Things I Love Thursday: The Slow Cooker

A couple of Christmases ago, B got me a slow cooker for Christmas. Now, before you go giving him hell for giving me a kitchen appliance, I have to point out that I asked for it--along with a dutch over, a tortilla warmer, and a grill pan. I'm that kinda girl. I love to cook and I love stuff for my kitchen.

Up until that point, my only real interaction with the slow cooker had been keeping queso, meatballs, and mini wienies warm for parties or work. But, I knew there was this whole world of slow cooker meals out there and I wanted to try it out. So, I asked for a digital with an automatic shutoff/warming setting.

I started out with basics--roast, tortilla soup, etc. I bought a couple of cookbooks. And I only used it on weekends/days we were home. B asked that we not use when we are not home. Now, being the person who had done the research, I knew hundreds if not thousands of people cook dinner in the slow cookers every day while they are away at work. But, B was concerned about a fire hazard, especially with the munchkins in the house, so I did as he asked. Because of this, however, the slow cooker didn't get a whole lot of use because a lot of weekends our plans were up in the air, so it was hard to plan to use it.

I did use it on occasion when I was off work to make some new favorites like meatloaf in the slow cooker (sooo good). And I used it the one month I decided to try Once a Month Cooking--it was great for cooking large amount of shredded BBQ chicken and shredded Mexican chicken to freeze.

Then, about a year ago, I was given the opportunity at work to work from home one day a week. In January of this year, I began doing it on a regular basis and realized this would be a great way to get more use out of the slow cooker. I could just take a little break sometime in the morning, prep the food and throw it in, and dinner at 6:00! Since then, I've been searching out new recipes to try. If you check out my cooking blog, you'll see some of my most recent dinners.

Now, I'm certainly not the first person to "discover" the slow cooker. But, it's new to me and I really do just love it.

The meat that you get is so tender. I even got B to eat ribs--twice--because the meat just fell off the bones. I love that mine is big--8 quarts--so I can usually get dinner and lefovers out of one recipe.

It's really good for more than just meals. I wanted some shredded whole chicken not long ago, so I threw in a whole chicken I bought on sale overnight, took it out the next morning and let it sit in the fridge all day, and that night, I had plenty of shredded chicken for a dinner with mashed potatoes, sandwiches for lunch, and some to freeze that I later used in a pot pie. I saved the broth for other uses and the bones to make stock. How awesome is that?

I can't find a link to my exact slow cooker. But, it's Cooks brand and 8 quarts. It can be a little big sometimes, but I just have to make sure I plan for the leftovers.

I can't wait to try and share more recipes!
Happy Thursday!


A

Things I Love Thursday: Mexican Food

So, I still have the whole account of B's ordeal with the pulmonary embolism to post. It is half typed out, but it's long and a lot to get out, so I'm still processing. In the meantime, I'm going to try to keep up with my weekly posts, meaning today is Things I Love Thursday.

I love Mexican food. LLLLLOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEEEE Mexican food. I could eat Mexican food every meal, every day, no question. There is very little about Mexican food I don't love. I used to not be so much of a hot and spicy kinda girl, but over the years, I have developed a tolerance. I still can't, say, eat a pepper or even just a slice of a jalapeno, but I don't think that makes me any lesser of a Mexican food lover.

Now, I suppose here is where I should point out that when I say Mexican food, I mean Tex-Mex. I'm a Texas girl--born, raised, and never left. I have been outside of Texas and tried Mexican food outside of Texas. It sucks. I don't even know what it is that makes Tex-Mex so much better, but it is. The only Mexican food outside of Tex-Mex that doesn't suck is authentic Mexican food. Living in Texas, you can find that and I have been to Mexico. The meats are different in authentic and often the dishes themselves, but there is something about eating authentic that makes it good even if it is not what you are used to.

So, my very favorite thing to eat at a Mexican food place and usually the thing I order the first time I try a new place is Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas. I love them. If my older brother was reading this, he would take this time to tease me about not liking sour cream. At some point when we were young children, I turned down sour cream on tacos claiming to not like it. While I do remember this incident, I have absolutely no idea why I said it because I do not ever remember a time in my life that I didn't love sour cream. What's not to love? And that is why I love the Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas.

And here is where I would like to discuss enchiladas for a moment. I'm a bit of a cooker myself. Due to my love of chicken enchiladas and B's love of, well, all enchiladas, I have tried my hand at them. My biggest complaint about recipes I see for enchiladas is that the majority call for flour tortillas. Enchiladas are NOT made with flour tortillas. Burritos are made with flour tortillas. You put fajita meat on flour tortillas. You can even make soft tacos out of flour tortillas. Enchiladas, however, are made with corn tortillas. Yummy, slightly fried corn tortillas.

Now that we have that cleared up, I need to tell you why I love Mexican food today.

Today, I had dinner at El Paseo. As you have probably gathered, I have eaten at a lot of Mexican food places in my life. And there are other places that I also love (Mexican Inn--the original locations, not the franchised locations--is a family tradition). But, no other place in many years has come close to rivaling El Paseo when I want real, down home, authentic Mexican/Tex-Mex.

B has been eating there with family for years. His late brother, Johnny, worked there for years. For some reason known only to him, B waited well over a year to share this place with me. I will never forgive him for that year or so I lost. We used to live minutes from the Fort Worth location, which is actually the only location I've been to. When we lived there, I could pretty much convince him to take me anytime I wanted. Now, we live over 30 minutes away, so it's a bit more of a decision if we want to go. But, it's also less than 10 minutes from my in-laws' house, so I have NO problem ever visiting them (I have no problem visiting them anyway; I love my in-laws) because even if B wasn't planning on taking me, odds of my father-in-law taking are pretty good. My father-in-law loves this place as much as I do. We are obsessed with the chips and salsa. We get our own basket, just the two of us. They have to refill it often.

Anyway, our best friend, Scotty P., took us to dinner tonight because B had been craving some Mexican food while in the hospital and, well, we love the place. So, we made the 30 minute trip out there and were not disappointed. In case any of you locals would ever like to try it, the dishes we got tonight (and that we get pretty much every time) were:

Steak Fajitas (Scott) 


Steak a la Mexicana (B)


Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas (A)

Soooo yummy!!! I love the fajitas. Really awesome steak. But, B's dish is their specialty and so worth the extra wait to cook. The steak is absolutely perfect and sooo different from the fajitas. And the SCCE are, hands down, my favorite of any other restaurant.

I need to say here that when I have mentioned my love of El Paseo to others in the past, I have received bad reactions. Other people--reasonable people whose tastes I usually agree with--have said they do not like El Paseo. However, these people have not been to the location I go to. Perhaps there are differences; I don't know. All I know is, the Fort Worth location is so good that I have been known to say I could just stand in the entry way and smell the air!

Happy Thursday!

A

Things I Love Thursday: My People

"Things I Love Thursday" is supposed to be my own little version of Oprah's Favorite Things--except I won't give anything away and nobody really cares what I love. But, my blog, my perogative!

Anyway, the intent is supposed to be to talk about things I love to do, things I like to read, watch, buy, eat, listen to, etc. But, like "Wordless Wednesday," it just so happens that the first post has to sort of take a different feel given what's going on this week. I'm not going to go into the full story right now, though I will post it later. Short story is B is in the hospital with blood clots in his lung. So, my head and heart are in a very different place right now than usual.

With that being said, the things I love this week are "my people." First, don't give me any crap about people things. You get what I mean. I've been thinking about this for the past few hours, batting around how I would word this: "my friends," "kind-hearted people." I just couldn't quite figure it out until I actually typed out the title. Kind-hearted people was too general. Friends didn't quite encompass everybody and, more importnantly, it didn't quite describe how I feel about the people I'm referring to.

We are very lucky to have so many people in our lives who genuinely care about us. Though I've always known these people care and are true friends, you really see when something like this happens what people are really about. Who will offer to do/help with ANYTHING while you are trying to worry about your husband getting into a real hospital room and getting his medication knowing that you are probably not doing thing for yourself like eating? Who will offer to take care of your beloved doggies? Who will just call to check on you and ask for updates or simply send good thoughts and prayers?

I am literally going to list those people. Mom, Mom, Scott, Julie, Cris, John, Terri, Ritchie, Jamey, Kelly, Marcos, Bernie, Jerry, Dina, Judy, Nora, Ginger, Cobi, Alex, Kyle, Angela, Angela, Melissa, Carol, Melanie, Darren.

I have no doubt there are others, but these people have let me have meltdowns, called or texted for updates, emailed a sister who had been though the same thing to give me some information and insight, came to visit, bought funny gifts, brought me food and took care of my doggies and stayed late to walk me to my car, emailed to tell me they were praying for me, offered prayers through a social networking website to someone they haven't seen since high school and her husband they've never met, offered their heartfelt prayers and good thoughts, took care of loose ends at work, took on full responsiblity of planning an event.

All of these things seem so little, but when you are dealing with so much, these things are huge. These things make the people who are "just friends" so much more. They are extended family. They are "my people." They are the people I can count on, the people I can call.

So, they are what I love today. I highly recommend everybody get their own people!

A