, ,

Standardby Julie81 Comments

If you didn’t get an email asking for your coordinates so I could ship you a spanking new Crock Pot this morning, sorry about that. I so wish I could have sent one to each of you, but I doubt the fairy godmother/FedEx guy will show up on my doorstep with 200+ new Crock Pots. That was so much fun though – it makes me want to give stuff away all the time – perhaps I will start Free Stuff Fridays (far better than Casual Fridays or Freaky Fridays, don’t you think?) so stay tuned. I’ll try to scare up some more loot. In the spirit of the contest, and because I just got home last night from foodstyling for said Crock Pot media tour in Edmonton, I decided it was a slow cooker night. (That, and I had to do CBC traffic this afternoon until 6pm.) Besides, when I got home and unloaded all my gear and had Crock Pots all over my counter andContinue reading

0
Share
, ,

Standardby Julie54 Comments

I do believe I have achieved one of the most visually unappealing meals possible – the fleshy colour and mushy texture of both chicken and smashed potatoes did not make this an easy photo. I was all set to make French onion soup tonight, to justify my 25 cent purchase of two soup bowls circa 1972 at a garage sale last summer, when I got a call just after noon to see if I was available to go do traffic on the Homestretch. My first reaction: what can I put in the slow cooker that will be done in 6 hours? And can any of it come from the freezer? I remembered something I saw on S’s blog recently – chicken cooked in applesauce – and considering my plethora of apples, mushy apples, applesauce and other apple products, it seemed fitting. Plus our nice, non-carnivorous neighbours brought over a box of frozen chicken breasts they got as a freebie-with-purchase last week at Superstore. It seemedContinue reading

0
Share
, ,

Standardby Julie42 Comments

I’m not really a steak and potatoes gal. Which isn’t to say I don’t love steak or potatoes; I just don’t come to a meal by considering the meat first and then filling the space around it with the requisite starch and veg. As you may have noticed over the past 239 (!) days, I tend toward meals that combine all elements into one. Or maybe I’m just lazy. But I was perusing Stephanie’s blog – she is using her Crockpot every night for a year (a braver soul than I, I think) and came across a recipe for a layered dinner – the name of which shot me straight back to the 70s – where you tuck your steak, potato and corn in the crockpot and leave for 7 hours, and come back to them all cooked. And it worked, technically, although it all came out roughly the same shade of beige, and was a litte… utilitarian. This photo gives it a little more justice than it likely deserves.Continue reading

0
Share
, ,

Standardby Julie337 Comments

Today was not a good day for Spanx. It wasn’t the best day for a boiled dinner either, and I know, it could not sound less appetizing. Technically it wasn’t boiled, but slow-cooked. Either way an unusual choice – I’ve never eaten corned beef brisket before, let alone cooked one. But. Every time I haul out my slow cooker (it’s not that big a deal, really) I get all giddy over it and go on a slow cooker kick for awhile before putting it away again. After the pulled pork fiasco I wanted to give it another go, so stopped at the grocery store on the way home and perused the meat section. I’m not sure if you’ve seen those sealed plastic packages containing corned beef brisket in brine – they have them at Safeway, and every single time I see them I pause and ponder it, partly because they are foreign to me, and partly because Mike always said that corned beef brisket was theContinue reading

0
Share
, , , ,

Standardby Julie72 Comments

Except that I can’t eat any. I’m having a minor test done tomorrow, which means I can only ingest clear fluids for 24 hours. Me! Going without food for 24 hours! Plus however much time I spend at the hospital tomorrow afternoon, which I’m sure will seem far longer on an empty stomach. So, planning to spend a full Sunday out of the kitchen (very unusual for me), I made a batch of chicken stew with pesto yesterday for Mike and W. If I didn’t work in the food world, and had just a few go-to dinner recipes in my repertoire, this would be one of them. If I was one of those Moms who made meals on rotation – meatloaf Mondays, spaghetti Tuesdays, pork chop Wednesdays, and so on, this would definitely make the cut. Willem loves it (possibly on account of the pesto, which he seems to be in love with), and so do Mike and I. For some reason it turns out creamierContinue reading

3
Share
, ,

Standardby Julie80 Comments

Today I’ve been working on an article about chiles, and as such, testing recipes that use them. My countertop is covered with dried guillano, ancho and as-yet-unidentified green, red and purplish chile peppers. One of the recipes I tested was sort of a pulled pork-goulash-sloppy José kind of thing. Using pork shoulder, I wanted to braise it, so since I didn’t get started until after 10 pm I browned it first in my skillet, then put it all in the slow cooker last night before I went to bed, fully intending to get up at 3am and check on it – in fact, I got a little giddy at the idea of sitting alone at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, writing something stirring that could only come to me at such an odd hour. The single light above me might swing subtly back and forth, as if I was in the bowel of a ship. Why does the image of aContinue reading

3
Share