What I Most Want You To Know - What's So Special About the Crockpot?

Our guest blogger today is Stephanie O'dea. Stephanie's blog A Year of CrockPotting is chocked full of crockpot recipes. She adds a new one every day as she cooks for her family. She was featured on the Rachel Ray show July 9 and you can see a clip here. I have been so inspired by the recipes that Stephanie posts each day and I have tried many of them. She has a great sense of humor and I look forward to reading her daily posts.

What is So Special About the CrockPot?

I've never really liked cooking. I am a total klutz, and many cooking tasks I perform end up with a cut finger or a burnt forearm. I also am easily distracted and have a problem with multi-tasking. I can't seem to not do it. Even when I'm supposed to be watching something on the stove or a treat baking. I routinely will put on a can of soup and then wander into the backyard and start pulling weeds. Twenty minutes later, I come back in to a kitchen full of smoke and a ruined pot.

That is why I love my Crock-Pot.

I LOVE it. The crockpot has turned me, ME, into a cook. A real one, who can offer her family nutritious hot meals nightly, along with fun desserts and baked products without even needing to be home.
I can now weed to my heart's content.

When I worked full-time out of the house, I'd prepare the crockpot the evening before with vegetables and meat. In the morning, I'd set it out on the counter to take the chill off, then go through my morning routine. The last thing I did before leaving the house was to click the crockpot on. I'd come home 8 hours later to an already-made dinner. The crockpot was/is my mother's little helper. There is nothing more disheartening than scrambling at 6pm to throw something together with two small children starving and in tears.

At the beginning of this year I challenged myself to cook more, and decided to go about it the only way I knew how: with my Crock-Pot slow cooker. Over the last 240 days, my mind has exploded with the versatility of this amazing kitchen appliance. You can bake, roast, simmer, and stew pretty much anything. I have been thrilled with the results of some of my crazy ideas. Falafels? Chocolate Mousse? Apple Dumplings? Smoking meat in the crock? Who would've thought?

The year is beginning to wind down, and I have a bunch of recipes bookmarked and ready to cook in the few months ahead. I look forward to giving the crock(s) a workout, and am interested to see how the recipes I have chosen will transfer to crockpot cooking.

The Crock-Pot is a wonderful invention---every home should have at least one or two.

xox
steph
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/