Getting Friendly With My CrockPot

I've been trying to get better at using my crock pot, but not many of the recipes fit into our eating style whether it be because of health or taste.  (was that grammatically correct?)  What I mean is most of them involve opening and dumping copious amounts of canned foods into the cooker.  I'm not totally against said canned foods, but the overuse of the cream of fill-in-the-blank soups and blocks of velveeta have me turning pages in disgust.  I had to laugh when a recipe for Chicken Alfredo called for chicken and a few cans of cream of mushroom soup.  Ya... I don't think so!! 

I checked out Fix-It and Forget-It, 5-ingredient favorites by Phyllis Good from the library to give me some ideas on how to get going.  The book was pleasing and easy to look at.  She lists the recipes in columns with only 3 to a page.  The big font and occasional tips make it feel very easy peasy to do.  And easy it is.  During our breakfast time yesterday, while some kids ate and others finished up their morning routine, I boiled a box of small pasta just a few minutes, drained it, and put it in the crock pot.  To that I added 2 cups of milk, half a stick of butter, and a good couple of handfuls of shredded sharp cheddar cheese.  Oh yeah, I learned that you have to add flavor to a lot of crock pot recipes, so I finely chopped up half an onion and threw that in along with some crushed black pepeer.  (The original recipe called for a can of cheddar cheese soup, so I just didn't use it at all, put plenty of cheese and milk)  It was ready in less than 2 hours, which was great for us to eat before we headed to the library for a couple of hours. 

Today, with the leftovers, I added half a can of tuna and warmed it up for the kids.. they loved it! 

I also decided to work mom's chicken stew recipe into a crockpot one.  I started all the 'stew' parts in the cooker (tomoates, sauce, potatoes, and onions) while I cooked the chicken in the presure cooker.   We were in school for the following two hours, but by lunchtime the chicken was cool enough to debone and pop into the crockpot.  By then the tomotoes had gotten a good two hour lead time  into cooking which is always yummy for tomatoes.  It was delicious, and I plan on doing that again.

I'm getting hungry talking about this food and thinking ahead to the lazy lasagne and to the mexican food I can cook in there!  Let me know if you have any favorites.