Connected Cooking

Last year my mom got me the coolest Crock Pot. It is wifi enabled! I connected it to our home wifi and then downloaded the wemo app which allows me to communicate with the Crock Pot remotely. I can schedule the cooking, check in on it, change the settings and get notifications.

Crock Pot season is here and Aaron was hungry for pot roast so I used a combination of a recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook and the Crock Pot booklet. You can see how I was able to check in on the pot roast during the day. Aaron kept texting me - "How is the pot roast?!"

The pot roast was perfect when I got home. What you see here is the topping of spices and horseradish on top.

I am hooked! There are lots of recipes on the Crock Pot website that I can't wait to try.

Beef stew | Slow cooker lasagna | Cheesy Jalapeno Chicken Burritos | Easy Italian Sausage Scramble | Slow Cooker Apple Oatmeal | Cinnamon Swirl French Toast Casserole

Red Pack Tomatoes 2-a-Day Crock-Pot Giveaway

Just in time for fall, I got a slow cooker recipe kit from RedPack Tomatoes! I certainly did not grow enough tomatoes in my garden for cooking into the winter so these ready to go cans of tomatoes are dinner time lifesavers.

There is just something about fall that makes me want to get out my crock-pot for making meals. It's warm and comforting to come home to a stew bubbling in the crock-pot and the entire house smelling delicious.

RedPack is giving away TWO Crock-Pots every day for 22 days! You can enter every day for a chance to win.

Enter here --> http://bit.ly/tomcpot

There are several slow-cooker recipes on the RedPack website that I want to try. They have even more on their Pinterest page.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork - pulled pork is a crock pot classic. So well suited to slow cooking.

Sausage & Sweet Potato Chili - I thought the sweet potato sounded like a fun twist for this chili!

Golden Tomato Soup - Fall means soup right? This one looks hearty!

Mozzarella Meatballs - I almost passed out when I saw this recipe. Cheese inside meatballs? Genius!

I can't wait to fire up my crock-pot and try these dishes out. Enter for a chance to win a crock-pot from RedPack and you will be well on your way to slow cooked comfort food too!

More crock pot oatmeal

I made another batch of crock pot oatmeal. This time I used steel cut oats and Alton Brown's recipe.

I didn't see a huge difference from the regular oat crock pot oatmeal recipe I made before. This one had craisins and figs in it so it was hard to compare, I think.

The Crock Pot experimentation will continue. I picked up this cookbook from America's Test Kitchen and I can't wait to try some of the recipes.

Crock Pot Oatmeal

To continue the crock pot experimentation I wanted to make overnight oatmeal. I didn't feel liek running out to get steel cut oatmeal or half and half, but I was able to find a recipe for crock pot oatmeal using regular oats and oatmeal. You just have to read her notes on using 2 cups of of regular oatmeal instead of steel cut oats.

It turned out really nice. I love thick, gooey oatmeal. I am going to try the steel cut oats recipe next.

Lunch Crock Pots

I finally found a Lunch Crock Pot in real life at Wegmans! I got a blue one to try out.

I put beef stew in it and sent it to work with Aaron. He said it worked great! I think I need to go back and get the pink one so we can both have lunch gurgling away at our desks at work.

Crock Pot Beef Stew

One of the things on my New Year's List was to cook at home more using our Crock Pot. I found this recipe for beef stew on the Crock Pot site and gave it a go.

It was easy to prep the ingredients the night before - especially when I found pre-cut stew beef cubes and potatoes at Wegmans. I also used a bag of baby carrots. Chopping up the onion was the most work.

When I came home the entire house smelled like beef stew. The pugs look like they were tortured by the fragrance slowly bubbling away all day just feet away from them.

It turned out great and there was enough to freeze a few quarts for later also. Yay for our deep freezer!

Autumn means firing up the crock pot. I picked up a Rita's Ragin' Cajun Bean Soup mix from the Healthy Sisters’ Soup & Bean Works booth at the wool festival.

All I have to do is add it to chicken broth in the morning and let it stew away while I am work. We come home to a big yummy pot of soup for dinner.