Crockpot Chronicles: Part 1

My husband and I bought a crock-pot for $10 from goodwill about a year ago. It's been sitting in the cupboard ever since. As I am trying to save some money, but still want to cook interesting and delicious meals, I figure that it might be time to get the crockpot out of the cupboard and give it a try.

One of my friends, Derek, kindly sent me two recipes for crock pot chicken. I tried one of them out this week when we had company.


Bung the following items in a crockpot and ignore for 8 hours: 1 whole chicken, 1/2 cup chicken broth, 1/3 cup soy sauce, 1/3 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup honey, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar, 2 teaspoons lemon juice, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 2 tablespoons minced garlic.

I overcooked the chicken a little. Derek recommended only leaving it in the crock pot for 5 hours instead of 8, and he was right. By the time we ate it it had lost it's consistency but it was very moist and flavorful.

I served it with fusion stuffing (just like I made last thanksgiving), roasted vegetables, and mashed potatoes so it was not a healthy meal, but oh boy it was delicious. I even used the juice at the bottom of the crock pot as the base for a gravy. Wowzers in my trousers!

I forgot to take a picture of the chicken until after we'd started eating, so this is the best picture I could take

Thrifty Tofu Thai Curry with Brown Rice

The mission of this blog is two-fold. 1. I want my husband and son to enjoy my cooking. 2. I want to get the good feeling that comes with knowing that I'm doing my best for them nutritionally. The challenge is that they tend to really like the kind of food that is linked to diabetes.

For the time being at least, I need to add a third mission. I need to be thrifty. I have somehow got quite emotionally attached to a '91 Honda Accord named Frank. Today, I took Frank to the shop to get a new timing belt  - which cost about $650. The other thing that I love really a lot is my son, and on Tuesday, we're getting him fitted for braces. After the down-payment, I need to make two years of monthly payments that are set at just the right level so that I can actually afford it, and so do not feel justified in saying no, but that it also uses up as much of my available income as possible. The result of these developments is that I am temporarily and voluntarily quite poor. I need the next few family meals to be cheap, like, really cheap. When I headed out to the supermarket today, I didn't know what I was going to make for dinner, but I didn't want to spend more than $10, and preferably closer to $5, but I still wanted to make it tasty and healthy.

This story's getting way too long, the bottom line is I made tofu. They sell 16 oz of tofu at my supermarket for 99 cents! 99 FUCKING CENTS! Do people know about this? 16 oz of tofu can easily feed three. What the fuck people!? Why didn't anyone tell me about the tofu!? I only looked at it by mistake. Jesus wept.

I like tofu, tofu is healthy, and I can easily afford tofu.  I had a jar of Trader Joe's yellow Thai curry at home and I had rice in the cupboard, so I got 99cents of tofu, a red pepper and onion and one yam and I was sorted. It probably didn't even come to $3.  Now obviously, using a jar of curry sauce makes this meal a massive cheat and not truly worthy of a blog post, but as I have never cooked with tofu before, this is a special case.

The rice I had was brown rice, and I do not have a proud history with brown rice. I decided to google for some pointers rather than just wing it. I followed this advice, and for the first time in recent history, my brown rice was pretty good. I rinsed the rice in cold water, I boiled a large pan of water, added the rice, and boiled it for 30 mins, I kept topping the pan up with more water if it got low. After 30 mins, I drained the rice and let it steam in the pan for ten minutes. I added a little soy and some salt and fluffed it with a fork. It wasn't life changing, but it was fine. 

For the tofu, I was just winging it. I heated oil in a wok, added two cloves of garlic and tipped in the tofu, which was cut into cubes. My plan was to get the outside a little crispy while keeping the inside soft. I added a tiny bit of soy. I wanted to fry it fast, but the tofu was sold in water, and it had held onto some of that liquid which dribbled out of the tofu, so it was more boiling that frying. I poured everything into a sieve and then put the tofu back in the pan. The second time I started to get some success, the outside of the tofu was starting to get a little crispy, but I was worried about over-cooking the inside, so I stopped it there and had half-crispy tofu. IT WAS DELICIOUS! NINETY-NINE CENTS OF PURE DELICIOUS! 

I then put a sliced onion in the pan and fried that in olive oil until it became translucent, then added the red pepper and a sweet potato (yam) sliced into little cubes. I fried it all together for maybe 5 minutes and then added the sauce. I simmered the sauce and the veggies together until the potatoes were cooked and then added the tofu just before serving.

It was freaking yummy and tofu only costs 99cents. 

Tofu Thai Curry with Brown Rice

Oven Roasted Veggies & Chicken Alfredo

This was a quick after-work recipe that was very delicious! It had three parts, oven roasted veggies, Alfredo pasta and garlic chicken.

Preheat the oven to 425. Cut up the broccoli, mushrooms, and leeks and put them in one layer on a baking tray. Drizzle pretty generously with olive oil, salt and pepper.  One thing I've learned recently, is not to underestimate the power of salt and pepper. I was worried that this would be boring, but it was great. Roast for about 20 mins, shaking them around occasionally. By the time these are done, everything else will be ready too!

Boil pasta. I wanted fettuccine but they didn't have any, so I got the big shells instead.

In another pan, heat some olive oil and add three chopped cloves of garlic. When you can smell the garlic starting to cook, add the chicken. When the chicken's cooked, take it out and then leave it to one side. Add flour to the remaining oil so that it goes thick. Then stir in about 2 cups of chicken stock  to make the beginnings of the Alfredo sauce.  Add a good spoonful of nutmeg to the sauce. I slipped on the nutmeg and added too much, but it was really yummy - so don't worry about it, go for it with the nutmeg. Then add sour cream until the sauce is a good consistency. Sprinkle with black pepper.

When the pasta and the veggies are all cooked, combine everything into a big pile of deliciousness and sprinkle with Parmesan. The whole family loved it! They had three or four servings each until they cleaned the pan.

Salmon - Rushed Dinner

I didn't take a picture of this but I want to write it here because I did something that I haven't done before and I think it worked well.

I got a nice big piece of salmon and cut it into 2 pieces (1 for me and one for the boy). I heated some olive oil in a pan, added 2 cloves of garlic put the salmon in and fried it so the outside was golden but the inside was still a little tender.

In a second pan, I fried a whole punnet of button mushrooms (sliced) in a small knob of butter until they turned golden brown. The mushrooms readily absorb the butter so it's pretty much a dry heat.  Then I added a mountain of spinach and let it cook for about 1 minute. I then poured a small amount of vegetable stock in  keep it moist but didn't want to add more fat.

Served with cous cous.

It probably took about 10mins to make, was reasonably healthy and made enough for lunches the next day too.

Baked Aubergine with Cheese and Basil

My husband could not poop. We tried a fybogel, we tried fluids, but alas, pooping did not happen. I googled  anti-constipation foods and read that aubergine (egg-plant) and broccoli are good at getting things moving. Armed with this information, I browsed BBC Good Food with my husbands bowels on my mind.

The result was this recipe, for baked aubergine with tomato, mozzarella & Parmesan. Everyone really liked it. My son was explicit that this is easily the most delicious meal that I've made under the guise of healthy family meals. He was torn between being excited to eat it all immediately and keen to keep leftovers for his lunch the next day. My husband agreed and they both had second helpings, and it made enough that we had plenty left over for lunches as well.

baked aubergine

The important thing to note is that there was an entire ball of mozzarella, the majority of a pack of Parmesan and an entire bottle of olive oil in this meal. The likelihood is that it is not going help us get into our swimming costumes with pride this summer. It is, however, vegetarian and full of fresh ingredients, so presumably, we're not going to have rickets.

baked aubergine served with broccoli

p.s.
my husband pooped about 5 minutes before the meal hit the table, so I can't speak to the digestive properties of this meal.

Soupa scoopa and mighty soups

I made soups. My son has a new thermos for taking hot lunch to school. We can really cram anything in there but it will all get combined by the end of the day so soup makes more sense. I've been trying out some new homemade recipes. We eat the soup for dinner and the boy takes the leftovers to school in his thermos the next day.

1. Chicken and Leek Soup

I mostly followed this recipe but I don't have a crock-pot so I just made it on the stove top. It was kinda tart to I stirred in some half and half when it was on the table and that eased it up a bit. It was very nice but it's one of those soups where every mouthful is exactly the same as the last. I served it with a salad with my favorite omega mix of nuts and berries on the top and some light balsamic dressing. Salad is so delicious but my family aren't so keen.

2. Vegetable and Chorizo Soup

This one was made from this recipe but I couldn't get all the ingredients at my usual supermarket so I made a few substitutions. First, I couldn't get vegetable stock so I used chicken stock. Second, they were out of leeks so I used a normal onion instead. I made double the quantity of soup so that it would last longer but decided that I should use half chorizo and half a less fatty meat so it was half chorizo and half chicken. My son and I both thought that this one was great but my husband preferred the potato and leek soup. There were so many veggies in here that I didn't make a salad, just served with bread.

Tangy turkey sausage casserole

I fried an onion, six Italian spiced turkey sausages and a punnet of mushrooms together in a large pan (all sliced). When the sausage was cooked, I added half a teaspoon of paprika, half a cup of apple cider vinegar and a quarter of a cup of Worcestershire sauce. I let this simmer together for about 15 mins.

As it simmered, it all went the same unappealing shade of browny-grey. I started to worry that my  spontaneous combination of ingredients would be too tart  As I was struggling to come up with a dinner rescue strategy, I let my son taste the juice and he really liked the flavor  I decided to give it a try and served it with sweet potato mash and green beans. The kid licked the plate clean and is taking leftovers to school tomorrow. I love it when my son enjoys my cooking. :)

My husband is out so I can't comment on what he thought of it, but i'll update later.

Update: Husband approved