Winter Lentil Soup

Source: Real Simple

Last night I had the house to myself and that's when I'm most comfortable trying new recipes.  If I mess up I can always have a bowl of cereal when I'm home alone.  If Stephen is home and I mess something up I feel awful, so trying new things becomes much more stressful.  (However, I do enjoy having him there with me when I'm cooking for reassurance when I try something new.  I sound crazy.)

This soup is called the Winter Lentil Soup from RealSimple.com.  When I read the recipe I was a little nervous because I've never cooked with lentil, leeks or kale.  Typically that alone would immediately make me skip the soup, but I love a good veggie soup and I wanted to try to find one that could become a staple in our house during the colder months.

I followed the directions with a few minor adjustments after reading a few of the comments.

• I added some extra lentils, probably 3/4 of a cup instead of 1/2 a cup
• I added the kale 15 minutes into cooking the lentil.  My publix also doesn't sell kale in bunches, it is already chopped up in a bag - I used about 5 handfuls.  I have no idea how close that is to what I should have used.
• I didn't drain the tomatoes before adding them, I wanted to keep some of that tomato juice in the broth after I added the water
• I didn't top with cheese

Overall, the soup was a huge success.  I even got seconds.  I had two servings last night and we have 4 servings for leftovers, so I'd say it serves 6, maybe 7 depending on any side dishes.  Each serving is 226 calories, and that is including the cheese.  I don't feel bad at all for having 2 servings!

Give it a try.  Now that I've cooked with lentils, kale and leeks I can say that there was never anything to be afraid of in the first place.  This is such a good vegetarian soup!

Honey Lime Shrimp

I love finding new recipes that I love.  If their easy, healthy and quick for a weeknight I'm even happier.   That's just what happened last night when I tried a recipe for Honey Lime Shrimp that I found on Pinterest.

Photo from The Dough Will Rise Again

Stephen and I love shrimp (all seafood really) so I'm always looking for new ways to serve it.  This recipe was so easy I had the marinade done before Stephen got home from work and 45 minutes later we had dinner.  The part that took the most amount of time was letting the shrimp sit in the marinade for 30 minutes.  The next time I make this meal, I'll make the marinade for the shrimp in the morning and let them sit in it all day long.  Then after work dinner can be ready in 15 minutes!

I followed the directions exactly as they are in the original post, but I did cook the shrimp in the marinade.  Based on how crisp the shrimp look in the photo above, she didn't.  My way turned out AMAZING, so I think you're safe either way.

I served the shrimp with some rice and sauteed broccoli.

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 #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 #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!

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.  

Lamb Chops with Dijon Mustard-Herb Crust

Before the days of Pinterest (and still today) I collected recipes.  I love getting magazines like Southern Living, Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, etc and flipping through for home decor inspiration and recipes.  I have a giant 4" binder of recipes that I've torn out of magazines over the years.  I made a dinner the other night based on a recipe that I tore out of Cooking Light magazine in 2006.  Recipes never go bad.

With our wedding behind us our evenings are much more relaxed and we don't have the Big Event ahead of us.  Even on nights we didn't do any wedding planning or projects I was always thinking about things that needed to be done.  Not having something to plan is much more relaxing!  With all my new found free time I decided to try a few new recipes this week.  First on my list was Lamb Chops.

From Everyday Food magazine in 2009, I had a recipe torn out for Lamb Chops with Dijon Mustard-Herb Crust.  I found the recipe on Martha's website, click here for the link and directions.

Source: MarthaStewart.com

Side note:  As much as I love having recipes online where I can find them in a recipe box or on Pinterest, having them on the counter in a page protector is so much easier than having to make sure the ipad screen stays lit.  I can spill on it, pick it up with dirty fingers and move it around the kitchen so much easier than an electronic device.

This was my first time cooking Lamb Chops, shopping for them too, so I was a little nervous.  Stephen was working on his NFL Fantasy Football Draft, so I was alone in the kitchen.  The Lamb Chops in the picture above are very different than the ones I found at Publix.  Ours were much larger and all the meat and fat were on the bones.  I made sure I bought 6-7 oz of meat for each of us to make sure we'd have enough.

The recipe is super simple and I had everything except the Lamb Chops on hand in the house.  I love meals that only require one extra item from the store.  I didn't measure the herbs, garlic or Parmesan cheese exactly, but I was close.  The more I cook and try new recipes the more comfortable I'm getting with estimating measurements.  And for this recipe I used Coconut Oil instead of Vegetable Oil in the pan.  Gotta keep it healthy!

Stephen looked up the final "done" temperature of lamb so I would know if it was cooked, I was aiming for 145 degrees.  Based on this website, Great Grub, 145 is cooked to Medium with a warm pink center.   Some of our meat got to that temp, others was still in the rare range, around 130 degrees.  The pink center made me a little nervous, but it was delicious!!  And now that it has been 12 hours, I can proudly say that the rare meat didn't make us sick.  Phew.  Because our meat was a little larger than what the recipes called for I had to cook for about 7 minutes each side until it was cooked to the right temperature.

The Lamb Chops were so good Stephen and I were talking about them this morning.  I'll definitely be adding them to a more normal rotation in the house.  Definitely something for us to look for when we hit up the Farmers Market next time.  If you've never cooked Lamb Chops this recipe is super easy, quick and delicious.  I served a side of Asparagus (cooked with salt & pepper, olive oil and baked at 350 for 10 minutes) with the chops for our complete meal.

I'm always so happy when I try something new and it works, especially when it was so easy!