Super Pinterest!

It's "Pinterest Week"! Everything I'm crocking this week is a recipe I found pinned on Pinterest. Never heard of Pinterest? DON'T look it up! You'll become addicted. I promise.

We invited a few people over to watch the Super Bowl tonight, so I decided to do some Super Bowl themed crocks today.

"Pulled Buffalo Chicken" (6 quart pot) Original is HERE.

~3 lb. bag of FROZEN chicken breasts
~1 bottle Frank's Wings Buffalo Sauce
~1 packet Ranch Dip Mix
~2 T butter
~blue cheese crumbles
~kaiser rolls

Put FROZEN chicken, Frank's, and ranch dip mix into crock pot.
Cook on low at least 6 to 7 hours
Using two forks, shred chicken & return to crock pot.
Add butter.
Cook on low for an additional hour.
Serve on kaiser rolls.
Sprinkle with blue cheese crumbles.

8 servings.

Drool. I served it on Kaiser rolls and sprinkled some blue cheese crumbles on top. It's all of the buffalo chicken flavor but without the evil bad for you fried batter. I could live off of this. For serious.

AND then because, I dunno, I felt like making a dip that clogs arteries by simply reading the ingredient list...

"Ultimate Super Bowl Dip" (6 quart pot) Original is HERE.

~8 oz hot Italian sausage
~1/2 cup chopped onion
~1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
~2 cloves garlic, minced
~2 packages (8 ounces each) reduced fat block-style cream cheese, softened
~1 1/2 cups finely shredded Parmesan
~1/4 cup milk
~1/4 cup mayonnaise (I used Chipotle flavored.)
~1/4 cup light sour cream
~2 cups chopped fresh spinach leaves
~1/3 cup mild banana pepper rings, drained and chopped

In a large skillet, cook sausage, onion, red pepper, and garlic until sausage is browned, stirring often; drain off fat and set aside to cool.
In a large bowl, stir together cream cheese, Parmesan, milk, mayonnaise, and sour cream.
Add sausage mixture, spinach, and banana peppers; gently stir to combine.
Add mixture to greased crock pot.
Cover and cook on low for 2 hours.

10 servings. (or 100 servings because it's SO bad for you, you should probably eat it crumb by crumb.)

Since it wasn't originally a crock pot recipe, I tried to covert it. AND I think I was successful. It was definitely "different" and yummy.

Happy Super Bowl!

Fondue fit for royalty.

I haven't double crocked in a while. Mainly because my little crock keeps burning things and that frustrates the crap out of me. We had some friends over tonight (Hi Laura and Jonah!), so I decided to make a main dish AND a dessert. I also reheated yesterday's fondue because we had a ton leftover and there was no way just the two of us would've been able to eat it all. Share the wealth, right? It was a good thing I did, too, because this brie dish didn't really make as much as I thought it would.

"Brie with Apricot Topping" (3.5 quart pot)

~small round of brie (The one I used was 8.5 oz)
~1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
~2 T dark brown sugar
~2 T water
~1 t balsamic vinegar
~1/4 t dried rosemary
~1/2 c walnuts, chopped

Place brie in a small CorningWare dish that fits inside crock pot.
Mix apricots, sugar, water, vinegar, and rosemary in small bowl; spoon on top of brie.
Sprinkle walnuts on top.
Cover and cook on low for 3 hours.

Serve with...stuff. We had apples, carrots, broccoli, pretzels, and crackers.

4 servings.

Brie is my new favorite cheese. Especially crocked brie. We decided that I should probably be thankful it's so expensive. We licked the bowl. It was THAT good.

"Raspberry Chocolate Caramel Fondue" (6 quart pot)

~12 oz bag of semi sweet chocolate chips
~12 oz jar of caramel ice cream topping
~1/2 C seedless raspberry preserves

Add everything to a medium CorningWare dish that fits in the crock pot.
Mix all ingredients in dish.
Cover and cook on low for 2 hours or until smooth.

Serve with...stuff. We had pretzels, apples, strawberries, and angel food cake.

I had to pour some of it down the sink to keep us from licking this bowl clean as well. It was THAT good.

Icanhazfondue.

"Bacon Cheeseburger in a Pot" (3.5 quart pot)

~1/2 lb ground beef, browned
~1/2 t salt
~1/2 c green pepper, chopped
~3/4 c onion, chopped
~8 oz tomato sauce
~4 oz can green chilies
~1 T Worcestershire sauce
~1 T brown sugar
~1/4 c bacon crumbles
~1 lb Velveeta, cubed
~1 T paprika
~crushed red pepper to taste

Combine beef, salt, green peppers, onion, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, and bacon  in crock pot.
Cover and cook on low for 3 hours.
During last hour, stir in cheese, paprika, and red pepper

Serve with...stuff. We had french baguette slices, Tostido bowls, broccoli, and cauliflower.

8 servings.

I love cheese. I thought nothing could be too cheesy.  I was wrong. It needed more beef to help balance it out. And more bacon. Bacon wasn't in the original recipe, so I didn't know how much it would need. The Velveeta totally drowned out everything else in the pot. Next time: Less cheese. Or maybe a different cheese. And more meat and bacon. It was good, but it could be so much better.






Dessert.

I had a pack of Peeps in the pantry begging me to put them in the crock pot. Along with their friend chocolate bunny. And their pals Cadbury caramel eggs.

"Easter Fondue" (6 quart pot)

~6 oz Cadbury milk chocolate bunny
~2 yellow Peeps
~2 Cadbury caramel eggs
~3 T milk

4 servings.

Cover and cook for...well...here's what I did:

I started with the bunny and one peep and crocked them covered and on low for about an hour. The wax eyes of the peep melted, but that was it. I increased it to high and let it go for an hour. The peep got soft. The bunny did, too, but it wasn't melting. Adding a few tablespoons of milk seemed to help. I added the caramel eggs. They melted. I added another peep. It melted. The bunny never really melted completely. There was still a chunk or two or 12 left when I gave up and decided to eat it as it was.

You can't really go wrong with chocolate fondue. Not even when the chocolate doesn't melt all of the way.

My tongue tastes like burning.

Crock outside the bun.

I did pizza in a pot during fondue week numero uno. Doing other things in a pot seemed like the logical step for me to take.

"Taco in a Pot" (3.5 quart pot)

~1/2 lb ground beef
~1 C frozen corn
~1/2 C onion, chopped
~4 oz diced chilies
~1/2 C hot taco sauce
~1/2 C hot salsa (I used Newman's hot)
~1 C shredded Mexican cheese blend

Brown ground beef and add to crock pot.
Add corn, onion, chilies, taco sauce, and salsa.
Cover and cook on low for 4 hours.
Add cheese and mix well.

Serve with...stuff. We had tortilla scoops, broccoli, and cauliflower.

6 servings.

The original recipe called for olives, but we don't do olives. It also called for mild taco sauce, but I substituted hot because we like things spicy. Still, this wasn't as hot as I/we thought it was going to be. It was good, but I think if I make this again, I'd have to add some sort of spice. Tacos are supposed to be spicy, yes?

FonTwo week.

My other half requested another fondue week, so guess what? It's another fondue week. I started off with  one of my favorite vegetarian dips because we had a vegetarian friend over for dinner tonight. (Hi Amanda!) Luckily for me it was super easy to put together and didn't take long to crock at all. This weekend kind of kicked my butt.

"Spinach and Artichoke dip" (3.5 quart pot)

~1 C mayo

~1 C grated parmesan cheese

~ 1/2 C diced red bell pepper

~ 9 oz frozen chopped spinach, drained

~14 oz artichoke hearts, diced

~1/4 C monterrey jack cheese, grated

Mix mayo and parmesan cheese in medium bowl.

Add pepper, spinach, and artichoke.

Sprinkle monterrey jack on top.

Cover and cook on low for 1.5 hours.

Serve with...stuff.

We had french baguette, club crackers, carrots, celery, broccoli, and cauliflower.

6 servings.

This was delicious. It was hard to stop eating it. I don't think I'll ever BUY spinach artichoke dip again.

How to make it so you don't become a "regular" at the wing delivery place.

Remember our love for the wing delivery person? Yeah. We love our buffalo-y goodness. I had been looking forward to this dip all week long. It's another ridiculously simple recipe that you might be able to make without having to make a trip to the grocery store.

"Buffalo Chicken Dip" (3.5 quart pot)

~1 1/2 C cooked chicken, shredded
~1 1/2 C shredded cheddar cheese
~2 C blue cheese salad dressing
~2 oz Tabasco sauce (about 1/4 cup)

Combine all ingredients.
Cover and heat on high for 1-2 hours or until cheddar has melted completely.
Serve with...stuff. We had celery, bread sticks, tortilla chips, mushrooms, and peppers.

 It's like eating buffalo wings, but without the annoying bones and skins. Our only complaint was that there wasn't more of it. Yum.

And Betty when you call me, you can call me Al.

It's Saint Patrick's Day and as far as I know, I don't have a drop Irish blood running through my veins. In fact, I might be the complete opposite of Irish. In honor of that little nugget of knowledge nobody asked me about, I made something for dinner that is not Irish, but pretends to be. And it's not a fondue. Since when do I play by the rules? Dessert, however, was the Holy Grail of fondues. Excited, yes?

I'd never had Corned Beef and Cabbage, but my other half had, and he said that it was delicious. What better time to try it than when every. single. grocery. store. has the ingredients for sale begging shoppers to take them home. Right? Right.

I followed Betty Crocker's recipe. I found it online somewhere. I chose Betty because she makes a mean carrot cake (among other things) and she can do no wrong by me. This is what Betty told me to do...

Corned Beef & Cabbage (6 quart pot)

~4 red potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1 inch pieces

~4 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces

~1 onion, cut into 6 wedges

~1 corned beef brisket (2-2.5 lbs)with seasoning package

~1 can (12 oz) Guinness

~1/2 head of cabbage, cut into 4 wedges

~1/4 c applesauce

~2 T Gulden's mustard 

Spray crock pot.

Add potatoes, carrots, and onion.

Top with corned beef. Sprinkle seasoning on top.

Add beer and enough water to just cover the beef.

Cover and cook on low for 11 hours.

Remove beef and cover to keep warm

Add cabbage to crock pot.

Cover and cook on high for 30 minutes.

Cut corned beef across the grain into small slices.

Using a slotted spoon, remove veggies.

Serve beef with sauce.

Serve veggies with broth.

Delicious. We both agreed that the meat didn't really need the sauce, but we ate it anyway. As always, Betty is awesome.

Some of you may remember the Cadbury Creme Egg thread on Facebook last week. I browsed the ENTIRE internet for a recipe a la Creme Egg and came to the conclusion that one does not exist. I had to make one up. The easiest thing I could think of was to make a fondue. Was I going to just melt them and serve them that way? I hadn't really decided. Then, a few nights ago, I had the BEST IDEA EVER.  

Cadbury Creme Egg Fondue AKA Bacon and Eggs Fondue (3.5 quart pot)

~4 Cadbury Creme Eggs

~3 T tablespoons heavy cream

~1 T bacon crumbles (because I love bacon and chocolate together, but I'm a terrible bacon cook, so I took the shortcut)

Unwrap 4 large Cadbury Creme Eggs (Because I don't want e-mails saying the fondue was good, but it tasted like foil)

Place eggs in crock pot.

Cook on low for about 10 minutes until melted.

Stir.

Add 2 T heavy cream.

Stir.

Add bacon.

Stir.

Add 1 T heavy cream.

Stir.

Serve with stuff...we had strawberries, pineapple, and pound cake. 

It was fabulous. Bacon really does make everything better. Another successful experiment! If only Cadbury Creme Eggs were available year round...

How to make the best vegetarian fondue ever.

When you think of fondue, you probably think of cheese. I know I do. I wanted to do something brie based because brie is yummy, so I searched for brie based recipes and found one I liked. It seemed like a simple thing to do at the time...

The problem? I couldn't find one of the main ingredients ANYWHERE. Dried mushrooms of some sort. Then, I found 4 (yes, 4) other recipes that looked delicious, so I kind of mashed them all together. Three of the recipes were not specifically for a crock pot, so I had pretty much no idea how long I was supposed to cook anything.

"Brie with mushrooms and cranberries fondue" (6 quart pot)

1/2 cup dry white wine (I used a sauvignon blanc)

2 T butter

3.5 oz shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and finely chopped

1 shallot, finely chopped

1/4 c dried cranberries, finely chopped

A wedge of brie minus the rind, cut into 1/2 inch pieces (the wedge I grabbed was .64 lb)

1 T cornstarch

Add wine to crock pot. Cook UNcovered on high for 30 minutes.

While that's cooking, saute butter, mushrooms, shallot, and cranberries. ( I actually did this earlier this afternoon when kiddo was napping and then stuck the mixture in the fridge for a few hours.)

When I removed it from the fridge, it looked like this:

Toss cheese cubes in cornstarch until fully covered. (Supposedly, this is to keep the brie from separating.)

Place cheese in crock pot and stir occasionally as it melts. (I stirred it about every 10 minutes for a half hour.)

Whisk, then cover and cook on high for 30 minutes. 

Add mushroom mixture.

Cover and cook on low for another hour.

Serve with...stuff. We had crackers, breadsticks, portabello mushrooms, and broccoli.

 This was absolutely delicious. I wish I'd doubled it. tripled it. Quadrupled it. My other half thinks it'd be awesome as a stuffing for chicken. I will most definitely be making this again.

I have a new favorite vegetarian dip/fondue! (and should really experiment more often...)

It's not delivery, it's pizza in a crock pot.

I'm weird. Just in case you didn't already know that. How am I weird this time, exactly? Well...I'm one of the few people on the planet who is NOT a pizza fan. Sometimes, however, I find myself in the mood for some pizza-y goodness. I love me some Bertucci's carmine or some Papa John's pineapple, but we don't do a lot of pizza. The delivery person we see at our front door most often comes from the local wing place. Still, I wanted to try this fondue recipe. It's so easy. The ingredients are probably in your kitchen. Right. Now. And that, my friends, is even easier than picking up the phone to call Papa. The downside is, of course, that you have to know that you're in the mood for pizza 3 hours before you're ready to eat it.
 
"Pizza Fondue" (6 quart pot)

~1 24 oz jar of spaghetti sauce with meat (I used Prego's mini meatball.)
~2 t Italian seasoning
~1 T cornstarch
~1/2 cup pepperoni slices
~1/2 cup fresh pineapple, chopped (The original recipe was sans pineapple, but we had leftovers from yesterday's rocky road fondue, so I added it. Besides, homemade pizza's not really complete without pineapple, right?)
~1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated

Grease crock pot.
Combine all ingredients except cheese.
Cover and cook on low for 3 hours.
Add cheese 2 hours into cooking.
Serve with...stuff. We had breadsticks, garlic naan, sourdough bread, peppers, mushrooms, and cauliflower.

This was so good. I must've been in a pizza mood because it really hit the spot. Or maybe it was just that good. Just think of all of the different versions of this you could make! And the things to dip! Endless possibilities! You could easily adapt this to make it friendly for pretty much anyone. (Except maybe a level 5 vegan).

My melting pots of deliciousness.

It's fondue and dip week! An entire week of dipping into some crockpotted yumminess. Why? Why not? The Melting Pot is one of my favorite restaurants and we'd go there more often if it didn't cost so darn much. I'm already drooling over this week's meal plan. 

I started off the week with one of each. Dinner was a vegetarian dip because a "pescatarian" friend came over for dinner tonight. (Hi Amanda!) This is possibly my favorite vegetarian dip when done correctly (whatever that means). It's right up there next to spinach and artichoke dip (which I won't be making this week, but will some day). My other half made a non-crockpotted version of this a few years ago, but it didn't turn out as well as we thought it would because the recipe was vague and we misunderstood the directions. I was kinda bummed that the only ingredient you actually put in the crock pot for THIS recipe is the eggplant, but I got over that quickly. I guess doing it this way would be convenient to do if you had to be out of the house for 3 hours or didn't want to do the 45 minutes in the oven thing for whatever reason...like going to the gym or having a screaming clingy 6 month old...or something. This recipe is my own. I found a handful of recipes and picked out my favorite parts. 


"Baba Ganoush" (6 quart pot)


~1 large eggplant (I had to use 3 smaller ones because Safeway was completely out of any size, shape, and color aubergine.  Lauer's to the rescue! Sidenote: They also had a boatload of  small cans of pumpkin! *squee* I bought 4 of 'em...)
~1/4 c tahini (Hint: Safeway carries it. Look near the peanut butter.)
~3 garlic cloves, minced (I found recipes with anywhere from 1 to 3 cloves. We like things garlic-y, so I did 3. (and a half. Shh...)
~juice of one lemon (it ended up being about 1/4 cup)
~pinch ground cumin
~pinch of salt
~pinch of pepper
~1 T extra virgin olive oil
~1 T dried parsley


Wash and dry eggplant. Poke several holes in eggplant with a fork.
Place eggplant in crock pot. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours.
Remove eggplant from crock pot using tongs. Discard skin and seeds.
Place remaining flesh and all other ingredients into a blender and blend. 
Refrigerate for 3 hours before serving.
Serve with...stuff. I went a little crazy. We had fresh broccoli, cauliflower, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, portabello mushrooms, baby carrots, celery, sourdough pretzels, sourdough bread, garlic breadsticks, and tollhouse whole grain crackers. 

Soooo good. This is how baba ganoush is supposed to taste. It was, however, super garlic-y, so you may want to decrease it (a little or a lot) depending on your preference or if you're not trying to ward off vampires. My other half thinks it was a bit too garlic-y (and I agree).  Next time, I'll do three cloves and skip the extra half. 


AND THEN because having company gives me an extra excuse to crock up a dessert, I made rocky road fondue. I love rocky road ice cream. I was dying to make this when I found the recipe in one of my cookbooks. Tonight was my chance!


"Rocky Road Fondue" (6 quart pot)


~1 1/2 T butter
~1 10 oz chocolate bar with almonds (I used 37 pieces of Dove almond dark chocolate silky smooth promises.)
~1 1/2 c mini marshmallows
~3 T milk
~1/2 cup heavy cream


Add butter, chocolate, marshmallows, and milk to crock pot.
Cover and cook on high for 1.5 hours.
Stir every 30 minutes.
Gradually add heavy cream.
Keep on warm for up to 2 hours.
Serve with...stuff.  We had strawberries, pineapple, banana, pound cake, mini macaroons, and marshmallows.

Oh man. The crock pot was literally licked clean.