What a Crock

I decided a few days ago that I would like to find a way to make decent meals without as much effort. It is far too easy to succumb to tiredness at the end of the day and simply order in, especially with three of us with such varied tastes.

I also have this problem with the Heinesuppe ... my existing pot only makes enough for about 8 bowls, which does not leave much left over for later. This last time, I got only a few bowls, and left the rest for Nick, who loves this soup.

So I went online to my favourite kitchen store (Kitchen Stuff Plus in Toronto) and looked around to see what was available. Turned out that a nice Rival Crock-Pot (6 liter) was on sale from about 130 to 59 ... that's a deal I was not about to pass on. And there was a wonderful 20 liter stock pot with glass lid and 18/10 heavy stainless construction on sale for 79 ... so I ordered both of these, finding that there is also free shipping over 100 bucks. Good deal ...

Two days later, they arrived in a huge box sitting on my porch. Wicked ...

The stock pot is embarrassingly large :-) ... I won't show an image yet ... that'll come when I next make the soup.


But the crock pot is perfect ... the ceramic insert can be used separately on the stove and can be carried to the table. Excellent. There are two cooking settings, low (6 to 8 hours) and high (4 to 6 hours) ... and a WARM setting, to which it automatically jumps at the end of cooking. This is important as you can stretch your workday to 12 hours and the food is hot and ready when you arrive.

My first recipe was Hungarian Goulash. I dropped by the Loblaws to grab some stewing beef (never use the good stuff ... it's just not necessary), some fresh paprika, onions, a large green pepper, diced tomatoes and that's about it. See this recipe.

I was a little freaked when I finished adding ingredients ... the pot was full and there was no liquid ... just massive amounts of veggies and a little meat hidden amongst it all. But no worries ... 7 hours later it was a lovely stew and I served it over penne.


Nice ... Jon was ambivalent, but then he is always ambivalent about food that is not within a narrow set of foods. Nick was too busy to try it last night as he had to write a complete 8 page essay after work ... it was due at midnight and 1 minute late would have cost him 10 marks. He made it, but lord knows how it reads :-)

But after a couple of nice bowls for Jon and I, I was able to pack away two large containers of left overs. That'll be lunches for me for the next week or so. Cool ... I think we'll be doing stuffed pork chops or perhaps Swiss steak next ... not too sure ...

So ... interesting experience. I look forward to cooking more complete meals in this thing ...