Living Off Leftovers

 I think we've eaten leftovers for four days and I'm happy to say there are no leftovers in the fridge. There are dishes in the freezer but I can get back to cooking and loving on my new little slow cooker. I had hoped to use the slow cooker today but this was a very busy morning and I never got around to getting the food in the pot.

We're supposed to have a pretty good frost tonight so I spent more than an hour this morning picking peppers, tomatoes and okra. Then I cut enough basil to fill all four trays in the freeze dryer and get those dried. There are apples in the freeze dryer and they probably won't finish til in the morning. The Purple Lady Bok Choy and the Tatsoi are not frost hardy so I covered those. For the next three weeks we may only have one more frost so I would love to keep those things alive a bit longer.

I had physical therapy at 11. At 12 I had a grocery order at Walmart to pick up. By the time I got home, about 12:30, I was starving, realized I had not even taken time to eat breakfast so I scrapped the plans for making a Chicken Cobbler and made Chicken Hot Pockets.

Not our healthiest meal this week but I was very close to saying "Let's go eat Mexican!"

I have been trying to make all of our salad dressings. This is the Caesar Dressing recipe I used for these and it was very good and very easy to make.

Vince seriously loved these "Hot Pockets". They were so easy to make us some of the rotisserie chicken and the purchased pizza crust (rolled up in a box like the pie crusts). A homemade pizza crust would work too (probably better) but in a pinch, the purchased crust was close to perfect.

Tomorrow we're having grilled tuna and I'm trying this Green Bean Casserole Tart that I may want to fix for Thanksgiving.

The New Crockpot

 Today I used the new crockpot but I will be using it more next week and will make another post once I've made a real meal. It's called a "Multi-Meal" so I start calling it that so you know I'm talking about the new one. By the way, at Sam's Club yesterday, I saw the full size pot like this one. It was $59. It wasn't the one you can cook two meals in but I had to laugh because you can buy two of those or less than I paid for the one multi-meal. In those two big ones, you could cook two BIG meals at the same time. But . . the Multi-Meal is so cute!  :)

OK . . what I cooked today:

On the right side (Side 2), I have Apple Crisp cooking. I used this recipe and only made half the recipe. It had not yet started baking when I took that photo and I meant to take a photo when it was finished and forgot.

The Apple Crisp turned out great. I will definitely use this recipe again. I cooked it on high for 2 hours, then removed the lid and left it on warm for about half an hour while we were finishing our meal.

You can't see much of the apple crisp under the ice cream. I made vanilla ice cream in the Ninja Creami and, as always, it's delicious!

Notes on Apple Crisp:

I used organic sprouted oat groats and used the flaker to roll them so they're a bit thicker than old fashioned oats.

The top of this dish doesn't get a bit toasty like it does when cooked in the oven but it was delicious and easy enough that I will definitely make it again in this cooker.

Notes on Steamed Veggies:

Someone had mentioned that if you have one side on high, the other side will get hotter than it would on low. I wanted to see how this would work so for the first hour the apple crisp was cooking, I had water in the vessel on the left side. I kept sticking my finger in it to see how hot it got. The water got warm but barely warm and the other side was on high.

The default for the steamer setting was 14 or 15 minutes. I left it at that and the broccoli and carrots were perfect.

The only complaint I have is that the grid for the steamer tray has spaces a bit larger than I would prefer. I started out cutting the carrots into rather thick "coins" but they were falling through into the water. I started cutting the carrots into "logs" about 3" long. If the carrots were bigger, I would slice those in half lengthwise and that worked fine.

Next week or maybe this weekend, I'll cook a meal in the Multi-Meal and report back. We're still working on leftovers!  If anyone is wondering, we had leftover Salisbury Steak with mushroom gravy and mashed potatoes with the steamed carrots and broccoli.

Reheating Pasta

 I'm probably not the one you want to ask for advice on reheating things because I detest the microwave and if it were up to me, there would not be one in my kitchen. Having said that, my guess is most people would heat it up in the microwave. Vince heated some leftover Million Dollar Pasta for a snack in the microwave today and he's fine with it.

I have a Ninja Combi All-in-One Multi cooker and I LOVE it! I've had it for two years and I probably use it at least five days a week. It does pretty much everything - air fries, broils, bakes, toasts.

When I'm reheating a frozen pasta dish, I defrost it in the fridge for 24 hours or more. Once it's completely defrosted, I will stir it up and see how it looks. Sometimes it looks a bit dry because I think the pasta continues to absorb liquid either as it's in the freezing process or in the defrosting process. If it looks like it's dry, I will add a little milk with a little melted butter. You could probably get by with water too. Then I cover it and put it in the Ninja Combi (you could easily use your oven) and heat it at 350 til it's warm. A small dish usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes. Also, if it looks a little sad, add some grated cheese, stir it all together and we can't even tell it was reheated.

Canning Chicken Broth

 First, a reader asked about freezing pasta. Yes, you can but it may not taste 100% as it did before it was frozen. I take pasta dishes out of the freezer and let them defrost in the fridge at least 24 hours. If there's a dish that I can stir (not things like lasagna), I will add a bit of milk or broth, stir it all up and then heat it. That seems to make it better but even if I don't do that, we've never had a problem with freezing, thawing and re-heating pasta.

Vince had plans to go to the south side of Joplin today, which is where Sam's Club is located. I had been wanting to go there so off we went. He made his stops, then we went to Sam's. I love their rotisserie chickens. Walmart has them too but sometimes the ones from Walmart are giant and the breast meat is grainy or stringy and looks weird. I just can't even look at the ones in Walmart! There are four or five dishes I want to make over the next few weeks that require chicken so we got three of the Sam's rotisserie chickens. By the time we got home, they were cool enough to handle so I stripped all the meat off the bones and got five bags with 3 cups of chicken in each bag.

Next, the bones and skin went into my biggest stockpot, with water to cover them, a bit of vinegar, salt, celery, carrots and onions. That simmered for about four hours, then I strained it and canned it.

I canned 19 pints of chicken broth! Usually I use quarts but at this time of year, my jar stash is slim because the jars are all filled. I need all of the available quarts for freeze dried apples and pears that I'm still working on. Pints are fine for the broth - sometimes a pint isn't enough and a quart is too much. I have 1-1/2 pint jars but the pints were easier to grab. That's one canner load in the photo above. I used the small canner with 8 jars and the large canner with 11 jars. It took the larger canner longer to cool down so those jars didn't get in the picture. In fact, even as I'm writing them, the large canner is just now getting down to zero pressure.

Next project was to get the elderberries out of the freeze dryer. That's three half gallons of dried elderberries. When I need to make elderberry syrup or jelly, I'll just simmer some of these, strain the juice out and be ready to go. That's a lot easier than using the steam juicer and freezing all the juice - especially since I don't have enough freezer space.

Here's a little snapshot of other things (behind the elderberries and chicken broth) I've been busy freeze drying. Lots of powdered tomatoes. some of the little Sweet 100 tomatoes that the dogs love and will get for treats during the winter, another jar of basil.

Crockpot Million Dollar Pasta

 Today's crockpot dinner was Million Dollar Pasta. I am not a fan of marinara but Vince loves it and I should make it more often than I do. He loved this recipe.

Messy bowl!  :(  By the time I'm ready to serve the food, I'm tired and I probably should do better with presentation if I'm going to share these photos but around here . . what you see is what you get!

We had garlic rolls and salad.

The only changes I made: I didn't have Ricotta so I used whole milk Greek yogurt instead and I didn't have cavatappi pasta so I used penne.

Where this recipe shines is the amount it makes and how well this will freeze. These are the 2 cup size Souper Cubes (affiliate link). I've been using these for a bit over a year. Once filled, I put the lids on and put them in the freezer. After a couple of days in the freezer, I pop them out and vacuum seal them, label them, then stack them back in the freezer. Some days, we each choose from a frozen dinner. Currently we have the following in the freezer:

• Chicken, broccoli, cheese and rice
• Scalloped potatoes with pulled pork
• Chicken jambalaya
• Meat loaf
• Shepherd's Pie

We also have the 1 cup Souper Cubes and for the things I like more than Vince likes  (Scalloped Potatoes or Chicken Jambalaya), I'll freeze those in 1 cup portions.

Most weeks, at least one day I will go over the list with Vince and he'll decide what he wants; I'll decide what I want and I'll take those out of the freezer and put them in the fridge to defrost so we can easily heat them up the next day.

The new crockpot is supposed to arrive tomorrow. We have to use up some leftovers out of the fridge so I won't be cooking a meal tomorrow. Monday we have several things going on so we'll be eating leftovers again so maybe Tuesday I'll be able to try out the new pot . . unless I come up with some kind of dessert I can make in it. We'll see.

A Divided Crock Pot

 It seems weird that I'm this excited about a new crock pot. Did I NEED a new crock pot? No. But, I was thinking I wanted a smaller crock pot. I have two and there may be a third one in the garage, but they're the bigger 7 quart or 6.5 quart. They're heavy and if I leave it on the counter, which I would do if I was using it every day, they take up a lot of room. Otherwise, it sits on the shelf in the sun room and I have to keep getting it out and putting it back. I found one at Amazon that was 2.5 quart and for most things I cook, that would be fine. I had been looking at it and tonight, I saw this one:

The blurb at Amazon says "Cook multiple recipes at one time, with dual pot temperature and cook functions, including slow cook, sear/saute, bake, rice/steam and keep warm."

Today I needed rice for the butter rice. I could have used the rice cooker function. Often - real often - I'm steaming carrots or broccoli or cauliflower for our vegetable. I could do that in this one pot.

Each side is supposed to be 3.7 quarts. It's 12.25" wide, 18" long and 9.25" high so it's bigger than it looks.

It should be here Sunday. I should not be this excited about a crock pot!!

Crockpot Butter Chicken

Today's crockpot meal was Butter Chicken. The link goes to a Facebook short. I didn't find (but it may be there somewhere) a printable link. I have his cookbook and it's in there. 

I actually forgot to take a picture. We had Basmatti Rice with it and it was so delicious. 

There's an Indian restaurant on the south side of the interstate and any time we find ourselves down there, we go eat at that restaurant. We always get Butter Chicken and this recipe was not only easy, we liked it better than what we get at the restaurant.

I only changed one thing - Last year I canned some tomatoes with hot peppers - I just added a variety of peppers to each jar - some jalapeno, some tabasco, serrano . . I don't even remember. In this recipe, I left off the can of diced tomatoes and used a quart of my home canned tomatoes. Since the tomatoes had hot peppers, I also left out the cayenne.

I also made Naan Bread with fresh milled flour. Delicious!