Fall Dinners from the Slow Cooker

Every fall with back to school and the return of fall sports schedules I struggle with dinners. I do love to use my crockpot, both for the sake of convenience, and for the comfort food meals that we all love as the weather begins to change. 

I just saw this post for 15 Fall Dinners from the Slow Cooker from theKitchn.com and thought I'd share. 

It looked like some new ideas, as well as some new twists on old favorites. 

The recipes included in the post are:

1. Curried Vegetable and Chickpea Stew

2. Slow-Cooker Vegan Pumpkin Curry

3. Slow-Cookier Chicken Burrito Bowls

4. Slow-Cooked Bolognese Sauce

5. Slow-Cooked Brisket & Onions

6. Slow-Cooker White Chicken Chili

7. Slow-Cooker Sausage & Spinach Lasagna

*the only time I tried lasagna in the slow cooker, I did not love it. Not sure I'll try it again.

8. Slow-Cooker Chicken in Milk

*Hmmm.... We'll have to look at this one a bit. Sounds a little bizarre to me.

9. Slow-Cooker Black Bean Enchiladas

10. Slow-Cooker Korean Short Ribs

11. Slow-Cooker Tuna Noodle Casserole

*I enjoy a tuna sandwich, but have never made a tuna casserole. Not sure I'm up for this one either. Plus, the picture has peas. (YUCK!) I'll probably pass on this one.

12. Slow-Cooker Pork Carnitas

*This picture looks so good to me! And I love, love, love pork carnitas!

13. Slow-Cooker Celery Soup with Bacon

14. Slow-Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup

15. Slow-Cooker Coconut & Green Curry Pork

I'll be sure to let you know what I try and what we think. Please do the same if you try any!

green tomatoes

I'm not a tomato fan. My husband is. So I always plant some. This year we got more than he can eat or we can give away. We also still have loads of green one on the vine. Wondering if I and the girls will like them more green I'm trying them tonight in a soup. It helps that it is 65 degrees - welcome fall. Green Tomato and ham soup.

I forgot how yummy this was!

I made an Oven Roaster last night and was thinking of how to use the leftover chicken. This recipe came from a friend of Manny's!

Sweet Bride's Easy Spicy Mexican Chicken Soup

• 2-3 Cups cooked and cubed chicken (I roast chicken breasts, cool then cube)
• 4 cups chicken broth (you can make your own or use Imagine or Kitchen Basics chicken broth as they are both really good).
• 2 cans of Cream of Chicken Soup (like Campbell’s Healthy Choice with the lower sodium)
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 2 cans Rotel Mexican style tomatoes (these are spicy but really good cooked tomatoes). If you are worried about the heat, then use 1 can of the Rotel tomatoes and 1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes.
• 1- 4 oz. Can of diced green chilies
• 1 can of white corn, or you can cut the corn off of 2 ears, depending on the season.
• 1-1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 onion, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 carrot, cut into bite size pieces
• 1-2 Tablespoons of olive oil
• Chopped Cilantro
• Kosher salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 1-2 avocados

Roast the chicken breasts in a 350° oven until almost done. Let the chicken cool. Strip off the skin and discard. Cube the chicken and set aside. You could also use a pre-cooked chicken but I like using the breast meat.

In a stockpot or Dutch oven, sauté the onions, carrot and cumin until the onions are almost clear. Add the chicken stock, wine, cream of chicken soup, corn, tomatoes and diced chilies. Simmer until the carrots are done. Add the chicken and some chopped cilantro. Bring back to a simmer and taste. Adjust seasonings and simmer from 30 minutes up to 2 hours.

To serve 4-6 people: Ladle the soup in a bowl and top with chopped avocado and chopped cilantro.

I make corn bread to go with this soup. If you want a heartier meal add a good salad.

New Year, New Recipe

I like Katie's idea of a food related goal for the new year. Fish is not so much a problem for us. It is beans. I really like beans but my family does not. I want to work on adding more beans to our diet. I got a pressure cooker for christmas with this in mind. So I told my family once a week we are going to have meatless meals. I'm thinking beans. but we need to start slow. I cooked curried lentils as a side dish with a meal they all like. Then I froze the lentils in small batches and have been adding it to soups and stew. I also made a Minestrone with great white northern beans. Brad seems to like that, so I'm sticking with the great white northern and going to try Bridget's Brazilian Black Beans w/o black beans and meat. 

1 med onion, chopped

2-3 Cans black beans, drained

1-2 T olive oil

1 lb Cut up Chorizo, Linguica, kielbasa, pork, or ham (any combination of 2-3 meats work well)

2 cloves garlic chopped

8oz can crushed tomatoes

Topping: 1 med tomato, 1 med onion, fresh cilantro, chopped olive oil and vinegar to taste.

In a large sauce pot, saute onion and garlic in olive oil. Add meat to brown add tomatoes and black beans. Simmer 20 -30 minutes, if time permits flavor is enhanced with additional simmering.

Serve beans over rive, garnish w/tomato, onion and cilantro.

The Dunican sisters were anti-grocery shopping today. I’m not sure what Regina ended up finding in her pantry and freezer to turn into dinner, but I had quite a coup, inspired by National Seafood Bisque Day, I combined the recipe the punchbowl.com page recommended with some inspiration from Ina Garten’s Shrimp Bisque (because I had all the ingredients on hand).

This recipe is truly a last-minute preparation. I made the whole thing from frozen shrimp to eating the piping hot bowl with a piece of crusty bread in 30 minutes. If you use frozen shrimp, skip the sautéing step, but the olive oil does add some depth of flavor to your bisque. If you don’t have white wine, you can substitute seafood stock or even water, but add a splash (less than ¼ cup of brandy, vermouth, or dry sherry at the end). Remember to take the center out of the blender when blending hot liquids; hot liquids tend to cause the blender to “explode” and are quite dangerous, so place a folded dish towel over the hole in the blender top to let the steam escape, and keep your hand on it so the top and towel stay in place.

Truly last-minute “National Seafood Bisque Day” shrimp bisque

1 T olive oil
1 lb shrimp, in shells, frozen is fine
1 bottle white wine
1 qt light cream
¼ t thyme leaves
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch kosher salt
1 pinch cayenne pepper

If shrimp is thawed, sauté shrimp, shells and all, in olive oil; add thyme, pepper, and salt. Simmer shrimp in wine just until cooked (pink), overcooking shrimp will cause it to be tough. Pull shrimp from wine and chill in refrigerator until cool enough to handle. In the meantime, add cream to wine and continue simmering over low heat.

Once shrimp is cool enough, peel shrimp and place in blender; reserve 12 shrimp, peeled, with tails intact. Add liquid so blender is half full. With center of blender top out of hole, place folded dish cloth over hole. Keeping your hand on dish cloth, pulse blender until shrimp is chopped fine. Return to pot to warm over low heat. Stir in cayenne pepper. Serve immediately with two whole shrimp as garnish.

SOUP-er Easy!

My kids always love to order Miso Soup when we get Chinese or Japanese food, mostly for the tofu. They have been asking me to make tofu at home, but anytime I have, it hasn't come out right -- mostly apparently because I do "stuff" to it. So tonight, mostly because I didn't have much food in the house and partly because I had 2 running out to soccer practice, I threw together a super easy soup:

I heated up some chicken broth, threw in some veggies from the fridge, added a can of cubed chicken breast and some diced tofu. Really easy and the kids loved it!

Mom's Clam Chowder

Does anyone have Mom's recipe for Clam Chowder handy?

As Admin, I'm taking the liberty of editing this entry and placing the recipe right in the entry. I find it easier to find recipes when they're here, not in the comments. Regina, hope you don't mind.


Mom's clam chowder


2 strips bacon
½ c onion, chopped
¾ c celery, chopped
1½ pt half-and-half
¾ pt heavy cream
3 bottles clam broth
3 cans minced clams
3 cans whole clams
1½ c potatoes, diced
white pepper and salt, to taste


Cook bacon. Remove and set aside. Sauté onion and celery in bacon fat until clear. Combine half-and-half, heavy cream, broth, clams, potatoes, and crumbled bacon in stockpot. Add onion and celery. Season to taste. Cook until potatoes are soft (about 1 hour). Very easy!

A week of good meal ideas

Sometimes I'm totally out of food thoughts and ideas. This meal ideas just seemed to have "hit" me. I had made Balsamic Beef in the crock pot http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/345/BalsamicBeefSandwiches64948.shtml it was good, but made a lot, so I was looking for a way to use it up. As we had eaten it as sandwiches once and added some red, green and yellow bell peppers to it and served it over egg noodles another time. At my daughter's request, I decided to carmalize some onions and add the last of the beef and some beef broth to it. We all enjoyed this Onion soup variation.

Next I tried some recipes from the January 2009 addition of Everyday Food Magazine. This week we tried the Light Italian Wedding Soup, it was good and we had escarole for the first time. The turkey meatballs do give off a "smell" while simmering, but it was enjoyed by all with bread and a green salad topped with sundried tomatoes, smoked gouda and bacon bits. Last night we made the Steak and Red Onion sandwiches also from Everyday Food Magazine( January 2009 ). I decided to sautee the onions while the beef was resting as I thought we'd all prefer them cooked rather than raw. We opted for our favorite light dressing instead of using the vinegar and oil suggested by the recipe. We also rounded out the meal with the leftover Beef and Onion soup. Our breath was smelly but everyone enjoyed the meals, three nights in a row. Now that may be a first! Today we are home enjoying a snow day. We'll light the fire place soon and I may throw together a pot of chili or defrost Saurbrauten from the freezer (that would be 4 meals liked by all:). Or possible get my husband to cook something in is dutch oven at the fireplace. Now that would be an awesome ending to a good food week. I will post the recipes later.

Create a Cookbook

I was with Katie at Book Group last night (neither of us had read the book…), and we got to talking about food – surprise!

We ended up talking about all of our favorite recipes: Katie’s Mom’s Clam Chowder, Lynne’s “Great-Grandmother’s” Italian Peasant Soup, our friend Marilyn’s Delta Shrimp, our friend Lisa’s Crockpot Ground Turkey 3 Bean Soup, etc. I told them all about this cool website that my cousin Betteanne sent to me -- http://www.tastebook.com/.

Check it out – you create a hardcover, spiral-bound cookbook of your favorite recipes that you can then order. You either type in new recipes or import from other websites. It's a great, easy way to organize your recipes.

I’ve created a cookbook citing Katie, Lynne, Marilyn, Lisa and others as sources and am thinking of creating one with all my mom’s old recipes as a gift for my sisters. Let me know and I can send you the link to my cookbook if you’re interested.

Cool-weather Soups

I always love to have soups during this time of year. It makes me feel warm and toasty, add salad and a bread, and I am in heaven!

Last night, I made a butternut squash soup. I roasted the squash with a little olive oil, s&p at 400 for about 45 minutes, until it was tender. Then, sauteed a little onion and garlic, added the squash pulp and some chicken stock, nutmeg and sage. Brought the soup to a boil and let it simmer. Then, pureed in the blender until smooth. Drizzled a little molasses on top before serving. It is good, but I would be more than welcome to trying other butternut squash soup recipes, as well as other soup recipes in general. 

I will come back shortly and post a few of our favorites.