Kitchen Fail - Chicken With Noodles Revisited

There are pins on pintrest referring to "cream of chicken soup" as "cream of chemical soup."

Having already decided to add chicken with noodles to our regular rotation I found myself planning to make it for a second time. Only this time I wanted to do it without the added chemicals. This meant making my own cream of chicken soup.

I used this recipe to do so. The resulting soup definitely doesn't look like what I'm used to from the can but that should most likely be considered a good thing . . . right?

The recipe is a little vague about which herbs and spices to use in making your soup. I used parsley, garlic powder, kosher salt (bc at the moment I was cooking my sea salt had mysteriously disappeared), black pepper, and herbs de Provence.

For good measure I made sure to give the mixture of the called for chicken stock and my home-made cream of chicken soup to avoid any lumps and then threw my butter on top.

Here comes the fail - when I went to go check on our dish this is what I saw.

Somehow a bit of soap must have gotten into or was left on something I was using. The food had to be gotten rid of :(

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Ultimate Beef Stroganoff

Too often I forget to do anything for my resembling meal-planning for my parents visits. Having already planned to cook this particular dish during the pay period in which they would be visiting.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the info found here.

I made sure to thaw the stew beef the day before so that I could at least try to have everything together as fast as possible the following morning, aka the day of my parents arrival.

My biggest recommendation is to make sure you can be home when the first of your timers goes off. My husband and I were out running last minute errands so when we got home the crock pot had been on "keep warm" for a minimum of an hour. I ended up having to add apple juice and beef broth just to make sure I had something a bit more than a lump of hot, tender, beef.

They never actually ended up getting the chance to try this dish. Despite my spending about an hour picking mushrooms out of the dish my husband didn't eat any either. I think it would have been even better with onions.

I can't really say if I loved this pin or not. There was a lot of variables that got thrown into the mix. Would I try it again? Maybe.

Pintesting - Crock Pot Pork Loin

I found this great pulled pork recipe but somehow I forgot that it called for pork shoulder and not pork loin so I guess that will have to be a pintest for another day.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

I started with a hormone and anti-biotic free, 2-pound pork loin.

 Expecting to rub spices into your loins? Don't. The recipe tells you to just go ahead and dump ingredients A - F into the crock pot and turn it on. I can definitely do that!

The recipe tells you to cook this on high for four hours but I opted to just go ahead and cook it on low for eight.

Once the pork is almost done cooking

Remove the pork from the crock pot

 and shred it.

Mix your glaze ingrediants.

Put them in a small pot or pan and boil them.

Pour over your shredded pork.

At this point I only had a little over an hour until the timer was going to go off so I set this to keep warm.

What you do with your pork once it's finished is your call. I chose to add a little Jack Daniels barbeque sauce and make myself a yummy Cuban sandwich.

Yes, I definitely feel this pin is worth making.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Crock Pot Chicken With Noodles

Ohio has a wonderful program called, Help Me Grow, and each Christmas they have a Christmas party. The first year I was able to go with my husband, the second we didn't have all the information to know when it was, and that brings us to this year. It was looking a lot like my husband was probably not going to be able to make it because of the time he leaves work. So i invited his grandmother to go with us and figured we'd just hope that my husband would be able to join us later on.

But just in case I thought it wise to pop some dinner in the crock pot for him should he find himself coming home instead of joining us at the party. I had a very late start in the day and found myself incredibly busy so I didn't get the food into the crock pot until around 2 PM.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information here.

This recipe is supposed to be cooked on low for eight hours but as I mentioned, I was trying to insure my husband came home to food so I chose to cook it on high for four hours.

Thankfully this is pretty quick and easy to throw together.

Chicken.

 Into the crock pot.

Two cans of cream of chicken soup.

Into the crock pot.

Chicken stock.

I like to use the chicken stock to help clean out the cream of chicken soup still left in the cans.

Into the crock pot.

A half of a cup of butter.

Sliced and thrown in.

Then I walked away until it was nearly time to leave for the party. Removed the chicken a bit early and did my best to shred it.

Left the noodles next to the crock pot.

Then left a note for my husband saying for him to stir the crock pot's contents, add the noodles, and make sure the crock pot is set for either high at 30 minutes or low for 1 hour.

This is the part where if you're the religious or spiritual type that you pray your husband can do this. Mine actually made it to the party so it never came up.

When I got home I put the noodles in and left it to cook on low for an additional hour. The result was delicious! Best of all the little picky eater ate some as well!

I will be adding this our rotation of regular meals and even plan to take some of the leftovers to my husbands grandmothers house for lunch to share.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Crockpot Potato Soup

Oh my! this particular pintest began a little misleading! My husband and I hadn't eaten lunch for the day yet and it was already seeming to get a bit late so I needed something that was tasty and could be whipped up relatively quickly.

When I first read this pin, I thought that it said that this recipe takes only 30 minutes. Not so! It takes 5 hours and 30 minutes - huge difference. Five hours still left me with enough time for a late-ish dinner so I went ahead and made it anyway. It was already on my list of things to make during this pay period.

I gathered my ingrediants.

Into the crock pot went the has browns.

Chicken stock.

Cream cheese.

Cream of chicken soup.

Realize the cream cheese isn't supposed to go in yet. take it out and put it in a Tupperware sandwich keeper while it waits its turn to be added.

Pepper. I used a full teaspoon since my husband is a big fan of pepper.

I also had to omit the onions because he is vehemently opposed to onions.

While I waited the five hours I chose to make a chicken kiev to tide me over.

 Finally the time came!

The whole family enjoyed the soup. We tried it with cheese; and then with cheese and a bit of garlic salt. I consider the fact that my little lamb also ate a huge bonus.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Crockpot Beef And Broccoli

When I was a little girl the only thing I ordered at a Chinese restaurant for quite a while was beef and broccoli so when I saw this pin on pintrest I was dying to try it. The source recipe for this pin can be found here.

My crock pot has been working over-time lately so I don't always have all of the burny bits scrubbed off the edges. But have no fear the pot is still very clean. I actually have two others and will probably be employing other uses for them in the near future. 

First we start with adding the mushrooms. I chose to use the Amish kind in the jar, partially because I forgot I had straw mushrooms that needed a home.

Next, the rest of a large onion I had in the refrigerator that was also in desperate need of use before it went completely bad.

Now for the beef. I used top round that was already in strips.

Before putting it into the pot I cut those strips into bite sized pieces. Then in they went.

Combine a mixture of oil, beef broth, minced garlic, sriracha chili paste, soy sauce, ginger, and pepper. I was out of sesame oil so I used vegetable.

Mix well.

The next directions are to cook your food on low for 6 - 8 hours. Having started later in the day then I really intended (just about after 1PM) I set the crock pot for 6 1/2 hours.

Don't be like me - check to make sure you have broccoli. Or at least att empt to avoid just settling to go ahead and buy some at 6PM LOL. I just bought a few broccoli crowns and then ripped off pieces.

For any of you who are uncertain about what  a broccoli crown looks like.

By the time I was ready to add my broccoli the smell of the beef was filling the house.

Mix your tbsp cornstarch and 2 tbsp water in a separate bowl before adding to your crock pot.

Adding the broccoli turned out to be a bit more exciting for me than expected (or then I guess it possibly should have been). Look at that beautiful color!

That night was actually taco night so I let this cool and put it in the fridge to eat for lunch the next day.

I was really excited. The sauce wasn't as thick as I wanted so I took some of it out of the container, put it in a separate bowl, and added cornstarch. In this didn't prove to be at all useful. The sauce was still too watery.

I dug in anyway. How was it? Really disappointing. I hated it. If you're really into super hot and spicy food you may like this. It was absolutely nothing like the Chinese food you order, which could be okay, but I still really hated the end result.

For the recipe I used for making the brown rice to go with it go here.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Crockpot Ham

We ran into some issues with our dishwasher and garbage disposal the other week. Ultimately I ended up with a massive pile of dishes that needed to be done once the dishwasher was finally fixed. When you just keep running out of dishes and you allow yourself to be convinced that your apartment complex will be fixing things the next day cooking anything can become quite a chore.

Once I got the dishes to a much more manageable place I was able to not just consider cooking but to pretty much resume my regularly scheduled life.

On my most recent trip to the grocery store my chosen splurge was a ham.

Nothing really large because we are only a family of three, but large enough I felt like we had a good shot at some leftovers.

TO MY CROCK POT!!!! .... but first TO PINTREST!!!!

Today's kitchen pintest comes from this pin and the source pin here.

Cooking ham is usually a pretty simple affair but what can I say? I enjoy testing out the pins on pintrest.

I rubbed my ham with brown sugar.

Then chose to mix my maple syrup and pineapple juice together before pouring it over the ham.

I set the crock pot for five hours and felt good about the fact that tonight there would be an actual home-cooked meal.

The resulting ham was really good. I didn't get around to taking pictures because I was so hungry by the time it was ready that pictures weren't even on my list.

Is this pin worth a try? It sure it. It's a really common way to prepare ham just with the addition of a crock pot.

I don't make it a habit to keep pineapple juice so I just used the juice from a can of pineapple slices. The husbands favorite dessert is pineapple upside-down cake so I figured this was a great excuse to make him a yummy dessert to follow up a meal that involved actual cooking. Sadly when I went to do so I found we were out of eggs so I ended up making a quick spice cake instead.