Boeuf bourguignon in the crock pot

Today is one of those days. It's been nice for the past few days but as soon as Saturday hits, we get a snow storm. There's not much snow, in fact, most of it has melted from the streets and sidewalks. But for a family who wanted to do a little hiking today, it's simply too muddy. Instead, we're having an indoors sort of day.

To compliment the indoors day, I'm making a tasty crock pot dinner. It's a simplified take on boeuf bourguignon. This recipe is my modification of a modifed recipe. Julia Child would certainly scoff at my crock pot version. Good thing she's not in my kitchen. This recipe makes a full crock pot worth of food, so there's plenty for sharing or saving half for another meal. Here's what you need:

1 Tbsp of EVOO (pick your favorite flavor.....today I used blood orange)
1 medium onion, chopped
4-6 yukon gold potatoes, cubed
3 carrots, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
6 slices thick cut bacon, diced
1# stewing beef, cut into 1" cubes (you can use more if you prefer more meat, any red meat will do)
1/4 cup flour
3-4 Tbsp provencial spices (or alternate spices, more on this below)
5-6 cups beef or vegetable stock
1 cup red wine (or sub more stock)
salt and pepper to taste

Add chopped potatoes, carrots and celery to the crock pot. Look at all those wonderful colors! I used orange, yellow and purple carrots with yukon gold potatoes. Heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and bacon and cook until onions are soft and bacon is browned. Remove from pan and add to the crock pot leaving fat in the pan.

Pat your cubed meat dry and place in a ziploc bag with the flour and spices. Herbs de Provence certainly give it more of a french flair, but use what you have and what you like. I used a smoky spice blend I had in my spice cabinet. A simple salt, pepper, basil, and thyme blend works great.  I used beef for my meal, but if you're a hunter you can use deer, elk or antelope too. Shake to coat. Add the meat to your pan and brown on all sides. You may need to work in batches. Once the meat is browned, add about 2 cups of the stock and stir. Scrape the bottom of the pan to get all the drippings. Add to the crock pot.

Pour the remaining liquids into the crock pot, stir everything and set on low. You will want to let it cook at least 5-6 hours until the potatoes and carrots are tender. This is a forgiving recipe, so if you let it cook 8 hours, it's going to be just as delicious. Season with salt and pepper before serving.

There are more steps to this recipe than simply adding all ingredients to the crock pot. Trust me, the taste is worth it! As with many soups, the flavor is even better the next day. I like to serve it with some homemade bread. mmmm mmmmm.

As a side note, since I was using so many vegetables, I also took the time to make up a new batch of vegetable stock. I used the ends of my celery, onions and carrots plus added a little more into my stock pot. Today I also added some swiss chard, garlic and a few tomatoes. I love being able to use up the otherwise wasted pieces of vegetables. Just fill the pot with water over your veggies, bring to a boil, and then let simmer on low for a couple hours. Remove the veggies and add salt to taste. Let cool and pour into jars. You can keep it in the refrigerator for about a week. I usually store mine in the freezer until I'm ready to use it. Super simple, delicious, and much healthier for you than what you buy at the store.

Who says you can't get excited about spaghetti?

Spaghetti is a great comfort food. Warm pasta with a tomato based sauce. Simple. Classic. Boring? It depends. I admit, I used to buy my marinara sauce from the store. Easy. Cheap. (My local supermarket has cans for $0.80 each this week.) The prepared version is loaded with preservatives, sodium and lots of things I can't pronounce. So I started making my own. It's pretty simple, really. I will make a large vat of sauce every 6-8 weeks and freeze it in family size porions. I use the sauce for spaghetti, goulash and even chicken parmesan. No batch is ever quite the same. Partially because I generally don't use a recipe and partially because I "hide" vegetables in the sauce. It's a great way to use up the veggies I have on hand, especially those that my kids aren't crazy about. And who can't use a few more vegetables in their life?

I found a recipe on Pinterest for a crock pot marinara. I liked the idea of making it in the crock pot and letting the flavors simmer and meld all day. I can't simply take a recipe and follow it, so I borrowed some ideas from the recipe I read and added my own touches and spices. I also thought I'd add up the cost to making a batch to compare to the $0.80 can from the store. Here's my recipe (for today):

2-28oz cans diced tomatoes       $5.00
1 6oz can tomato paste               $0.48
1 medium onion                         $0.29  I used a sweet onion, but use what you have/like
4 cloves garlic                            $0.05
basil (about 1T dried)                $0 from the herb garden
oregano (about 1T dried)           $0 from the herb garden
2 bay leaves                                $0.05
salt to taste                                  $0.01
black pepper                               $0.01
1T balsamic vinegar                   $0.05 even using the expensive kind, the cost is minimal
1T brown sugar                          $0.01
1 medium zucchini                     $0 from our garden
1 small-med butternut squash    $0.50 this came from a bountiful basket so very inexpensive
1# maple sausage                       $0 My dad gets a 4-H hog and shares some of the meat, optional add
TOTAL                                      $6.45

My recipe was to mince the garlic and finely chop the onion. Add to slow cooker. Add tomatoes, paste, spices, vinegar, brown sugar and some salt and pepper. Cube the zucchini and squash and add to tomato mixture. Stir well. Cook on low for 8-9 hours. If you choose to add a ground meat, brown it first, then add to the sauce after it is fully cooked.

This method gives me more than 3 quarts of sauce. If you round to an even 3 quarts, your cost is $2.15 per quart (32 oz) which will make about 6 servings. Add a standard package of pasta for $1 and you have a main dish for about $0.52 per serving! We ate ours with some lettuce greens from the garden and our whole meal was right at $0.52 per person. Granted, we were lucky to have some of the additions on hand at no cost to us, but, again, use what you have and be creative!

Here's the great part: this took very little effort on my part to prepare (thank you crock pot!) and now I have marinara sauce for 2 additional meals in my freezer. Sweet!

Smoky Mountain Pork

I've mentioned before that we're lucky to be given meat from my dad and my in-laws. Here is a recipe I received from my friend David to use up some of the pork roasts in our freezer. Here's what you need:



2-1/2 lbs boneless pork, cut into 1 inch cubes (use about 3 lbs if bone-in)
2 10-3/4 oz cans condensed tomato soup
1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup vinegar (I use white vinegar but apple cider vinegar works great too)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp yellow mustard
1 Tbsp onion powder (or flakes)
1/4-1/2 tsp celery salt
1 tsp liquid smoke

Combine all the ingredients but the pork in the crock pot. Stir until well combined. Turn on low.

Heat skillet over medium heat. Add half the cubed pork and brown on all sides. Put cooked pork in crock pot. Repeat with the remaining pork.

Stir contents of crock pot until meat is well coated. Cook on low for 6-7 hours. Serve over rice (preferred) or noodles.

The things I like about it are: 1-super easy, 2-delicious, 3-crock pot, 4-makes enough to freeze. Are you seeing a theme with the recipes I post?? Enjoy!!

Orange Chicken

I am in love with Pinterest. It's been less than 3 weeks but I just love it. It's fun to see things other people create. Truly inspiring. I've made several recipes from there this week alone. Here is one of them. In my true fashion, I didn't just make the recipe as written, but added and tweaked it a little. A few of the ingredients I bought at Olivelle which is a local specialty food shop. Lucky for all of you, you can order online and they ship!

The recipe I made was orange chicken. I thought it was delicious. My oldest daughter and my husband thought it was too spicy. I could have turned up the spice a bit, but thought I kept it pretty mild. You decide what's right for your family. Here's what you need:

3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into small chunks
1/3 cup flour
Blood Orange olive oil (or regular olive oil if you don't have the blood orange)
1/2 Tbsp salt
1 T series 7 balsamic vinegar (use the best you can find)
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup brown sugar
6 oz orange juice concentrate
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional and can be varied depending on desired spicyness)

In your crock pot, combine the salt, vinegar, ketchup, brown sugar, red pepper and orange juice. Mix until smooth.

Place the chicken chunks into the flour, coating well. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. The original recipe just called for regular olive oil, but using the blood orange oil made the chicken amazing. It is worth it to get the blood orange. Seriously, go to the Olivelle website and get some! Put your chicken in the skillet and brown it. It doesn't have to be cooked all the way through because it's going in the crock pot, but you do want the outside browned. This will probably have to be done in 2 batches.

 

Put the browned chicken into the crock pot. Cook on low for 5-6 hours. Serve with rice. It was a great change to the teriyaki chicken my husband would eat daily. Simple. Delicious. I suppose I'll have to leave out the red pepper on the next go-around. Enjoy!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

This is on our dinner menu tonight. Yum! The aroma in my house right now is just delicious. I know there are likely hundreds of variations of chicken tortilla soup. I like this particular recipe because it has ingredients that I usually have in my house, it is (almost) a dump and sit type crock pot recipe and it makes a huge batch so I can freeze half for a second meal. My sister-in-law Lori gave me this cookbook a couple years back. It is one of those compliation cookbooks where everyone gives their favorite/best recipes and then they're sold for a fund raiser. There are some great recipes in there. I'm sure I'll be sharing a few, but I told you why this one works for us. Here is what you need:

1 can black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 can pinto beans (drained and rinsed)
1 can kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
1 can tomato sauce
2 cans chicken broth
1 can enchilada sauce
1 tsp chili powder
1 Tbsp cumin
1 clove garlic (not pictured)
1 can/package corn
2 c cooked, shredded chicken (4-5 breasts)

The reason I say this is almost a dump and sit recipe is because of the chicken. I prefer to use boneless skinless chicken breasts, so you do have to cook it and shred it before adding to the crock pot. If you're in a pinch, you can use canned chicken, but I think it's so salty I don't use it. Anyway, get your chicken on the stove to cook and start adding the rest of the ingredients to your crock pot. Any order, just dump them in. Turn on low and let simmer for 5-6 hours. If you see in my picture, I actually used cannelinni beans instead of black beans this time because I didn't have any black beans (weird for me). I'm a big fan of "cook with what you got." I've had some darn good meals when I've been creative with what's in my pantry. Serve the soup with cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips and (my favorite) avocado. It's also really good with corn bread on the side. It makes a ton, so you can easily freeze some for another meal. An easy meal for the first prep and a freezer meal?? You're welcome. :)

Salsa Chicken

When you're on a limited budget, like my family is, you have to get creative with basic (cheap) ingredients for dinners. PLUS, I need to make them healthy and nutritious for my growing children. I try to research recipes online, but I'm especially thankful when a friend recommends something tasty. Shout out to my friend Natalie for sharing this recipe. Like many of my crock pot recipes, I made a double batch so we could eat half and freeze half for a quick meal down the road. I do this quite a bit because it doesn't take any extra effort, but it can save us on a night where I have plans or if I simply don't feel like cooking. (Moms, you can relate right??) Here's what you need (single batch):

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (cut in half if they're large)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup salsa or picante sauce
1 packet taco seasoning

1 cup corn

1 cup sour cream

cilantro (to taste)

In your slow cooker, add the soup and salsa and mix well. Add the chicken breasts then sprinkle the taco seasoning on top. Mix until seasoning is combined and all chicken is covered. Cook on low for 4-6 hours. Remove chicken. Add the corn and sour cream and mix well. Shred the chicken and add back into the slow cooker. Turn on high and let cook for 30 more minutes. Serve over rice with cilantro on top.

Results: my family liked this recipe. It's a good combination for a nearly one-pot rounded meal (protein, veggie, dairy, starch). Plus, I have the second meal in the freezer. All we'll have to do is make more rice. Chicken and rice are inexpensive staples in our house and I like serving them in a different way. Enjoy!!

Brown Sugar Crock Pot Chicken

The older I get, the more I love fall. Fall in Montana means turning on the heat in the mornings and the air/fans in the afternoons. The smell of wet leaves on the ground is one that reminds me of being a kid (I have no idea why). As a matter of fact, the first time I visited Cornell was in October. The leaves were all changing colors and the Hilltop was truly magnificent. You couldn't deny how beautiful it was. It was less beautiful in sub-zero January, however.

The rite of passage every fall for me is the change in my meals. Let's face it, in the summer, it's hot and you certainly don't want to cook in the oven. We do lots of grilling and eat lots of fresh, cool salads. The last thing I want is something heavy sitting in my belly when I'm trying to stay cool and relax for the evening. Fall is a different story. Soups, stews and chilis are delighful. The warm deliciousness is comforting. Plus, I can add so many vegetables to them, it makes almost a one-pot full meal. I do a lot of crock pot cooking in the fall and winter as well, so I'm always looking for new recipes to try.

Yesterday, I was looking for something for dinner to use the chicken drumsticks I had in the freezer and came across the following recipe. My family are good sports about trying my new recipes (ok, they don't really have a choice). This one ROCKED!! It has all the elements of a great family meal: a few simple ingredients, E-A-S-Y to make, and delicious. Here's what you need:

10-12 chicken thighs or drumsticks or 6 chicken breasts, halved
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup lemon-lime soda (don't use diet)
2/3 cup vinegar (I used half apple cider and half white)
3 cloves smashed and chopped garlic
2 T soy sauce
1 t ground black pepper

Place your chicken in the crock pot. Cover with the brown sugar, garlic, pepper and soy sauce. Pour the vinegar over the top and then add the soda. It will bubble. Cook on high for 4-5 hours or low for 6-9 hours. The longer you cook it, the more tender it will be.

I made some au gratin potatoes to go with it (ok, so no veggies for this meal). It was very good. The girls gobbled it up as did my husband and I. One of the best new recipes I've tried in the crock pot in a while. Try it. You will love it. This goes on the permanent list.

If you're looking for more crock pot recipes, check out this blog. I've tried several (including this recipe) and haven't found a "bad" one yet.