Slow Cooker Recipes

Zesty Italian Crockpot Chicken

• 6-8 chicken breasts
• 4 tsp butter
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup
• 1 - 8 oz pkg cream cheese
• 1 pkg dry Italian seasoning mix

Place chicken in slow cooker with butter.  Sprinkle Italian dressing over chicken.  When chicken is cooked, add the cream of chicken soup.  An hour prior to serving, stir and add cream cheese in cubes on top.  Cook on high, 4-6 hours.  Stir before serving.  Serve over rice.

Nutty Apple Streusel Dessert

• 6 cups sliced peeled tart apples
• 1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 Tbsp butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup biscuit/baking mix

Topping:

• 1 cup biscuit/baking mix
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 Tbsp cold butter
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds

In a large bowl, toss apples with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg.  Place in a greased slow cooker.  In a mixing bowl, combine milk, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and baking mix; mix well.  Spoon over apples.
For topping, combine the biscuit mix and brown sugar in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly.  Add almonds; sprinkle over the apples.
Cover and cook on low for 6-7 hrs or until the apples are tender.
Serve w/ Ice Cream or Whipping Cream.

Slow Cooker Tips and Tricks

1. If you lift the lid to peek, add 30 min to cooking time
2. Fresh herbs will lose flavor over cooking time = add during last hour of cooking (dried herb flavors intensify)
3. Fill slow cooker only 1/2 - 2/3 full, not to the top
4. Foods on bottom cook faster & will be more moist = place root veggies in first/at bottom
5. 2 hrs on low in slow cooker = 1 hr on high
6. Converting an oven recipe for the slow cooker:

• Slow cooker low = 200* in oven
• Slow cooker high = 300* in oven
• Use 1/3 to 1/2 the liquid called for in oven recipe (liquid will not boil away in slow cooker)

Marilyn's Bookshelf

January 2011

Doig, Ivan, The Whistling Season

            This title was on the reading list for the now-defunct Canyon Readers.  Since there were so few who read it, I decided to add it to the Book Shelf for this year’s reading fare.

            Widower Oliver Milliron, in the small town of Montana’s Marias Cooley, is raising three sons.  To an ad he places in the paper, Rose Morgan responds to act as housekeeper (“Can’t cook but doesn’t bite”), and she comes to far-away Montana. Into the bargain comes Morris Morgan, her scholarly brother.  At the unexpected departure of the local schoolteacher for their one-room schoolhouse, Morris is impressed into service, and what a teacher he is, taking anything and everything as a text for exciting, stimulating, and thought-provoking lessons, to which all eight grades are exposed.  Paul, Oliver’s oldest son is a bookish seventh-grader.  Morris eventually teaches him Latin, either before or after school in order to keep him engaged in learning.  The action of the novel is seen through Paul’s adult eyes as he remembers theses events in contemplation of a movement to close all rural schools.  As he is state school superintendent, we, as the reader, come to realize the value of one-room schooling.  We are introduced to a community of characters, including Brose Turley, the wolf hunter in the community who wreaks terror in the schoolroom and is the embodiment of the animals he hunts.  This book could be used as a textbook course on perfect novel writing.  What a treasure.

Cheers,

Marilyn