I Love the Crockpot

Life just seems to get crazier and crazier and the crockpot was invented by a genius.

Friday, Rob and I went to the Star for dinner, our favorite Basque restaurant and had baked lamb and halibut respectively. Great meal. On Saturday Rob went on an overnite hunting trip with his friend Irineo, in hopes of getting Irineo's deer. No luck unfortunately, but Rob came home on Sunday with a goose. So Saturday, I had left over stir fry from Thursday night.

Veggie Stir-fry. Two yellow or red bell peppers sliced into strips, 8 ounces of sliced mushrooms, 1 bunch of asparagus cut into bite size pieces, one red onion cut into slices, 1 tbs of minced ginger and 1 tbs of minced garlic, canola oil, soy sauce, chicken broth, and rice-wine vinegar. Get your wok or pan really, really hot. Smoking hot and then add the peppers and onions to the canola oil. Add the garlic and ginger and then the asparagus, add the mushrooms last. When the veggies look crisp cooked add your soy sauce, chicken broth, and rice-wine vinegar to taste. Let it thicken up just a minute or two and serve with rice.

I also stir fried some green beans and chopped garlic and that was the second dish. It was pretty good.

I made dipped pretzel sticks for Halloween. Really easy. Take almond bark in whatever flavor you want, melt it, dip the pretzels in and then cover them with sprinkles of the season.

Sunday, as I said before, Rob came home with a goose. He cleaned it and plucked it and it is in the fridge awaiting something. But I'll put it in the freezer today since I'm leaving to go to Kansas tomorrow. Rob got home from hunting and neither one of us were really interested in cooking anything, so it was a hunt through the cabinet and eat what you wanted night. I didn't eat anything, not hungry. Rob had a pear apple and dried fruit and nuts.

On Sunday, I took a venison roast out of the freezer to thaw, and that's where the crockpot comes into play. Yesterday about 4:00 I put seared the venison roast in a pan with some olive oil, after I had drenched it in lemon pepper. I cut up three potatoes and put them on the bottom of the crock pot, along with about five carrots cut up, and 4 ounces of mushrooms quartered. I then lay the roast on top of the potatoes and put about 8 ounces of green beans on top of the roast. I deglazed the pan that I had seared the roast in, with some beef stock and put in two cups to the crockpot. I put it on high, and left it alone. At 6:30 I came home and turned it onto low for an hour and then we had this really great, easy meal. I took the juice thickened it with some corn starch and we were ready. Yum!