Crock Pot Style

A few thing converged within the last few weeks and I decided I needed a crock pot. Or "slow cooker" as they're called these days. My friend L, who also has two small children and not a lot of time to prep her meals, likes hers. My babysitter, LB who is also really into cooking swears by hers and I was randomly watching the Food Network on a rainy day and I happened to discover Robin Miller.

For those of you who have not heard of her, she has a show on the Food Network called "Quick Fix Meals." Unlike her absurdly famous counterpart, Rachel Ray, Robin Miller does 15 minute meals. But she does a lot of prep ahead of time. So, she throws a few things in the crock pot in the morning and throws together a simple salad in the evening and voila! Dinner. She is self consciously skinny like so many 'celebrity chefs', this woman does not look like she has eaten a gram of fat since the Reagan Administration... But I digress. I like her cooking style because it fits my lifestyle. I have a bit of "free" (ie, non kid time) in the mornings when K takes her nap, and then I usually don't get a break until Rich gets home. I am fond of Rachel Ray, but most of the time her meals do not work for me. This is due to:

• her penchant for cooking with things that my husband would not touch with a ten foot pole (mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers... the list goes ON and ON.)
• the ungodly mess that must be created to actually cook one of those dinners in 30 minutes. I try to clean while I cook. And if I start after he gets home, I'm too hungry and tired.
  
• the diverse and fresh ingredients she uses are seldom things I have on hand.

But Robin Miller makes sauces out of stuff that are generally in my pantry. So, I thought I'd give the whole slow cooker thing a try. I bought this one from Amazon for $30 and so far, it has been a great investment. The first night, I made ribs, and They. Were. Fabulous. The fell off the bone and had a lovely flavor. They were a success. A rib dinner like that a restaurant would have cost us $30 per person, and the baby back ribs I got at McKinnons only cost about $10, and the ingredients for the bar-b-que sauce were stuff I had around, brown sugar, tomato sauce, chili powder, etc.

I made pork roast in the slow cooker last Friday. I invented a sauce with orange juice, maple syrup and rosemary. I had to use the high setting because I didn't start the meal until after two, and I think it made the meat a little tougher. The sauce was a little on the sweet side, but over all it was pretty good.

For tonight, I made a variation of something I saw Robin Miller do. She made a slow cooker chicken with orange marmalade that she thinned with chicken broth, orange juice and added a dollop of hoisen sauce, and maple syrup. I substituted apricot preserves and orange zest, because that's what I had handy. We'll see how it comes out. I put a bunch of rainbow chard on top, which I'm regretting at the moment, because it smells a little skunky. She made another chicken dish with chard in the crock pot and it looked really fine.

So, we'll see what comes out of the pot. Perhaps we'll dump it in the garbage and eat a lovely bowl of cereal, or perhaps we'll pick out the chard and snarf it up.