Crock Pot Crisis!
Have you ever prepared your meal in the crock pot – but then forgot to plug it in before you left the house for the day? Gah! It happened to us just a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately I have a slow cooker with a base and a separate pot. So the pot was in the refrigerator. It was just that neither my husband nor I remembered to take it out of the fridge and put it on the base that day before we left the house. Believe me, we paid the price that night – scrambling to make another dinner and get my son to basketball practice on time. That’s why I have to use my secret weapon – the Crock Pot Post It (pictured above). It goes right by the garage door after I assemble the crock pot meal so that we remember to put the crock pot on in the morning!
My friend and co-worker, Kim, had an even worse Crock Pot Crisis last week. She left her crock pot on the kitchen counter – unplugged. Horrors! Her teenage son came home from school and found it cold on the counter. He was so disappointed! Kim had taken the Chicken with Red Peppers and Mushrooms recipe from last week and made a Cream of Celery version instead (with celery and peapods). “Can’t I just plug it in now?” he asked his Mom. Nope. Kim is a smart mom who knows that food left out on the counter for all those hours needs to be thrown away. It’s not worth the risk of everyone getting sick. I will make Kim a Crock Pot Post It too.
Yes, we’ve all had our Crock Pot Crises. Finding the right cooking levels is tough too. How low is too low? How high is too high? I suggest that you experiment on days that you are home to learn just how your slow cooker cooks.
I so often meet Moms who are new to NuVal or new to my blog and they are always interested in slow cooker recipes. Whether these Moms work outside of the home or not, everyone is incredibly busy and we all need our crock pots to help get our families around the table enjoying home-cooked meals. I’m always composing emails for friends (new and old) with links to all the slow cooker recipes I’ve blogged about here at A Better Bag of Groceries. So, today I thought I would put them all here for all of you. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve made one of these recipes.
Chicken With Red Peppers and Mushrooms
Six Sisters Slow Black Bean and Corn Salsa Chicken
Catherine Katz’s Turkey, Bean and Thyme Pot Au Feu
Italian Style Steak (a Weight Watchers recipe)
Question of the Day
Have you ever had a Crock Pot Crisis?
Posted by: Melissa 7 comments
Posted in: Slow Cooker Recipes
Tags: crock pot, Slow Cooker, Slow Cooker Recipes
on Feb 20th, 2012 at 9:55 am
This doesn’t qualify as a “crisis” but this blog is timely as I had a crock pot “event” just this morning. I diced carrots and celery, and sliced onions and potoatoes and put them in the crock pot. I put the beef roast on top of that. I lightly salted and heavily peppered the beef and added a little minced garlic. I poured a can of 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup and what I thought was cream of celery soup over the roast. When I rinsed the cans to put them in the recycling bin, I noticed the cream of celery was actually cream of chicken. Don’t know how that’s going to taste with the beef roast, but I guess I’ll find out this evening.
on Feb 20th, 2012 at 11:46 am
Knock on wood I’ve never had a crisis but a few weeks back when I prepared my crock pot meal I couldn’t for the life of remember if I turned it on or not. All day at work I stressed over it. Luckily when I got home, we had a hot cooked meal : )
on Feb 20th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Just so happens that I was making your chicken with red pepper and mushroom recipe for dinner tonight. I didn’t have the red pepper on hand so I started the crock pot without, ran out early this afternoon and bought the pepper(along with other errands), sliced the pepper and did a quick stir fry in my small pan and tossed it on top. Hopefully, the stir fry will catch up the cooking time and taste close to the original recipe. In any case we will have chicken with mushrooms and crispy red pepper! Still easier than waiting until later to start dinner. Thanks for pulling all the recipes together today, Melissa.
on Feb 20th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Thanks Melissa – I think I will have one of these ready for when my family gets home from their school vacation ski trip – makes my evening easy too
on Feb 20th, 2012 at 7:55 pm
Awesome!! I love crock pot recipes. The easiest one I’ve ever made is taking organic chicken breast and a bottle of BBQ sauce. Let it cook on low all day. When you get home, its smells so good and ready to eat. I like to shred the chicken and make BBQ sandwiches.
on Feb 23rd, 2012 at 4:07 am
I’ve plugged it in and forgot to turn it on. Yup, the garbage ate that night. Other times I’ve done everything right only to come home to a cold dinner because my crock pot died (I had 3 at all times but we had a funeral for that one & I still haven’t replaced it. LOL)
on Apr 11th, 2012 at 11:11 am
I love using the crockpot, but seldom do as most recipes aren’t that good. I’ve got about 3 that turn out really good. I’ll have to give a few of yours a try and see if I can increase that number.
My crockpot crisis: I plug in my crockpot and before I leave the house I check to make sure it’s heating. I have an old crockpot and wonder when it might kick the bucket. Well, I came home one day and it was lukewarm. I could see it had been up to cooking temp at some point, but who knows how long it sat with no heat. In the trash it went. It was my favorite 6 quart crockpot too. I still have the 4 quart, but miss my 6 quart. My brother and I took it a part to see if it could be repaired. It couldn’t be. I saved the removalable crock and lid. What the heck am I going to do with it? It just seemed too nice to throw away. Maybe make pickles?