Yay my first post!
As a very busy research assistant/graduate student, I sometimes don't return home until late in the evening. As my stomach growls, I try to figure out what to cook. Generally hurried and unprepared cooking does not make for the best food (unless you are my college roommate Kat who can make anything!). To overcome this, I have started to become an avid slow cooker. There is something wonderful about coming home to a nice warm meal! Meal planning is also great for the wallet, and has cut my grocery budget by half!
Here's what I've planned for our next 7 meals (sources in parenthesis):
Slow Cooker White Chili (making 1/2 the original) (Whole Foods)
Slow Cooker Chickpea and Lentil Stew (Whole Foods)
Slow Cooker Pork and Cider Stew (Whole Foods)
Slow Cooker Pot Roast (Whole Foods)
Sausage and Shrimp Gumbo (Whole Foods)
Slow Cooked Beef Fajitas (Ring around the Rosies)
Cilantro Lime Chicken with corn and Black Beans (Six Sisters)
I started out by finding recipes from Melissa Fallis (here). Following her numerous posts, I started to do mainly meat (to me veggies turn out too soggy and tasteless depending on the dish), but my boyfriend thought I needed more veggies (boys can be picky - if there is too much meat he says something, but if there is no meat he says something :) ) Melissa seems to get most of her recipes from Stephanie at Mama and Baby Love. Her ebook on slow cooking looks interesting, but I don't know if I am ready to spend $10 on it when there are so many free sources (thanks to Pinterest and your local library). Jaima, another blogger at Ring Around the Rosies has a lot of freezer cooking (round up here). She references Stephanie a lot (and reviewed her book), and also has freezer recipes for toddlers (not that I have any need for that).
I was really excited when I started poking around that I found recipes for slow cooking from Whole Foods. I am interested in eating healthy, and have an interest in organic food, so getting more veggies and beans into my diet is a good thing. I also like that the Whole Foods recipes don't have a lot of "Condensed Cream of X Soup." I am not sure canned soup is the direction I want to be going.
Anyways, I'm off to the grocery store in a bit to purchase everything. Look for reviews forthcoming!
