mastering the art of the slow cooker

School starts. Monday. I can't believe how incredibly sad I am to see summer go. And how much summer stuff I still want to do. But, it's time to shift gears, make syllabi, attend faculty retreats.

Mr. Beeton and I tried our hand at some crockpot cooking in preparation for the school year ahead. For our wedding, we received an obscene, All-Clad Deluxe Slow Cooker (not on our registry). I was incensed. We have very little room in our railroad apartment for pots and pans, let alone a slow cooker that could easily feed twenty. Plus, I already had a lovely, small crockpot that my grandmother had given me. Mr. Beeton didn't want to exchange a gift we received for cash; he felt strongly about it. So, we kept it, and I fumed, frequently bringing it up in arguments that we'd have, even if those arguments weren't about slow cookers.

But, I made peace with it last winter. It's actually a fabulous way to cook a meal when you don't have a lot of time, and plus, it provides us with plenty of leftovers. During the school year, this is particularly ideal, so we are planning to put a slow-cooked meal into our regular weeknight rotation.

The recipe we tried the other night came from one of my mother's magazines. Overall, it turned out well, but I'd recommend adding an extra apple and, if you have the Super-Deluxe slow cooker, toning down the cooking time. Ours got a little mushy after six hours. Start it in the morning and eat it in the evening. That gives you a whole lot of time in between to work on that syllabus.

Keep sweeping, Martha

Watching Entourage: Season Five.