Those who know me will know that the scientist in me loves to experiment and finding answers for my curious mind. Since I have not been doing that lately in school or in a job; it has come to the surface in my cooking. Jesse jokes that I can never try a recipe for the first time without modifying it first. He is probably right but there has only been two meals that I have cooked I thought were awful, and both were lamb (lamb is hard to cook). We do not have a oven in the love shack so problem #1 was figuring out how to bake the things that I love to eat. We got a slow cooker a couple weeks after moving in. I was searching the web for slow cooker recipes. I found the blog of a woman that her New Year's resolution was to cook something in her slow cooker every day of the new year. Here is her year of adventure with her slow cooker: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/. She set my head spinning with possibilities of what I could make in my slow cooker. The following weekend after our purchase we made bread, a delicious honey wheat recipe that Jesse had baked for me when we were dating. It turned out well just little crispy on the sides from the heat being in the sides of the pan.
We quickly found a solution to making bread in our crockpot. We bought a flexible silicone bread pan that fits perfectly in our crockpot. No more burnt edges on our bread. The next big adventure was making cheesecake without an electric mixer (perk of marrying a handsome strong man ;-)) and an oven. After an hour of preparation and 4 hours of baking our apple strudel cheesecake was finished! Boy was it delicious!
I was sure missing the homemade pizza that I grew up helping my sister make. So I whipped up some home made dough, put some topping on, and let her bake for 2 hours. It was good. Unfortunately since it is not oven the dough can not get crispy and get done the middle as well because of the heating on the sides. In any case I thought it was delicious bearing in mind with what I have to work with.
My crockpot creations have expanded to enchiladas, lasagna, eggplant parmesan, baked oatmeal, apple crisp, chocolate cake, and that is just to name a few. It is now strawberry season in New Zealand, and I am looking forward to trying shortcake in the crockpot to have strawberry shortcake! I also bet Jesse would sure appreciate me trying to bake a pie in there!
Coming soon. . .
How Laura's life has drastically now that she has started putting in an honest day's work.
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