New Blog

Oh Wow - another blog ... this one dedicated to my many slow cookers ...

Like "Xerox" means to make a copy ...
"Ziploc" is any bag that zippers closed ...
"Sharpie" signifies any permanent marker ...

so too has the public come to call any slow cooker a Crock-Pot ... and well its because Crock Pot makes the best - at least it did, now there are several models out there that are just as good ... Crock Pot is now owned by the Rival company who hold the rights to its name.

I also group my roasters in the "crock pot" category because it can also be used for the slo-o-o-o-ow cooking of foods.  I will however refer to them as 'roaster' s in my posts ... where the slow cooker pots will be labelled "Crock-Pot"s since those are what I like to use.

My mother had a Crock Pot which was only used on days she was making soup ... and only soup.  It wasn't my mother's fault really ... back in the 70's that was all that any one was really using them for.

I received my first Crock-Pot as a wedding gift from my middle-older brother ... it is the one gift that I can trace all the way back to the beginning ... and like my marriage it is still going strong - with the exception of the lid which finally broke after all this time.  It was a plastic lid molded with a handle ... but when it fell this last month or so, it was one fall too many and it broke.  Not the entire lid, just the handle and the section directly behind it so that the lid looked like a donut with a small center hole.

My husband glued it back together with Gorilla Glue, but my less-than-middle older brother said I better not use it, I might poison the children and he wasn't going to have that!

So hubby took me out to find a brand new Crock-Pot ... well a little look online found me a wonderful one from Rival ... the Crock-Pot Duo.  It has two - yes 2 - pots so I can have two different items cooking simultaneously!  and at two different temps if need be ... I love it!  It came from Walmart, has glass lids, but doesn't hold quite as much as the other pot ... oh and did I mention that that old crock fits the new heating element? Perfect!

In between these two I also purchased an oval slow cooker which holds about 6 qts - its wonderful for doing up whole chickens, tons of wings, or a pork roast.  It has an electronic timer so that your food doesn't over cook, then it switches to a warmer mode.  I used to have two crocks for it - the first is just one large 6 qt pot, the other was a split pot so that two food items could be cooked at the same time.  That was nice, I could do chicken wings on one side and mini-wieners on the other ... it was wonderful for football weekends.  But alas, the divided crock broke ... the nearest I can figure, the chicken wings were too cold and cracked the pot across and it split upon washing. so sad - I miss that one. but the new duo is better for double cooking.

My Roasters ... now those I also have several of.

After nearly 35 years of cooking ... the roaster I "inherited" from my mother (i.e. she gifted it to me) when I took over making the holiday dinners died during Christmas dinner this year -- sniff, sniff -- my brother is fairly sure it is just the thermostat that needs replacing, but dang if we can figure out how to get to it.  Ma bought this roaster in the 1970s from either Montgomery Wards (now gone) or Sears, which doesn't seem to know anything about the model.

So I have had to buy several models trying to "replace" it ... none have done the job ... not the Rival, not the T-Fal, not the cheap-o holiday deal from Menard's Hardware ... we will be giving two more roasters a try this winter to see ... but I doubt they will be able to handle the same size bird ... Ma's could hold over a 25lb turkey - I don't think I've ever seen any that will hold that much these days.

I keep my crock's on the counter ... and it gets used all year round, while the roasters seem to only be used for special occasions.

So here begins my sharing ...
my trials....
my tribulations ...
my uses ....
my recipes ...
and my reflections of how they turned out.

Welcome into my virtual kitchen .... let's get those ladles & tongs ready!