Sunday Dinner- Crockpot style

Sunday is a slower paced day for us.  Between church and Sunday naps the last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  For that reason, I love the slow cookers.  I have 3 of them.  I can throw stuff in, go to church, come home and my house smells amazing!  Today, I looked in the freezer, found a deer roast and a small package of elk steaks to cook.

Here's what I did.  I took a bunch of those cute, little red potatoes that we got in our Bountiful Basket, threw in some baby carrots, and cut up one of the onions that we also got in our basket. 

The potatoes were already pretty small, so I didn't cut them or anything, just threw them in whole.  Then I sprinkled some italian seasoning on all that.  Next, I put the meat on top.

One of the great things about this, I didn't even need to defrost it, I put it in frozen.  Sprinkled some seasoning salt and pepper on there, put the lid on and turned it on high for about 4 hours.  When we got home from church I put it on low for about another hour while we got ready to eat and waited for my husband to get home.

Verdict: You can see from the first picture that I paired this with a green salad.  I'm not a big meat eater and half of my kids aren't either, so we really enjoyed the carrots, potatoes, and salad.  My husband and my other two kids really enjoyed the meat.  Next time I need to cook more potatoes.  Also, I love that I was able to use so many things from my basket.  My goal is to use all of it before we get our next one. 

This Week's Bounty

There weren't many fruits this week, but my family is sure going to love the veggies!

Lettuce

Red Bell Peppers

Green Bell Peppers

Asparagus

Onions

Green beans

Tomatoes

Red potatoes

Oranges

Apples

Grapefruits

Blueberries

In addition, we got the Tropical Pack (not shown).  It included kiwi, mango, pineapple, coconut, limes, plantain, mint, and vanilla beans.  The kids can hardly wait to crack open the coconut and help me pry out the meat. 

A New Year

Isn't it beautiful?

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays.  I know I did.  Now, it's a New Year.  How many of you made new resolutions to eat healthier, get in better shape, or something along those lines?  I didn't.  At least, not a new resolution, that's always my goal.  Also, our lives changed quite a bit when my sweet husband took a new job.  His schedule changed quite a bit.  He used to leave early, but was home for dinner quite often.  Now, he leaves later, but misses dinner more.  This has led to breakfast being our "family meal" instead of dinner.  I now have the opportunity to make sure I plan good, healthy breakfasts to make the most of family time.  Also, since it's the one meal that I know I will be fixing for my husband, I want it to be a good one.  I'm finding this to be slightly challenging.  He doesn't like pancakes, one of my kids favorites, and I can't hardly stand french toast, one of his favorites.  I feel like I can do bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns only so many times before I need some variety.  In comes the cookbooks and other ideas.  We have a favorite that I do try to make at least once a week, biscuits and gravy, but the other days we are rotating through a few things and figuring it out.  If anyone has great breakfast ideas I'm all for it.  This morning I needed to make something quick so I did some mini muffins.  I wanted to add something, so I cut up the beautiful fruit plate you saw above.  The great thing, my kids didn't eat it all at breakfast, but they snacked on it the little while until it was gone.  I love that they knew they could eat it, it was healthy, and I didn't have to hear them whine about being hungry and asking what to fix, then telling me they didn't want it.  Please tell me my kids aren't the only ones who do that.  I'm really thinking that this fruit plate may become a breakfast staple, though.  It worked really well today and I can always switch out whatever fruits we get in our Bountiful Basket.

My kids are still helping me plan out some of our meals.  They get to pretty much pick about 4 out of 5 meals, and I make sure that if the meal doesn't contain enough variety (veggies) then I get to add the side dishes, and they have to at least taste them.  Once in a while I will over ride an idea if there are time constraints or we are out of a main ingredient.  Overall, though, the kids do a great job of looking at what we got in our basket and figuring out how we are going to use it.  In fact this week we got both broccoli and cauliflower and my daughter was so excited because she wants macaroni and cheese with both of those in it.

This Week’s Bounty & Hostess Pack

I forgot the pineapple in with our basket picture, but here’s the rest of it:

• 1 Pineapple (missing)
• 1 bag pears
• 1 5lb bag +3 loose red potatoes
• 1 bag carrots
• 2 bunches spinach
• 1 celery
• 9 bananas
• 3 yellow squash
• 3 yellow onions
• 7 oranges
• 1 clamshell grape tomatoes

The hostess pack has everything else to round out our Thanksgiving meal:

 

• 10 lb bag russet potatoes
• 1 pineapple
• 1 celery
• 1 large bag green beans
• 2 yellow onions
• 2 parsnips
• 8 granny smith apples
• 2 bags carrots
• 7 yams
• parsley
• sage
• rosemary
• thyme

The herbs are in the little baggies on the side.  I love the smell of fresh rosemary, it’s one of my favorites. 

So, what’s your favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner?  Mine is the fruit cocktail and the veggie tray.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the turkey and mashed potatoes and all that, too, but I love to snack on all those yummy veggies, call me crazy.

Pear Butter

 We have a really big pear tree in front of our house that gives us lots of pears every year.  These pears are not really good for canning, they are more grainy and tend to fall apart if you try to can them, but they make really good juice.  We use our steam juicer and then we are left with this pear pulp.  Last year we decided to put that pulp to good use, we made pear butter.  When I say "we"  I actually mean my husband.  I may have given him the idea, but he did all the work.  Well, this year he's been gone a lot so I decided to try my hand at it.  I picked a bunch of pears with my sister-in-law and then juiced them.  That was pretty easy.  Then, I looked for a pear butter recipe.  That got a little confusing for me.  There are so many recipes out there and some I had the ingredients for and some I didn't.  So, I made up my own.  I didn't have any clove, so I used some pumpkin pie spice.  Most recipes called for pear sauce, similar to apple sauce.  Well, I blended up the pear that was left in the juicer and it ended up being thicker than pear sauce, so it cuts down a lot on the cooking time.  Also, a lot of recipes called for quite a bit of sugar, since my pears are really sweet, I cut down on that, too.  Oh, and when I juiced the pears, I cored them, but I left the peel on.  When I pureed them, I did it peel and all.

Pear Butter

13 cups of pear puree
1 cup sugar
2 TBSP cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Juice from 1 lemon

Combine all ingredients in a large pot.  Heat through.  If butter is too thick, add some pear juice.  If it's too runny, then just cook on low to reduce.  Be careful, as it cooks it will probably splatter.  You can either partially cover with a lid to let steam escape, or stir constantly to keep air bubbles from building up.  Since it's already pretty thick it doesn't take long to reduce.  Once you get it to the consistency you want, ladle it into hot jars leaving 1/2 inch head space.  Process in a water bath for about 25 minutes for pints.

Verdict:  Just so you know, this recipe has not been tested for canning, but I adapted it from recipes of others who have used and tested them for years.  Follow at your own discretion.  If in doubt, you can freeze the pear butter, or store in your fridge for up to 2 weeks.  This is really good.  It still seemed pretty sweet to me, but I think it's just because my pears are sweet like candy.  It's really good to use with peanut butter on sandwiches, or my favorite, on some toast with butter.

Eggplant Parmesan

Yeah, a recipe!  A good friend of mine gave me some eggplants from her garden.  I was so excited and couldn't wait to make this recipe.  I like this recipe because it doesn't use crumbs for the breading.  It is gluten free, even.

Eggplant Parmesan

1 medium or 2 small eggplant
1 egg
1 TBSP water
Parmesan cheese
jar spaghetti sauce

Peel the eggplant and slice 1/2 inch thick.  I cut mine lengthwise, but you could also cut rounds if you want.  In a shallow bowl or container crack egg and beat it up with the water.  In another shallow bowl put the Parmesan cheese.  I didn't have enough real cheese, so I had about 1/2 grated cheese and 1/2 of the powdered kind.  Dip eggplant into the egg, and then coat with the cheese.  Place in a greased dish.  Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Cook eggplant for 20 minutes.  Turn over and cook for another 10 minutes.   Cover the eggplant with spaghetti sauce and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes.  Enjoy with a big tossed salad.

Verdict:  I loved it!  I love the flavor of the Parmesan.  I used my own canned spaghetti sauce on top and it was fabulous.  My 2 year old had thirds.  My 8 year old told me it wasn't as bad as she thought it was going to be.

This Week's Bounty

1 bunch celery
2 heads lettuce
1 container mushrooms
7 sweet potatoes
2 yellow squash
1 head garlic
4 tomatoes
5 avocados
4 apples
11 plums
9 bananas
1 bag grapes

My 6 year old's favorite thing to eat is plums.  She is very happy this week.