Bowl

So I pulled out my crock pot this week and made the potato soup from one of my crock pot experiments.  Best potato soup ever!  

And what could be make my potato soup even better?  My potato soup in a bread bowl! 

However…  I am too lazy to make my own bread bowls. 

I had a couple of Kaiser rolls leftover from the bag I got off the day-old rack at Tops and had an idea:  What if I made a mini bread bowl from one of those?

 

 

It worked!  But it was really small and didn’t hold much soup.  I thought I would be OK with it because I don’t eat a lot to begin with, but this wasn’t enough of a meal even for me   

But… it was really good!

This would be a really nice idea for an appetizer, and I think I would serve it as such the next time I have company over for dinner.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Maple

While driving home from shopping tonight, I saw some signs up advertising the upcoming Maple Weekends. I don't know why, but I was thinking that the Maple Weekends were in February and that I had missed it this year.

I was disappointed to see that there is only one farm from Niagara County participating in the event. I think that there were three or four last year.

That being said, it looks like one of my neighbors is tapping his trees for sap. I don't remember seeing anyone around here doing that before, so if this is his first year, I wish him luck! The whole process is actually quite interesting. Maybe one day when I'm all caught up on the stuff that I *need* to do around the house, I might take the time to experiment on some tree tapping myself. I'll have to scout my property and see exactly what kind of trees I have...

I've still been feeling down, and it just seems like nothing is going right lately. I decided that I was going to try and lighten things up for myself by trying to make a crock pot dessert. I remember seeing some that looked yummy from the list I had posted a while back. I went to look up one of the recipes only to find that the site has been taken down. ~heavy sigh~

I couldn't find anything else online that seemed to pique my interest. Lesson learned: If you see a recipe that you think that you might want to try someday, write it down or print it out.

Crock Pot Experiment #2

Encouraged by my first try at using a crock pot, I decided to try something else... Potato Soup!

This project was a bit more work than the chili. This time, instead of just dumping everything into the pot, I actually had to peel, cut up and cook the potatoes first. For most people, this isn't a big deal, but to a non-cook it was quite the process :) Maybe next time I could try using the canned potatoes... those are already peeled and pre-cooked, right?

I ended up substituting the cream of chicken soup with some chicken-flavored bouillon and skipping the onion, but otherwise I followed the recipe. I imagine that this could easily be made without a crock pot too, but I have one now, so I'm going to use it :P

I'm happy to report that the potato soup gets two thumbs up! I liked it a lot and the four other people I shared it with also thought it turned out terrific.

I froze some, and the rest is almost gone. That's saying a lot, because it was 4 quarts of soup and it's only been three days :)

Chilly Chili

So my first crockpot meal was chili.




The whole process was pretty quick and painless. I pretty much just dumped all the ingredients in the pot (using veggie meat crumbles, I didn't have to worry about browning any beef) and turned the thing on. Kind of hard for anyone - even me - to mess up! Seven-and-a-half hours later I turned it off. Cleaning the crock was easy - nothing stuck inside. And the chili turned out not half-bad... Considering I made it and it's not a dessert :)

It is a bit on the salty side, but I think that is because I used the veggie beef instead real beef. Next time, I would just not add the extra salt called for in the recipe.


I had my first bowl with cheese on the top - yum!

I am going to freeze some and see how long it lasts - there was a *lot* of chili there for one person :)

Overall, I will call my first crockpot experience a success. I will not be afraid to try something else. I kind of have my eye on a cheese-potato soup concoction...

Crock

Let me start by saying that I am not a cook by any stretch of the imagination. I can make good cookies and good brownies, but when it comes to 'real' food, the microwave is my best friend. Whenever I've tried to cook a real meal using a cook book and the oven, the thing I try to make just never turns out right. One can only take so many failures before totally giving up :)

That being said, I received an email this past week with this link to a bazillion crock pot recipes. As I quickly perused them out of curiosity, I became more and more intrigued. A lot of them looked *really* good!

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try some crock pot recipes. Most of them look easy enough that even I can't mess them up. If I like them, they could be an easy way for me to make my dinners and lunches. They might even be healthier than the add-water-milk-and-butter stuff out of the box.

So this week I bought myself a crockpot.

This weekend I am going to try a recipe. I'm not sure which one yet - I have it narrowed down to a couple, tho'.

We'll see how it goes.

Wish me luck :)

On a side note, I'm watching They Wait right now, which I taped off the Sci-fi channel a while ago. I like scary ghost stories, and this one is really good so far. I think it's the best one I've seen since The Grudge 2 - which was really good.