Freezer Meals: Teriyaki Chicken

The second meal to come out of my freezer and into my slow cooker was teriyaki chicken.

Ingredients
Medium - large bag of carrots
Red onion cut into large chunks
2 large cans pineapple (undrained)
4 garlic cloves
4 chicken breasts (or eight chicken thighs)
1 cup teriyaki sauce
Split between 2 bags, seal, mix, lay flat, freeze
Directions for bags:
Add 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce to pot. Cook low 6-7 hours. Serve over hot rice.

 It was super easy to throw everything in the bag, like easier than the other ones. The only part that took any time was the carrots. I wasn't sure from the recipe what to do with them, so I julienne'd them through my mandoline. The original recipe called for chicken breasts, but my grocery store was absurdly out of chicken breasts, so I substituted chicken thighs, and left them whole.

Freezer Meals - Italian Sausage and Peppers

The first meal from my freezer cooking that I made was Sausage & Peppers.

Ingredients:
6 Italian Sausages
2 Green Peppers
1 Red Pepper
1 Red Onion
4 Cloves Garlic, Minced
2 Cand Italian Diced Tomatoes
2 Tbs Italian Seasoning
Split between two bags, seal, mix, lay flat, freeze
Directions for bags:
Add drizzle of olive oil, cook on low 6 hours, serve over hot noodles or fresh french bread with mozzarella cheese.

Just looks like veggies to me!

Freezer Cooking

 I love freezer cooking. It's a pretty basic concept, but the application is a little intensive.

Basically, you take some time, and prep a whole bunch of meals and put them in your freezer so when you want dinner, it's prepped and ready and just needs to be finished. Finishing varies on what recipes you do. I've done casseroles that just need to be popped in the oven for an hour or two, I've done barbecue meat that just needs to be thawed and grilled, but my favourite is slow cooker meals. You toss everything in a bag and then thaw it, dump in in your slow cooker and have dinner! Or, put it in a strategically sized container before freezing and then dump the frozen dinner in your slow cooker.

I haven't done this gluten-free, but I did do it a few times a few years ago. I always had a hard time getting all the groceries - it would take me a few days to find everything, and then I had to set aside an entire Saturday to do it all. I'm not sure how exactly I did things differently this time, but it worked a lot smoother.

I figured out what meals I wanted to make, made a combined list of groceries, went straight to the grocery store after work, got home around six, and by ten o'clock everything was in the freezer.

BBQ Chicken and Potatoes in a Slow Cooker

When I don't have much time to prep dinner, I steer towards my slow cookers, because I can put something together at lunch and then eat it a few hours later. When I don't plan for something specific (and find ingredients and a recipe), then I fall back on one simple guideline: Potatoes, chicken, flavour. It's simple, low-prep and fool-proof. I usually have chicken and potatoes on hand, whatever flavour I use can vary from spices to sauces, whatever I'm feeling or whatever's handy.

I buy baby potatoes, and we like eating them with the skins on. You could peel and cube larger ones, but slices of potatoes also works well. You want to cover the whole bottom of the pot.

Slow Cooker Sweet Potatoes

I love sweet potatoes. I love the flavour, the texture, the colour. I love how they can be dressed up in brown sugar and cinnamon and taste like a desert or be covered in savoury spices and make a great side to a breast of chicken.

[Fun fact: A yam is a plant that grows large starchy tubers, and while sweet potatoes are large, starchy tubers, they are not actually yams, although places in the US call them that. Google it.]

Taco Pork Tenderloins

Something I've been trying to do lately is make a little extra for dinner and plan for leftovers. Often our leftovers just sit in our fridge until we give up and throw them out.

One of the best ways to do that is to make two meals at the same time. I saw a recipe in a magazine for pork tenderloins, and underneath it had a couple of ideas of what to do with the leftovers. One of those ideas was to shred the pork and put it on a sandwich, another was to put it in a taco. That one sounded brilliant.

So I put bought two pork tenderloins and put them both in the slow cooker for a day. We ate one for dinner that night and it was delicious, and the other went in the fridge. The next day, I shredded it, added taco spice, warmed it back up and we had tacos. It was also delicious.  I'm going to have to do more meals like this.

Quick Meals - Slow Cooker Dump-Pot Soup

Well, the new year is not everything I hoped it would be. I haven't done a lick of baking, I haven't blogged much so far, I still don't have much energy, and I'm still crazy busy. We're only ten days in, sure, but I just feel like I've failed the last ten days.

I have been cooking, though! Sort of... I've made two dinners in a slow cooker this week. One of them turned out fantastic, and the other was so-so. So what was so fantastic? My dump-pot soup, that's what. I basically took everything I had lying around and threw a bit of it in the slow cooker.

I started with a pound of ground beef, and added some water and cooked it on low for four hours. When I was home for my lunch break, I added some more. Two tomatoes, some spinach and half an onion went in the food processor before going in the slow cooker. I also minced two cloves of garlic, and added a bay leaf and some oregano for spice. I tossed in a tiny slice of dehydrated jalepeno, and a few baby potatoes sliced thinly.

In hindsight, I should have left out the potatoes. I was thinking that the soup needed something with consistency, but the potatoes left it feeling like a really thin stew.

It was really tasty though, and even tastier the next day after the soup sat in the fridge.

My Untraditional New Year's Eve Party

I'm pretty sure I was meant to be a sixties housewife, but somebody somewhere messed up and I was born in the nineties. What the crap, guys? I live in a time where I'm not expected to bake, host dinner parties and clean all the time. I'm expected to have a job, go to work, and be independent. I would way rather be home all day, keeping the house clean, making casseroles for dinner, baking plenty, and hosting dinner parties often. Honest to goodness, I was meant to be a sixties housewife.

But with the way life has been going, I haven't been hosting much. The last event I had at my house was in May. Recently, a couple friends of mine were planning a New Year's Eve Bash, so I jumped on the chance to host it. Yes, that meant I would need to do a lot of cleaning, but goshdarn it, I wanted to have people over again.

Until it was time to plan the party, and then I realized I've never even been to a NYE party... I mean, my parents had friends over every year, and I used to go out to a big youth event, but that's it. I've never even been to a bar for NYE.

So I didn't know what to make, what to serve, what to do, or what to have on hand. I felt totally at a loss. I figured it out, and I think it went really great, but I didn't exactly do anything traditional.

Gluten Free Chex Mix

M's dad lives a 16 hour drive from here. I am told only Canadians measure distance with time, but it's the only way I know how. So his dad (and sisters and grandparents) all live South of the border. Which is great, and we've gone to visit them a couple times, both over Christmas. His grandma makes Chex mix every single year for Christmas, and M's dad picked up the habit (and the recipe). I'm not hooked on it, because I've only had it two Christmas's, but M loves it, and misses it around the holidays.

When my family, up here, decided to have a Christmas/Thanksgiving dinner, I had to figure out what to bring. Something gluten-free, without being really obviously gluten-free, and something everyone would enjoy. I thought of Chex mix, for M's sake. I didn't use his dad's recipe, I used a recipe I found online that called for a slow cooker.

Slow cooker lasagna

Working 11 hours in a day, between two jobs doesn't leave much time for eating. I usually have one hour between getting off work and having to be at work. Thanks to two very different dress codes, I have to change in that time too. Some days, I just down a can of chicken and rice soup, some days I heat up some leftovers, and some days I actually have it together enough to make an actual meal. By that, I mean my husband who gets home fifteen minutes before me sometimes starts dinner, unless I put something in the slowcooker. The problem with slow cooker meals is that I usually have to put it in at lunch time. If I have it together, I can prepare it the night before, toss it in at lunch, and eat it at dinner. Otherwise, I have to prepare it at lunch hour, which leaves me less time to eat another meal.

Yesterday was one of those days. I prepared it at lunch, and ate it at dinner. There were three reasons I selected this recipe.

1. I miss lasagna. Like, a lot.
2. I bought gluten free lasagna noodles awhile back, but I haven't had the time to prepare a lasagna (let's be honest, they are a little intensive. 
3. My roommate recently made a lasagna, and has been slowly eating it over the last week. Staring at it every time I open the fridge made me desperate enough to try anything.

I wasn't really sure about this recipe. The blog I found it on said she thought it would dry and crunchy, but it wasn't. I thought the same, but even worse, because my noodles would be gluten free. But they weren't! Actually, they were a little bit soggy. The recipe says to cook on low for three hours, but I had to cook it for four, because my time is a little limited. I would still highly suggest it to anyone, GF, or not.

I found it here, and I made some tweaking. First of all, she didn't mention any beef, although her picture shows some. I wanted beef, so I browned some, and layered it in there as well. Second, M hates parmesan, so I took that out and added a little more mozza instead. This recipe is pretty relaxed, and you can do whatever tweaking you like.

Here's what I used

1 box lasagna noodles - uncooked

1 1/2 cups cottage cheese

1/2 - 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1 egg

1/2 - 1 pound ground beef

1 jar spaghetti sauce

Here's what I did:

Brown the ground beef. Mix the cheeses and egg together in a bowl. Layer.

Start with sauce on the bottom, then dry noodles. I had to break mine to get them to fit in the pot, and then I put the broken pieces around the edges. Layer some cheese, beef, sauce, noodles, until you run out. Finish off with some sauce.

You can add cheese for the last half hour, which I didn't for two reasons. First of all, I wasn't home half an hour before I ate this. And second, I wanted parmesan, M didn't, so I put parmesan on my plate after I served it.

Day 75: My Basics of Slow Cooking

I don't know if I've told you this yet, but I have five crock pots. Yep, five. They all work just fine, and they're all less than two years old. They're also all different sizes.

You see, before I got married, I had one and only one, and it was a good one. When we were engaged, I didn't put a single crock pot on my wedding registry, because we had one, and who needs more than one?

And then I got three for my wedding. We got a gift reciept with one, so we turned it into some cookie sheets, but that still left us with three large crock pots. I decided to keep two, and hang on to the third, but leave it in it's packaging. Recently, I had need of three large crock pots, so I pulled it out. They are 4 qt, 5 qt, and 6qt, respectively.

Even the smallest is a little big for making dinner for two, so at Christmas time I asked for a small crock pot, the kind you can make two chicken breasts in, and both my mother and husband bought me one, but they were each different sizes too, (2 qt and 3 qt) so now I actually have five different sized slow cookers. Oh boy.

Anyways... I was recently explaining this all to someone, and he said he didn't know how to use a crock pot. It seemed difficult, and exact. I tried to explain how easy and unexact it really is, but then I remembered how I used to feel about them. I was obsessive about having the right amount of liquid in there, afraid it would burn off, and I had to measure everything before it went in. After cooking dozens and dozens of meals in slow cookers, I've got it pretty well figured out. I can guesstimate the average recipe. Granted, I will still follow recipes very carefully for anything that isn't chicken, ground beef or soup.

So, some basic rules of basic slow cooking...

1. Add about half a cup of liquid to a meat. It can be marinade, water, broth, or sauce.

2. You can cook meat in bulk by just adding water, and then freeze portions for other meals.

3. If you are cooking for one meal only, flavour it. It will taste immensely plain if you don't. Spices, barbeque sauce, or a marinade are my favourites.

4. It depends on your slow cooker, but the general rule is Low for 7-8 hours, High for 4-5. If you have the time to put it on low, I suggest you do. It's less likely to burn, and tends to come out more fall-apart-in-your-mouth.

5. There are a million recipes on Pinterest for slow cookers. They can be a bit overwhelming, but if you find a good collection of slow cooker recipes, you can pick your favourite and start experimenting.

6. I suggest slow cooking if you tend to have time during the day, but no time in the hour before you want to eat dinner. I also highly reccomend it if you have a small kitchen, because you just need a square foot of space and a plug-in. Also, it's the second best option (next to barbeque-ing) on hot summer days, because it lets off a lot less heat than your oven or stove.

Okay. So there are my basics. I'm sure I'll share a bunch of slow cooker recipes as we get into summer, so stay tuned.

Oh, and this all came to mind because I made dinner in a crock pot tonight. I dumped two chicken breasts in, added half a jar of leftover spaghetti sauce (with chickpeas and spices) and turned it on low. I think we ate six or seven hours later, and I made rotini for the side. That's how simple dinner can be.

Day 73: Roast Chicken in a Slow Cooker

Well, today was the day of my big family dinner. It actually went really well, food was devoured, and forks were not thrown. My sister did throw a spoon at me, but at least it wasn't a fork. Or a knife!

I started the day around nine this morning, with three chickens in my sink.

I said that to someone yesterday, and apparently she thought I meant like dead chickens, but with their heads and feathers... Gross. No, I mean raw, ready to cook fryer chickens. My mother and I agreed on slow cooker whole chickens, because yes, I have three crock pots that will fit a whole chicken. And I have two more that are too small. I have a crock pot problem.

Anyways, I guess I actually started with potatoes and carrots. When slow cooking chickens, you need to put something between the chicken and the crock pot. You can quarter some potatoes and loosely wrap them in foil, you can throw some whole carrots down, you can chop onion, carrot and potato if you like. I opted for the last one, but I quickly discovered my onion had gone bad, so it was just carrots and potatoes.

I rinsed two pounds of baby potatoes, and roughly chopped a pound of carrots and divided them between the crock pots, so that all of the bottoms were covered.

Then I mixed up a few spices in a bowl.

I took each chicken one by one and rinsed it, patted it dry with paper towel, rubbed it down with the spice mix, set it in a slow cooker, and tossed two or three garlic cloves inside. I put two of the chickens with their breast bone up, and one of them with the backside up, and the only difference I noticed was that the breast-down one came out in one piece, whereas the other two came out in about twenty-five pieces. That could be several other factors too, but I would suggest putting it breast bone down.

And then I put the appropriate lids on, and turned them all on low. I put them on at 9:30, and the first chicken came out around 5:30, with the last one coming out closer to 7. Around 4, the chicken in the biggest crock pot (with the most room) starting falling apart, and within an hour, it had collapsed completely. It doesn't need to be that dramatic, but you should see the meat starting to pull away from bone. And that means you have juicy, succulent, fall-of-the-bone chicken, with little-to-no effort.

I also made mashed potatoes, and roasted asparagus, and served the potatoes and carrots from the bottom of the slow cookers. They were well cooked, and very savoury. I didn't plan on serving them, but we ran out of mashed potatoes and all the menfolk were complaining. They were delicious enough to have served them in the beginning though. Oh, and I also made gluten-free gravy with the chicken drippings from the slow cookers, and a gluten-free thickener I bought for stew (that I never made).

Roasted Chicken in a Slow Cooker

1 fryer chicken

2 cups roughly chopped vegetables (potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.)

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp black pepper

2-4 whole garlic cloves

Put the chopped vegetables in the bottom of the crock pot.

Mix all of the dry spices together. Rinse the chicken, then pat down with a paper towel. Rub spice mixture all over the chicken, and under the skin of the breast.

Set the chicken on top of the vegetables, then place the garlic cloves inside the cavity.

Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours, or high for 4-5 hours, until the meat starts falling off the bones.





Day 68: Crock Pot Apple Cider

Well, it snowed today. When I woke up this morning there was a good six inches on top of my car, and it was wet, thick, solid snow that stuck to all of the tree branches, and broke a bunch of branches, and even toppled some trees.

Seriously. Tomorrow is May first, and the world is completely covered in snow. In the spirit of extended winter, I made apple cider today. Back when hubby was in school, he got it in his head that he wanted homemade apple cider, so I figured out how to make it and made him a couple batches. It's pretty easy, but I make it in the slow cooker, so it just takes forever. It also makes my entire house smell like Christmas and fall for a few days.

I've tried it with peeled apples, and with apples that still have their peel, and I decided the biggest difference was the amount of prep time. The recipe is extremely exact, I know. You quarter some apples, add some water, throw in some spices, and cook it until they're done. If you mess up a tiny bit, then it's all gone wrong. Kidding.

Quarter some apples and put them in a crock pot. I put too many apples in, don't fill it this full, but I just used all that I had, and I'm stubborn. Pour water in, until the apples start to float a little.

For sure you need cinnamon and cloves, and I added ginger, allspice and nutmeg. I forgot to put nutmeg in the picture. I added a teaspoon or so of cloves, two sticks of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of each of the spices at first. The spices you can always add more of at the end, after you taste it, but the cloves and cinnamon need to cook into the cider. Also, I would suggest adding a couple tablespoons of brown sugar. I was out this time, so I used white sugar, but it was definitely better with brown.

Turn your crock pot on low, and let it cook all day. It typically takes about eight hours, but you want the apples to cook and all the flavours to marry. Last time that I made this, I made it in two different crock pots at the same time. Admittedly, they had different amounts of apples and water, because they were different sizes, but after eight hours, this is what they looked like.

You want them to look like the one on the bottom, however long that takes. It might actually take less time, but as long as you don't burn it, you can leave it in.

I maybe forgot I had made apple cider until 10:30, so mine cooked for a little more than ten hours. I added my sugar then, and since it made exactly three cups, I didn't store any. However, you could. I have poured it straight into mason jars and sealed them, or just let them cool and put them in the fridge for a few days. It microwaves well.

The perfect remedy to a winter that just won't end.

Day 21: Babysitting

Okay, so here's something I never thought this whole gluten crap would effect. Babysitting.

Haha. I know, I sound like I'm a preteen girl. But really, I've been babysitting since grade eleven in highschool. When I only had a part-time job, I was sometimes babysitting 4-5 times a week. Mostly for the same family, but I have sat on lots of other children. I haven't managed any children alone at their house since December, so I kind of forgot about it all, except for my once-regular family. I'm still hoping to steal them from their daycare one of these Saturdays.

Anyways, I got a call tonight just after work from a family I've met briefly, but I knew they had my number to call for sitting. They asked if I could watch their kids (who I haven't really met) tonight. Since dinner was almost done, I said yes! Ah, the spontaneous life.

So yesterday, I stuck a pound of raw ground beef in the crock pot all day to make something for dinner, but my husband remembered he had a concert to go to, so he took off before I even got home for work. So at lunch today, I took that pound of ground beef, and threw it back in the crock pot with half a can of pasta sauce, a can of tomato paste, enough water to make it soupy, and a cup of pureed chickpeas (I got brave) and a bunch of spice. Left it on low all day, and the house smelled amazing when I got home. Since hubby gets home before me, he started a pot of water boiling for pasta, and I just had to throw some rice spaghetti in. Let me tell you this, I do not like that rice spaghetti. It was the first gluten-free pasta I'd had at home, and now I've had all of two. But people also keep telling me that pasta is the best GF thing. And this pasta, is not. No way. It's mushy and tough and foams and is weird. The vegetable pasta I have doesn't do any of that. It cooks and tastes exactly like pasta. So now I know which kind I am not buying again... So I added the yucky pasta to the simmering sauce, and it was less than fantastic. The beef had been cooked to the point that it was powdery. I tried to blame it on the chickpeas, but they were not at fault here. The beef was powdery. I guess the crock pot was too warm, or next time I just add the beef right before dinner. Hmm.

So that was dinner. Didn't take long, and then I ran out the door to go take care of two toddlers who had never met me so their parents could go car shopping in the bigger city.

They're asleep now, I'm actually writing this at their house. They were the best kids. The younger one met me, and asked me to pick her up. She curled up in my lap, and poked my nose. Just super friendly, super well-behaved children. I watched a movie with them, read them a few books, gave them a snack, and shipped them off to bed. Then I watched Sleepless in Seattle. And then five minutes before it ended, their mom called to say they'd be home in about an hour.

Of course, I was hungry. I'm always hungry lately. I often munch at babysitting houses, on cereals or fruit or whatever the kids usually snack on, so I know I'm not ruining meal plans. So I looked, and they have Timbits... Mmmmm... and Cheerios. Which would have been perfect, and my favorite brand of bread, and then I had to leave the kitchen. It's easy for me to eat at home because everything I can see, I can eat, but munching at other people's houses is far from safe.

So now I'm hungry, and yet again chastising myself for not carrying snacks everywhere I go. Blurgh.

Lessons learned today: Don't over crock-pot beef, and pack snacks and stop just saying you're going to!