Crock Pot BBQ Beef Brisket

I've never made beef brisket. It seems odd as I believe it's a staple in America. Although, since I've never made it and have rarely eaten it, maybe I'm incorrect in my thinking? Either way, I had the challenge of making something with the beef brisket cut that we received from our 1/4 of a cow that we purchased. Plus, as I've attempted to have dinner ready before my husband gets home from work, I have been totally loving my crock pot. So, BBQ Beef Brisket in the crockpot? It's an amazing marriage. 

I took the lazy way out and used store-bought BBQ sauce. If I had had the ingredients, I totally would've made the recipe that the country cook had provided. Maybe next time. 

Going into the crockpot, this looked kinda disgusting. So, if you want to see a picture, keep in mind, it's not pretty. If you don't want to see the picture, just keep on scrolling...

Mmmm...raw meat.

BBQ Sauce-covered raw meat...tasty.

I cooked the meat on high for 1 hour and then reduced the heat to low for the rest of the day. I would recommend not going over the time recommended in the blog as it can dry out the meat. Thankfully, the BBQ sauce took away some of the dryness. 

To go with this dinner, I made veggies and potatoes and it was wonderful. And, it made enough for us to have leftovers. However, as a leftover - you wanna have a side ready to go...like a baked potato or something just as delicious. Yeah, I think I'd make this BBQ Beef Brisket again. It's a good'n, ya'll. 

Slow Cooker Quinoa Tex Mex

This has been a week for slow cooker meals. So many slow cooker meals. It's been frustratingly humid, and I haven't wanted to turn on the oven or the stove for fear of warming up our house more than it already is. My slow cooker has been a lifesaver!

Here's one of the many new recipes I tried this week. Slow Cooker Quinoa Tex Mex.

Photo from Pinterest

I wasn't sure about rinsing the quinoa - thinking about it falling through the colander, so I used a mesh strainer, and that worked wonderfully. 

This dish took longer to make than I expected. The blog said it would take anywhere from 3-6 hrs (how's that for a range?), and it seemed to take about 5 hours for the quinoa to soak up all the liquid. 

I added ground beef, but this could easily be a tasty vegetarian dish. I did not have any green onions or mozzarella cheese. So, instead I used colby jack cheese and just left out the green onions. I wasn't able to get a picture of it as soon as it was done, because I had rehearsal for a musical that I'm a part of, so I took it to my mom's to finish cooking after I added the cheese. 

The consensus was that this dish was tasty, although needed a little more salt. It wasn't quite as quick as I would've liked, but it still turned out really tasty. My mom put the food into a tortillas shell and I am looking forward to trying it that way my ownself.

This is a keeper recipe that we will certainly be making again.

Crock Pot Baked Potato

Hi All! My friend, Erin, told me about this great recipe she completed recently and recommended that I blog about it. So, I handed her the reigns and had her do her very first blog entry! I'm happy to introduce you to my friend, Erin, and her Pinterest Success. So, without further adieu, here she is...



A few months back my home church, Court Street Christian Church, did a really awesome Wednesday night community dinner of loaded baked potatoes, and it was a total hit! Since then, I have craved the yumminess that was that night. So one night a couple weeks ago I decided that's what's for dinner, loaded crock pot baked potatoes!! Mmmmmm, my mouth is drooling thinking about it again. I digress....the day I chose to make the potatoes was an unusually warm day for Washington, and I didn't want to heat my house up with the oven, so I went back to a website I had seen where you could make Crock Pot Baked Potatoes !! Genius, right?!

Photo from theyummylife.com

The website talks about baking many small potatoes, but I had bought 3 GIANT potatoes so I was unsure how they would turn out. 

This was rather easy, I poked a few holes in the potatoes and wrapped them in foil, just as if I was going to bake them in the oven. Then I threw them in the crockpot, and turned that baby on high for 6 hours. About 5 hours in I checked them, and they were definitely soft, but the husband wasn't home from work yet, so I kept them on warm for about another hour and a half. When I final did take them out, they were .... PERFECT!! 

As you can see, the potatoes turned out soft, but not overcooked. I actually think this may be my new go-to method of baking potatoes, as it doesn't heat the house up at all. I would call this a Pinterest WIN!! 

Homemade Chicken Stock

The other day, I posted about slow cooker baked chicken - and today I'm gonna post about what to do with the carcass and other stuff in the slow cooker after you've taken the chicken apart. I, recently, discovered that you can use more of the chicken than just the meat. I'm sure most of you already knew that, but I never really *thought* about how chicken broth was made. Now I know! To see how to make your own chicken stock, check out this blog.

Photo from Pinterest

Since I had already made my chicken in the slow cooker - making the stock in the slow cooker was genius and I was so excited to do it! I cut up all the ingredients, put it in the slow cooker and let it go to work. By the way, just so you don't make the same mistake I did, you can use the leftover parts of the veggies that you wouldn't normally use for this. You will be straining them anyway, so have at it. It does say this in the blog, but I didn't read far enough down for that, so I'll just tell you again. :)

After all the ingredients are in the crockpot, you can let it set all night and most (if not all) of the next day. But be forewarned: your house will smell delightfully like dinner which is non-existent, so have a plan for dinner or you will have a hungry mob on your hands. This was the only chicken stock recipe I found that didn't require a timer. So simple! I like simple.

I used mostly pint jars and one quart jar (says the novice canner...I think that's what I used). I wrote on the lids of the jars since those can't be reused anyway, and I filled the jars and let them set just a bit longer. You don't want to put them into the freezer hot because they will burst.

My quart jar did not fair well in the freezer. Within hours, the jar had cracked and a mess was made. I think I may have filled the jar a bit too full, and the liquid still may have been too hot. My pint jars are still doing just fine though. In the future, I plan to stick with the pint jars.

There you have it - easy-peasy. This is fantastic and healthier than any store-bought chicken broth and so so so easy. I'd recommend this method any day.

Baked Slow Cooker Chicken

Have you ever found yourself in the predicament of trying to find a way to cook a whole chicken? I have. But, not recently. Thanks to all recipes.com, I have a fantastic recipe for cooking a whole chicken and, even better, I do it in a crock pot! Woohoo! Oh, how I love my crock pot! To see the recipe, you can just click here.

Photo from Allrecipes.com

This recipe is incredibly simple and quick (to put together - not to cook). It's a set it and forget it kind of recipe. You start by wadding up 3 balls of tin foil. Here is a picture for your viewing pleasure:

Rinse and pat dry your chicken (be sure to remove all the innards) and then lightly season with salt, pepper and paprika. Place it on top of the toil foil.

Put the lid on your crockpot, turn the heat to high for one hour. This is very important. You want to be sure to do this as it helps cook the chicken properly. After one hour, turn the heat to low and let your chicken just simmer in its juices until dinner time - about 8 hours.

Afterwards, you can just take the chicken apart, put pieces on your plate with some rice or potatoes and veggies and dinner is served! Easiest recipe ever. And the chicken is rather good. If cooked too long, it does seem to dry out a bit, but it's still really tasty. Plus, you end up with enough chicken leftover for another meal or two!

Also, one quick little tidbit that I just recently learned: when making rice, use chicken broth instead of water - the rice reheats better and it has more flavor to begin with! You're welcome. ;)

Slow Cooker Chili

This will be a blog post about food. It will not be from a recipe I found on Pinterest, but rather, a recipe of my own design. One that I find to be incredibly tasty and I thought others might appreciate as well. A number of years ago, I was looking for a tasty chili recipe that was quick, easy to make and would be ready when I walked in the door when coming home from work. In the process, I managed to collect a few different recipes from friends and kind of mishmashed it into my own award-winning chili. Ok, it's not award-winning. HOWEVER, many moons ago, my dad entered his chili into a cook-off and it won, so I am believing that I have inherited his chili-making abilities and have found yet another award winning chili. So, without further ado, here's my slow-cooker chili recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground turkey or ground beef
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 1 (8 oz) can of tomato sauce (not paste!)
• 1 (15 oz) can kidney beans
• 1 (15 oz) can pinto beans
• 2 (15 oz) cans black beans (or your choice, these are just my favorites)
• 2 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1 (14.5 oz) can corn
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• Chili Powder (I don't measure this, probably about a tablespoon - but just to taste)
• Cumin to taste
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Shredded Colby Jack Cheese

Directions:  Start by browning the meat and onion together. While those are browning, add all other ingredients (except the cheese) into the slow cooker. Once meat has browned, add to slow cooker and stir. Cook on low for 8 hours. Dish up into bowls, add grated cheese and you are good to go!

Right now, I am going dairy and soy free, and as long as you don't add cheese - this meal can be that for you as well! It's tasty, comfort food at its finest. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do. I generally make corn bread to go with this meal, but I didn't this time, so it's not very fancy looking. But that's ok. It still tastes super.

PS - have you tried the slow-cooker liners yet? They are truly amazing! I mean, seriously. They are incredible. You can make a pot of chili, throw away the liner and never have to scrub your slow cooker again! It's awesome! If you are interested in getting them, check them out here.

Chicken Breast Crock Pot Fajitas

I got chicken out of the freezer the other night...anticipating that I would want to make something with it the next day. What I was gonna make had yet to be determined, but I knew chicken was going to be a part of it. And probably some tortillas. Mmmm...Mexican food. Yep, that's what I decided on. I generally make chicken fajitas on the stovetop, but I was intrigued by the fix-it-and-forget-it ease of the slow cooker recipe I found - so I gave it a try. To check out the recipe, go here.

Photo from Pinterest

This recipe was very easy to follow. I've actually made this dish twice now, leaving out the cumin the first time (I didn't have any on hand) and I think I may prefer it that way. Either way, the prep time was about the same as it would be if you were making this on the stovetop (due to having to cut the veggies) - other than you don't have to cook the chicken first. Yay! One less step!

Sorry for the blurry pic - I was in a hurry.... to eat! hehehe.

As you can see, I used less chicken than the recipe called for, since it was just for me and my husband and my son and we still ended up with leftovers.  I also didn't use the normal green, red and yellow peppers that are customary for fajitas. In our produce box we ended up with some different peppers that had a bit of a kick. Cooking them in the crock pot was just the ticket as it seemed to taper down the heat of the peppers. The second time I made this, I did use normal peppers and it was still quite tasty.

After the meat was shredded, I dished up our tortillas with the veggie/chicken goodness and we all thoroughly enjoyed our dinner. I would highly recommend this recipe. I don't have a picture of it all plated...I guess I got too hungry to take the time for the pic. *Sigh* story of my blog, recently. hehe.

Either way, this was tasty, easy and how nice to not have to prepare much at dinner time! I'd call that winning! .... I can't believe I just wrote that....

Slow Cooker Chicken & Stuffing

I know I've already said it, but I'll say it again. I am LOVING my crock pot this summer. Having a home-cooked meal without the heat in the house has been really nice. Today's recipe had a lot of great feedback from the blog that I found on Pinterest, so I thought I'd give it a try. To check out the recipe, go here.

As always, I like to use crock pot liners when I make food in my crock pot. Clean up is 10 billion times easier with crock pot liners. You can usually find them at the grocery store near the turkey bags and ziplock baggies and such. They are amazing and I can't recommend them enough.

Anyway, I added all the ingredients and turned on my crockpot. Here it is, all ready to be started.

This dinner turned out pretty tasty. It wasn't my favorite, but I will make it again. I loved the convenience and ease of it; throw it all in the slow cooker, turn it on, walk away, eat a few hours later. That's my kind of cooking. It seemed like the stuffing was very dry, but not so bad once the sauce was mixed in with it and set for a few minutes. My mom, husband, son and I all tried it and the consensus was that it is definitely a make-again-worthy meal. The sauce was a bit rich and thick, but it was still quite tasty and worth a go. 

I don't have much else to say. It was tasty, and I'd say this was a tried and true crock pot dish. 

Crock Pot Lasagna

Isn't the sunshine and the heat wonderful? If you didn't know me very well, you'd never guess that I've grown up my entire life in Oregon because I'm not a big fan of rain. In fact, most people would think I am not a native Oregonian but rather a sad, sad transplant - most likely from someplace like California where the sun shines far more often than what we normally have in the Northwest part of Oregon. But, alas, I am indeed an Oregonian, through and through. I love the green in Oregon. I love the rain...when it first starts in fall...by December to early January, I'm done...done done done. So, this summer has been heavenly for me. We've had so many gorgeous, sunny days. I have loved it. The only issue I've had with these hot days is finding foods to cook other than on the BBQ. I don't want to heat up my house because my son and husband are true Oregonians and anything about 75 constitutes sitting in front a fan trying not to melt and BBQing every day is just a bit overkill. For some reason, I had never considered using my crock pot in the summer - it just seems like something you use in the fall - but I did this week, twice as a matter of fact, and it was wonderful. My house stayed cool, it smelled like delicious food, and I didn't spend hours slaving in the kitchen, although the food certainly tastes as though I could have.

Thanks to Pinterest and the loads of pins with crock pot recipes, I found the crock pot lasagna recipe. 

Photo from Pinterest

To be honest, I didn't follow creatingthroughlife's blog recipe pretty much at all. I already have a lasagna recipe that I love, so I used that recipe instead. I made the sauce as I normally would and instead of putting it in a pan to bake, I put it in the crock pot. I used whole wheat lasagna noodles and ground turkey instead of ground beef. I felt like I was living large with how healthy I was making this meal. hehe. 

Anyway, I put it in the crockpot on low for four hours and left it alone until dinner. It actually ended up cooking longer than the four hours I intended though because I went for a walk with my mom and son and forgot all about it. Oopsy. Thankfully, no harm, no foul. It still turned out just fine. 

Unfortunately, I didn't get a beautiful picture of it plated as I just scarfed a quarter of it before I realized I hadn't taken a picture - hence the not so pretty picture. But, believe me, the food was very good. It tasted very much as if I had made it in the oven except maybe the noodles were a bit softer, but overall, it was excellent. 

This is certainly something I will do again. It was relatively quick, my house stayed cool and my son, my husband, my mom and myself all enjoyed it. In fact, I may go eat some leftovers now....

Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken

One of my husband's favorite places to eat when I don't pack him a lunch for work is a local teriyaki place. A lot of those kinds of places are hit and miss for me, but this one is really good. If you haven't ever been to Love Love Teriyaki - you should. It's really tasty. Knowing my husband has a love of asian food, I decided to try my hand at it; in steps Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken.

Photo from Pinterest

The recipe appeared easy enough, but knowing I didn't want to make a ginormous batch of Teriyaki Chicken, I reduced the recipe to 2 pieces of chicken rather than the 12 it recommended. Drastic, yes, but we still had leftover chicken even after just using 2 pieces. I also halved the rest of the recipe, of course, and all of that seemed to turn out just fine.

Ewww...raw chicken...

I know, a picture of raw chicken; nasty...but, I wanted you to see that the sauce when halved still made plenty but not an overabundance for the chicken.

Anyway, after it cooked the 4-5 hours specified, I put the chicken on a separate plate and dumped the liquid into a pot to make the actual teriyaki sauce.

Once that was completed, my chicken was shredded, rice cooked and I had my vegetables all cut up, dinner was ready. I put some asian cabbage that we had from our produce CSA box on the side after I cut it up, put a little ramen noodles (without the seasoning on there) and called it good.

It looked amazing!! I wish it had tasted as amazing as it looked. It wasn't bad by any means, but it was very bland. Very, very bland. The sauce didn't seem quite sweet and spicy enough to me. It may be better to try a different sauce next time. The chicken was a bit dry as well. I thought that might have been because I didn't make enough chicken, but I've made it with more before and I still remember it being pretty dry. Anyway, this wasn't a complete bust - it looked beautiful. And, really, it didn't taste awful. Would I make this again? Well, apparently after a year or so I tried once more...but it is now going on my "tried and not lied but not going to try again" Pinterest board. It just doesn't satisfy the way I'd like. At least it looked pretty...

Melt In Your Mouth Crockpot Cube Steak

Recently we purchased a quarter of a grass-fed cow. This has been a great decision. The quality of the meat we have been eating is superb. This meat needs very little seasoning; it is so flavorful!

However, the only problem with getting a whole quarter cow is you don't get to pick just the cuts that you want. Not that this is a huge problem; it has challenged us to try new dishes. One of the cuts we have an awful lot of is cube steak. So, naturally I went to Pinterest for some recipes. Here is one of many, the Crockpot Cube Steak and Gravy. It is delish and easy.

I was excited by the throw it in, set it and forget it easiness of this meal. No stirring, nothing. It was terrific. As thepost-itplace's blog says, the dish does not look good at all, but it's easy to look past that once you take a bite. 

I know...this looks disgusting, but I wanted you to see what it would look like when it was done. It looks horrible. But it tastes delectable. 

My mom, my husband and I all ate this. My nephew (who I had the fortunate blessing of having with me for the afternoon) and my son were not quite as daring.  The three of us (daredevils) enjoyed it and  wouldn't mind eating it again.

The meat was tender, though not quite as juicy as I would've liked. Having the gravy from the crockpot drizzled over it made it extra yummy. My mom said this was very much like a pot roast in the flavor and texture, and I think I'd agree with that assessment. It didn't seem to need much seasoning, it carried itself (with the gravy). I will definitely be making this again sometime. 

I hear cube steak is some of the cheaper steak to buy as well, so...that could make this dish even more satisfying: more bang for your buck! 

Crockpot Italian Chicken - The Popular Pinterest Post

I have seen almost all of my friends on Pinterest post about this recipe, and rightfully so. It really is a scrumptious dish. I have made this multiple times and it is on our home menu at least every month or so.

I had never actually gone to the blog for the Crockpot Italian Chicken because the directions are in the description of the pin - but for the sake of this blog, I did go to it when making the recipe this time. The picture actually doesn't look as good on the blog as it does on Pinterest either. Weird.

The only difference I noticed between the actual blog recipe and the Pinterest description was whether to combine the cream cheese & cream of chicken soup in a pot on low heat or just throw it into the crockpot. I generally just throw it in the crockpot. This time, I followed the recipe and didn't notice a difference, so next time I will just leave out the dirtying up of more dishes and put them directly in as I have done before.

I would also recommend, rather than leaving it to cook for 4 hours on low as recommended by the blog, is to cook it on high for 1 hour and then turn it down to low. I've been told by a professional chef that you always should cook meat on high for the first hour, if at all possible. So, if you can, cook it on high for an hour, turn it to low for at least 3 - but according to the blog, you can leave it in there on low for all day if you want! Sweet deal.

This picture actually doesn't look anything like the picture on Pinterest either. I'm not sure why that is though as it generally looks very similar to it. I'm not too concerned. I mean, as long as it tastes good, the picture isn't that big of a deal, right?

Last tip I have for this post: I generally do use the amount of ingredients as recommended, but it makes a rather large batch of sauce. What I would recommend doing is halving the sauce (after the chicken is shredded and put back into it), keeping half out for the pasta and putting the other half in a Ziplock, put a date on it, label it with "Crockpot Italian Chicken Sauce - just add noodles," and stick it in the freezer! There you have it ~ dinner for two occasions!  Easy, tasty, cheap and a set it & forget it meal. Could it get any better than that? Hope you enjoy it as much as my family does.