Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Crockpot Vegetable Soup

Last week I made some Crockpot Vegetable Soup to see if it was good enough to put in the Oregon Trail, the mission newsletter I edit each month. I thought it was fabulous soup.  I have not tried it out on Dear One yet, but that will come.

Quick and Easy Crockpot Vegetable Soup
3 potatoes, scrubbed and diced
1 large onion, finely diced
2 16-ounce bags frozen vegetables of your preference, thawed somewhat
2 15-ounce or 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, including juice
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon coarse salt or 3/4 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 quart vegetable broth

In the bowl of a 6-quart crockpot put the diced potatoes and onions in the bottom of the crockpot bowl.
Add the frozen vegetables, chopping any large pieces to about dice-sized.
Add the bay leaves and sprinkle on the spices.
 Pour the vegetable broth and canned tomatoes and juice over the top then stir well with a wooden spoon.
Cook on Low from 5-6 hours.
Taste to adjust seasoning. Add whatever you need!

This made about 3 quarts of soup.

This is what I told the missionaries to do in the Oregon Trail.  As it turned out, since the frozen vegetable were not very much thawed, the potatoes were not ready when I checked it at 4 1/2 hours.  Since I was edgy to have some for supper, I turned the temperature up to High then cooked 2 more hours.  The potatoes were then soft and the soup tasted good.

The next time I make the soup, I will probably only put in 1/2 teaspoon black pepper and let people who like it with a little more kick to add more at the table.

Sorry about no photo.  It was put away too fast!

Food Friday: Refrigerator Soup, More or Less

When we were growing up Mother used to take all the leftovers in the refrigerator that were on the verge and threw them into a big soup pot.  Those soups were absolutely delicious.  Of course, there was no way ever to duplicate them since there was no recipe...just a dib of this and a dab of that until the pot was full and ready to heat and eat.  Well, I just did the same thing, sort of.

We had carrots, celery, onions, broccoli, and other things in the refrigerator that needed to be used.  The next day was going to be very taxing to me physically so I wanted food ready the instant we got home. So I chopped vegetables and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  In the morning I added the dibs and dabs and started the Crockpot on Low and set it for 8 hours.  When I got home there was some truly delicious soup.  Even Dear One liked it.  He had arrived home an hour before I did and was sitting on the couch fat and happy after a big bowl of soup.  Well, definitely not fat, but doesn't that have a nice ring to it?!

What I did:

1/2 pound carrots, peeled and sliced
4 stalks celery, sliced
2 small russet potatoes, scrubbed and diced
1/2 large sweet onion, diced
1/2 large red onion, diced
1 head broccoli, chopped VERY fine.  No need to throw broccoli in anyone's unsuspecting face...!

These were stored in the refrigerator overnight.

Since I had almost 3 cups of Soy Curls that I had purchased at the New Seasons Market, I put them in a large pot,  put in 4 or 5 cups of water then stirred in 2 Tablespoons of the savory seasoning I blogged about some time ago plus 2 heaping Tablespoons of Better Than Bouillon Roasted Vegetable Base. I stirred this well then covered and let sit on the counter overnight.

In the morning I put the vegetables plus the Soy Curls and their broth into the Crockpot.  Way not enough ingredients so I took a half can of refried beans and stirred them in.  There was a 15-ounce can of diced fire-roasted tomatoes I tossed in, then a big jar of Salsa Verde.  I added a teaspoon of chili powder and a Tablespoon of granulated garlic.  When this was all nicely stirred, I added the last of the homemade vegetable broth and more water to bring it up to 3/4 full in the 7-quart Crockpot, turned it on low for 8 hours and walked the long way to the office.  I walked an even longer way home from the office and collapsed in my chair, too tired to eat but happy that Dear One pronounced the soup good.  After half an hour or so I had life enough to eat some. It was really good.

This soup had the most flavorful broth.  Soup is all about broth to me....

If you don't know what Soy Curls are, they are soy beans that have been cooked, cooled, then extruded into some sort of shape then dried.  They taste like nothing until you soak them in some sort of broth.  Then you can use them in many ways.  They have texture, unlike tofu, and are really worth trying.  You can make "chicken" salad with them.  You can make "tuna" salad with them.  You can make "beef stroganoff" with them.  So many things.  And don't mind a bit.

These are the soy curls that have been soaking overnight and have plumped up beautifully. They were the last thing I threw into the pot before adding broth water to make lots more broth.

Munchie Monday: Food Fail

How great it would be if  we could use the Crock pot for overnight cooking of a great breakfast.  So I did a whole lot of looking for simple, easy, cheap breakfasts in the Crock pot.  And found one that was touted as fabulous...so I tried it.

It turns out NOT to be overnight so I made it for lunch.  It took 3 hours to cook on low. I was thinking the missionaries could put it going before leaving their apartments and come home and have breakfast for lunch.  Not going to happen.

This is what it looked like in the Crock Pot when cooked.


This was a French Toast in a Slow Cooker recipe.  Sounds reasonable and doable.  

Slice French bread 1 inch thick.  Spread both sides with softened cream cheese and place in the crockery bowl touching each other.

Sprinkle 2 Tablespoons of brown sugar over the bread then sprinkle in 1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice over the top.  Slice up 3-4 bananas and cover the bread with the banana chunks.  (That was the big mistake right there...)

In a bowl, mix together 4 large eggs, 1/4 cup milk, and 1/3 cup honey.  Pour over the top.  It should come 3/4 of the way up the bread.  Sprinkle on 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans then cut 2-4 Tablespoons of cold butter into thin slices and put on top.

Put it to cook on low for 3 -4 hours.  It looks like the above picture when it is cooked.

Even with a big glug of real maple syrup on it, this was kind of nasty.  We will not be making it again.

Crockpot Missionaries!

Recently our missionaries have been making their own suppers Monday through Friday rather than eating with members of the congregation.  They will still eat with ward members on the weekends.  Our mission president thought the missionaries would eat better healthier meals if they had crock pots so all the senior missionaries went to Costco who was (and maybe still is) having a sale on 7-quart Crock pots that let you program them to a small extent.  We each picked up five so we would have enough for each apartment to have one.  (There are about 70 apartments in the mission...)

Today was the first of two zone conferences where the Crock pots were going to be dispensed.  Dear One and our local young missionaries plus some senior missionaries loaded 45 pots into the back of the truck.  We drove them to the zone conference in Tualatin.  During the conference a lady who is a crock pot queen gave a short presentation with tips on how to use the Crock pot.  She had previously sent us a number of quick and easy recipes to pass along to the missionaries, which I did.

For myself, I thought that was a good Crock pot so I availed myself of one and made some Apple Pie Cake. It has five ingredients.  I will be sharing that here tomorrow, I hope, and with the missionaries as it was okay eating.

This is the truck ready to hand out the crock pots to the missionaries.

If anyone has any quick and easy, with few ingredients, and inexpensive, recipes to share, please email them to me!  I will pass them along.  Especially good would be recipes that could be used for several meals in several different ways.  Thanks!

Munchie Monday: Slow Cooker French Onion Soup

Don't you just love a bowl of French Onion Soup?!  I do.  Without the bread and cheese is the way I like it best.

The other day I got a bag of Walla Walla Sweets onions at Costco because I needed an onion.  Of course there were seven onions in the bag.  Each onion was at least one pound in size.  After slicing one to sauté with two small zucchinis, slicing another to sauté with garlic and spinach, I still had five onions.  What to do, what to do....French onion soup. 

Caramelizing the onions is the job to do with French Onion Soup...so I looked for easy caramelizing recipes online. Most of them suggested quickly sautéing them with sugar. What!!!  Then there was one that suggested using a crockpot.  That was my guy.

After slicing three onions (64 ounces worth!) I put them put them in the crockpot which was then about three-quarters full.  I put them cooking on Low at 10:24 AM. 

Three or four times during the day I gave them a stir.  At about 7 o'clock I took a big spoonful of them and put them over mashed potatoes in a bowl. 

Boy, were they great tasting!

Because they were not quite ready for the soup, I put the crockpot on warm all night with the lid slightly ajar. 

This morning they looked great.

I added two quarts of vegetable stock I had made yesterday in the Instant Pot (all the saved vegetable peelings, scraps,  etc, stored in the freezer until I had a gallon of them, then put in the Instant Pot at high pressure for 45 minutes after covering the scraps with water, then strained and bottled...) poured over the onions.  To the onions and broth I added 2 bay leaves, 1 teaspoon of thyme,  2 Tablespoons of vegetable base (Better Than Bouillon), plus a scant half teaspoon of black pepper. I turned the crockpot back to Low and will let it bubble all day while we are gone.  When we get home I am sure it will be delicious. 

Dear One may like it with toast and cheese on top but I will love it just as it stands.  I can hardly wait.  AND one of the best things about this is that supper will be READY when we get to the apartment!

Food Friday: Homemade Apple Butter in Crock Pot

We came into some apples that had seen better days. I did not want to throw them out since there were parts of each apple that were still good. I also did not want to make apple pies on this occasion...no place to store the pies (especially not in my tummy!) and not life enough to drive them to donate....so I thought of apple butter.

This is what I did:

Washed and cored apples.

Chopped apples into large pieces.

Filled 5-quart crock pot bowl/ceramic insert with apple chunks.

Filled crock pot...about 15 apples

In a medium bowl put:
   1.5 cups apple cider
   1.5 cups brown sugar
   1.5 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
   1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
   1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Spices in a bowl

Stirred these ingredients together then poured over apple pieces in crock pot.  With long-handled wooden spoon, stirred the apples and spice slurry together until all apples were coated.

Put the cover on the crock pot and turned on crock pot to heat for 4 hours on HIGH setting.  Stirred at least every hour.  After 4 hours, turned crock pot to LOW setting and heated for 10 more hours (overnight).

In the morning let apples cool for an hour then in batches put apple butter into blender and blended for 1-2 minutes until all the apple peels were totally pulverized.  (I wanted the peels to be in with the apples-not what most recipes call for-so there would be a little more fiber in the finished apple butter.)

Cooked-down apples and spices

Returned the completely pulverized apples to the crock pot bowl and continued heating on HIGH for 1-2 hours, stirring AT LEAST every 30 minutes, until the apple butter was the texture/thickness I like.  Well, actually it was a little less thick than normal apple butter, but my view is that often apple butter is brown sludge, which I don't find appealing, texture-wise.  For this last stage of cooking, I put the cover on ajar so more of the steam would escape to bring the apple butter to a pleasing thickness, but which would keep any splatters from getting out onto the wall or counter. (Cleaning spatters off walls is not always completely successful. I hate to have to scrub AND repaint the kitchen walls...)

After the finished apple butter cooled, I pulled out some pretty good homemade whole wheat bread, put on some apple butter, gave one slice to Dear One, and ate one slice myself. It was pretty tasty.  Even Dear One said so.

Finally, I put the apple butter into jars.  This amount made four jars.

1 pint and a half jar, 1 pint jar, 2 half-pint jars

Pretty fun and easy project with good results.