I think I found my new home!

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

D'OH! Years ago I bought a little mini Crock-Pot for 1. I've never even taken it out of the box!

Google for recipes, or there may even be a couple included in the box. There are a million slow cooker recipes out there, there are whole cookbooks devoted just to slow cooker dishes. My pot roast recipe came off the back of a Liption Onion Soup Mix box. And I've got another one I want to try that is on the back of a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce. I don't know about recipes for mini crockpots but they're probably out there too.

If you experiment with it and like it, you can always get a bigger one. I got mine off Amazon and I don't think I paid more than $30 for it. Then you can buy ingredients in larger quantities (usually cheaper), make more and have leftovers which means you are cooking less often but still have homemade meals on hand.

[Wolferz]

I stand corrected, Steve but,


from Wikipedia... main ingredients for chili are...

• Chili peppers
• Meat
• Tomatoes
• Often made with beans

Beans are apparently not a main ingredient for the dish as far as I can tell.
Maybe someone thought they could extend the yield on a batch by adding beans. Therefore, calling it Chili Con Carne (with meat) as the translation goes, is redundant. You can't make a pot of Chili without ground beef. Beans are optional. Red beans and Kidney beans are a total deal breaker for me. I like mine plain and hot.
Since the dish originated in Texas, let's ask Neal.

Hey Neal.. What's in "genuine" Texas Chili?

Inquiring taste buds wanna know.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

I stand corrected, Steve but,


from Wikipedia... main ingredients for chili are...

• Chili peppers
• Meat
• Tomatoes
• Often made with beans

Beans are apparently not a main ingredient for the dish as far as I can tell.
Maybe someone thought they could extend the yield on a batch by adding beans. Therefore, calling it Chili Con Carne (with meat) as the translation goes, is redundant. You can't make a pot of Chili without ground beef. Beans are optional. Red beans and Kidney beans are a total deal breaker for me. I like mine plain and hot.
Since the dish originated in Texas, let's ask Neal.

Hey Neal.. What's in "genuine" Texas Chili?

Inquiring taste buds wanna know.

Not beans, that's for sure

My favorite chili is:
1 pound of course ground 80/20 beef hamburger
1 pound cubed stew meat
1/2 cup Mexene chili powder
1 8 oz can of tomato sauce
16~18 oz of water, preferably from the artesian zone of the Edwards Aquifer
1 TBSP finely chopped onion or dried onion
1 TBSP garlic powder, dried and minced
1-1/2 TSP cumin
1 TSP oregano
3/4 TBSP paprika
1-3/4 TSP salt
1/2 to 1-1/2 TSP cayenne red pepper (vary according to amount of heat desired, a little goes a long way).

[Wolferz]

Now that's chili. Thanks Neal

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

from Wikipedia... main ingredients for chili are...

• Chili peppers
• Meat
• Tomatoes
• Often made with beans

Which Wiki article is that from? Their main article is just a link to other articles. If it's from the 'Chili con Carne' article then there's your answer.

Neal, that sounds like a great recipe. My only question is, if that's chili, then what's "chili con carne"? Conversely, if that's chili con carne, then what is contained in chili not con carne?

What I really don't get is what you guys have against beans? There are some great beans out there.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Google for recipes, or there may even be a couple included in the box.

I will, thanks. Of course now that I have a refrigerator all to myself there's no reason not to get a bigger one and store or even freeze stuff. Pot roast sounds good, certainly better than canned beef stew. I suddenly feel the need to learn some of this stuff.

But today is pizza day, so I need to get started on that.

[Onkel Neal]

Beans are great, and chili with beans ain't bad. But that's what it is: chili... with beans.

[Sailor Steve]

So why is there specifically a "chili con carne" but no "chili con frijoles"?

[frau kaleun]

It's window shade time! Well, it was yesterday anyway.



First gotta get the handles attached. For Steve: these little jobbies, placed in the center of the bottom rail, are what you use to raise and lower the cordless shade. You pull them up, shade goes up. You pull them down, shade comes down. It stays where you put it. How does it do that? I don't know so the answer must be: MAGIC!!





Now it's drillin' time.



Just gotta get the brackets in place...



Aaaaand one shade is up!



Repeat the process for the other window, and no more blinding sun coming in at eye level in the afternoon. Or ever, for that matter.



And somewhere in there my brother-in-law called and I found out that our niece from Arizona was at their house, she had emailed that she might be in KY visiting relatives on the other side of her family and might drive up, so she surprised them for his birthday next week by coming up yesterday. She also surprised us by telling us she's actually moved to KY for work and is now living there, which means we'll all get to see each other a lot more often than every ten years or so.

So the rest of my prospective projects got put on hold since it was decided that my BiL's birthday dinner would be later that night while she was here. Since I was gonna make some pasta salad anyway I just took it over there, but it still counts as the first homemade food prepared in my new kitchen!



Didn't take long to make, but the clean up afterwards was a real... OH WAIT NO IT WASN'T I HAVE A DISHWASHER.

And then I went over there for the rest of the evening and got home late which is why nothing much else got done yesterday.

Once I'm thoroughly awake today I think I'll take out the new sheers I bought for the bedroom and put them up and see how they look. Or I might sit here watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares reruns all morning. It's kind of a tossup at this point.

[Sailor Steve]

Lookin' good! Having a dark room to play and work in is important.

And a house is not a home until you've cooked something in it. I know I heard that somewhere.

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

...new sheers...

And there you did it to me again. I thought "Oh, cool, she's gonna cut something!" But then I thought "Wait...what?" Then I kind of figured it out. Then I remembered that "sheers" aren't the same as "shears". Then I thought "If I don't mention it, no one will ever know." But then I thought "Where's the fun in that?"

Oh, and the pasta salad looks yummy!

[Wolferz]

I can think of many fun things to do in a darkened room, Frau.
Like turn on the lights.

Sorry, Steve. I don't care for beans that much. I have consistency issues with all lentils except the white beans and those require copious amounts of cornbread and raw onions mixed in with them. I was always a finicky eater. A fact that drove my dear sweet mother into fits of despair trying to feed me.

As I got older, there was more than one occasion where I sat down and ate something that would normally turn my nose up and her jaw dropped .
I still remember the first time I tried an Olive. Something my dad always enjoyed with hamburgers. I spit it out poste haste. Then pop made the mistake of trying to make me eat it, ignoring mom's warnings the whole time.
Yes, I hurled into my plate. My brother followed suit almost immediately along with choice words from mom directed at dad. He never made that mistake again. It's a wonder I didn't starve to death as a child.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Pot roast sounds good, certainly better than canned beef stew.

My recipe, stolen and revised from the back of a Lipton Soup Mix box:

3-4 bunches fresh whole carrots (the kind sold with the greens still on top)
2-3 lbs red or baby red potatoes
1 Tbsp oil
2-3 lb chuck eye roast
1 box (2 envelopes) Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Soup & Dip Mix
3/4 C water

The amount of carrots & taters you use is gonna vary depending on size of your pot and the size of your roast, and depending on how much of either you want. I usually buy more than I think I'll need and whatever I have left over I use for other things.

Of course you can just buy the carrots in the 1 lb or more sized bags and use those, but I don't recommend the "baby" carrots that come in the little bags. They look like they'd be convenient, just open the bag and dump them in the pot - but in my experience they don't turn out well after hours and hours in a slow cooker.

If you don't want red potatoes just make sure you use some other low starch variety as they will hold their shape throughout the cooking process and not end up all mushy. White round, new, and fingerling potatoes should work fine. In a pinch you can use a medium starch all purpose tater like Yukon Gold but stay away from russets or anything sold as a "baking" potato as these won't hold up well.

Cut greens off the carrots if needed, peel them and cut them into chunks.

Dice up the taters. You can peel them if desired but I leave the peel on mine.

Try to get your chunks of taters and carrots in a roughly uniform size for even cooking. Load them in the bottom of the slow cooker pot; I just keep adding, first one then the other, as I'm prepping them until I've got about the same amount of both AND the pot has just enough room left on top for the roast. (The recipe on the back of the soup mix box skimps on both... but I really like a lot of carrots and taters with my roast).

When you're done with those, put the cover on the pot and set to one side.

In a large skillet, heat the oil and brown the roast. This you do by laying it down in the pan and NOT TOUCHING IT while it browns on one side. I also will salt and pepper and rub some oil on each side of the roast first.

For a 2-3 lb roast, usually 4-5 minutes a side is what I shoot for. You're trying to get a nice sear on each side for extra flavor. So lay it down on one side, put your splatter shield over it if you've got one, and just let it alone for 4-5 minutes. Then turn it over and repeat on the other side. When that's done, get the cover off that pot and transfer the roast carefully from the skillet to the pot - just plop it down right on top of the carrots and taters.

The browning process is NOT mandatory, you can also just put the roast straight from the package into the slow cooker.

Combine the two packets of soup mix with the 3/4 C water and blend thoroughly, then pour it over top of everything. I spread it around a little so the solid bits from the mix are distributed evenly across the top of the roast.

Put the pot in the cooker and cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours. As previously stated, I'll prep everything and have the pot ready to go and then just stow it in the fridge overnight and put it in the cooker the next morning, so it starts cold and takes the full 10 hours or more in my cooker. If you don't chill it first it will take less time.

I recommend cooking this when you will NOT be home all day, because it will start to smell really really good long before it's done and you will really really want to eat it but it won't be ready yet. This is why I usually prep it on a Sunday and then stow it in the fridge to go in the cooker on Monday morning before I leave for work. The kitchen will smell delicious when I get home and I won't have to wait TOO long before I can eat it.

Towards the end of the cooking time you can pop the lid and pierce the meat with a fork to check for doneness and then adjust your remaining cooking time accordingly. I just keep it on low until I decide it's ready to eat, then leave it on "keep warm" until I'm ready to eat.

[frau kaleun]

And since you posted that cool English language errors and usage page, here's the first site I go to when I have a cooking or ingredient related question:

The Cook's Thesaurus

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

ISorry, Steve. I don't care for beans that much.

Nothing wrong with that. I was really just arguing the difinitions. As for olives, I put them on pizza and enchiladas. That's about it. I should probably drop them in my salads too. I'll have to remember that tomorrow.

My mom loved to cook okra. I couldn't stand it then and I can't stand it now. Sauerkraut either. I've learned to love a lot of different veggies, but those two I won't ever touch again.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

My recipe, stolen and revised from the back of a Lipton Soup Mix box:

Copied to a text file and saved, thank you.

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

...here's the first site I go to when I have a cooking or ingredient related question:

Bookmarked.




OhmygodI'mturningintoarecipejunkie! What have you people done to me?!