Crock Pot Adventures

When Andy and I got married, we were given a huge, stainless steel fancy crock pot. At the age of 22, neither of us had ever used a crock pot, had any idea what you could make with one or how one was supposed to work. I have made several things in this bad boy, but never religiously since it tended to cook things pretty fast. Little did I know...

One morning a few years ago, Andy's parents were staying over and we had planned to have a roast for lunch the next day. I arose from bed around 8 and found Peggy in my kitchen running warm water over the rock hard frozen roast furiously trying to thaw it. She made a comment to me that there was no way the roast would be done in four hours. I told her to trust me, and we put the rock hard roast in the pot with all the fixins, set it to high and let it cook. I could tell she was nervous (I didn't really care, if it wasn't done, we could just order pizza.) Four hours later, the roast was ready, totally cooked and perfect--even a little dry in some sections. We came to the conclusion that the heating element on my slow cooker must be out, considering a ten pound roast should not cook from frozen in four hours. Who knew?

So tonight I am going to buy another. Considering the one we have can boil water in 30 minutes, I am willing to try something that cooks..well..slow. I am going to post pics of my meals- successes and hopefully no failures. I cooked sloppy joes last night in our old one, and thank God we turned it off in time. Good recipe though. Here it is:

Ingredients:

1lb ground beef
1/4 cup of Onion (I used dehydrated and only 1/8 of a cup)
1/8 cup of green pepper (I skipped these)
1/2 cup of ketchup
2 tsp of yellow mustard
3 tsp of brown sugar
2tsp of Worchestershire sauce
A few shakes of garlic powder
Salt
Pepper

Brown hamburger with onion and pepper until done.
Drain grease.
Combine all ingredients (add a little water if it is too thick) and put in slow cooker
Cook for 2-3 hours on high (or if you have mine about 30 minutes)

I served them on Hawaiian style hamburger buns (they come in packs of 4--so no stale buns at the end of the week) and Alexia sweet potato waffle fries. The sloppy joes turned out wonderfully, MUCH better than Manwich. This recipe serves about 4 sandwiches.

More tomorrow!