regular lasagna noodles
3	Potatoes
2 1/2 lb	Pork Roast
1 lb	Pecans
container	mushrooms
2.5 cups	Half and half
1/4 tsp	Ground Ginger
1.5 lbs	Ground Beef
1/4 tsp	Ground Allspice
6	Green Peppers
3 cloves	Garlic
10oz	Frozen Chopped Broccoli
Loaf	French Bread
1/2 lb	Elbow Pasta
9	Eggs
1 cup	Dried Figs
64 oz	Beef Stock
5 stalks	Celery
1 bag	baby spinach
1 cup	Apple Juice
1	10oz can tomato soup

I tried to be as specific as possible in my ingredients.  Some items on the list come in just one size package (I can't buy just 1 cup apple juice) so I bought the package size that made sense.  For items like the 1.5 lbs of ground beef, that will be split between two meals - Lasagna and the Stuffed Green Peppers.  I did have the regular pantry stuff at home that I didn't have to shop for, so those aren't on my grocery list, obviously.  I was shocked that we didn't have Ground Ginger at the house.  I'm sure I'll find that little container of spices in the back of the pantry one day.

I went home at lunch and took a peek at the stew, I can't wait for dinner!

Oh, and for no other reason than to publicly (with the few of you who read my blog) share feelings for Craig Kimbrel, closing pitcher for the Atlanta Braves.

I think he's swell

My 14-day Crock Pot Challenge

Call me crazy, but I'm challenging myself to a new test.  I want to see if I can use my crock pot for 14 straight days.  One meal or snack a day will be made from the slow cooker.  Tomorrow, October 1, will be my first day. Some of the meals will give us a ton of leftovers, especially when there are just two of us eating together, but that should cover our lunches for half the month, too.

We did our grocery shopping this evening so that we have everything we need in-house.  I realized that I missed some ingredients for two of the meals, so those are going towards the end of the challenge so I have time to get back to Publix.  For the 12 meals I did shop for, we spent $140.  The ingredients I'm missing for the other two meals should come to about $10 total so it's safe to say that I will have 14 days of meals for $150.  I'm sure if we had shopped coupons and based meals on what was on sale we could have cut that down a little bit, but at close to $10 a day with a ton of leftovers, I'm not upset about it.  We also bought a few extra things while at the store, so it should take us even further than two weeks.  

Tonight I will cut and prep for meal #1 and I'll throw everything into the crock pot in the morning.  We'll have dinner as soon as we get home.  Hopefully, this will help us kick start our motivation to start working out again.  

To make sure that I wasn't running to Publix every evening or quitting the challenge mid-way through I made my list of meals.  Most are from recipes I found on the Internet, some are from a cookbook I have at home: Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook, Feasting with your Slow Cooker.

Source: Amazon

Here they are, if the recipe is online, I've included the link so you can follow along at home.  I'll blog about the experience along the way and I'll make my notes about the recipes at that time.  

1. Absent Cook Stew, book page 28
2. Pork Roast with Apples and Sweet Potatoes
3. Sugared Pecans
4. Stuffed Green Peppers, book page 123
5. Applesauce, book page 245
6. Egg & Broccoli Casserole, cook page 23
7. Minestrone Soup
8. Buffalo Chicken Sandwich
9. Greek Chicken
10. French Onion Soup
11. Mac n Cheese
12. Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup
13. Lasagna
14. Overnight Oats

Wish me luck!  Stephen is super excited about all of the food coming his way.  

Penzeys Spices & Dessert

We were going to have a small dinner part last night so Stephen made some pork shoulder in the crock pot.  His recipe is pretty simple.

• Rub meat with spices
• Place in crockpot
• Pour in one or two bottles of dark beer, depending on the size of the shoulder
• Turn on low for 8-10 hours
• Enjoy!

For Christmas, my dad got Stephen a really great variety of rubs from Penzeys Spices, a great specialty store in Winter Park, FL.  Typically I would just walk past such a store, but Dad knows better.  They have stores all over the US (one in Sandy Springs, GA!) or you can order through a catalog or order online.  

For dinner last night we went with the Adobo Rub.  Penzeys is great because they give you a little info on the rub and what you can make with it.  Most of the rubs Stephen got from my dad were for beef, this one was good for pork, seafood or chicken.  You can even put some of it in guacamole!  

The main dish came out delicious.  I didn't take a picture because, let's be honest, a big slab of meat isn't a pretty picture.  Trust me, the house smelled amazing when we walked in the door from work and the meat just fell apart.  It was so tender and juicy.  

For dessert we had orange sherbet topped with fresh berries, peaches and honey.  It might have been the best non-chocolate dessert ever made.  

We have so many leftovers, we'll have the same meal tonight for dinner.  I can't wait!