Tasty Tuesday ~ Crockpot Simplicity

You know what is striking me lately?  The older my kids get, the busier my life gets.  It is so true.  I remember other moms telling me this when my kids were toddling all over my house, and I thought they had whacked out memories and didn't know what they were talking about.  But now I'm there.  And it's so true.  It's a different kind of busy, but it is more busy for sure.  The demands on my emotional energy is greatly more than it was then.  The physical energy demands are different, but greater.  There are no nap times for any of us.  There are no early bedtimes so I can recharge my batteries before the next day.  The conversations require so much more of me.  Instead of short bursts of encouragement or correction or playing on the floor with legos or babies, now it's involved conversations about growing up and figuring out life and helping with homework and the encouragement and correction conversations are much looonnnnggggeeeerrrrrr. 

I know what your thinking right now, "Isn't this suppose to be a crockpot recipe?"  And yeah, I'm getting there.  Because the other thing I've noticed is that, proportional to my kids getting older and busier, they are eating more and I have much less time to cook.  And our window of time to have dinner on the table and eat together is getting smaller.  We still sit down at the table and eat together almost every night.  That's a story for another time, but I believe in that in a big way.  And I work hard to make it happen.

So, with the chillier weather here, my time in short supply, and food needing to be ready to go, I'm falling back in love with my crockpot.  I'm trying, anyway.  I've been looking through old cookbooks to find new things to do.  I've made a couple in the last couple weeks that I would make again, so I thought I would share them here.  Mainly so I can pop back on here and find the recipe...

The first is a creamy chicken recipe that you serve over pasta.  It was good enough for dinner, but was especially good as left overs in lunches.



Angel Crockpot Chicken

About 3 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1/2 cup butter
2 (0.7 oz.) packages Italian salad dressing mix
2 (10 1/4 oz.) cans cream of mushroom soup (I used one "gold mushroom and one regular)
1 cup chicken stock
1 tub (8 oz.) cream cheese with chives and onion
hot cooked angel hair pasta

Place chicken in crockpot.  In a medium saucepan, melt butter.  Stir in Italian dressing mix.  Stir in mushroom soup, chicken stock, and cream cheese.  Combine well and pour over chicken.  Cover and cook on low setting for 6-8 hours or until chicken is done.  Serve chicken and sauce over pasta.


This next one could not be humanly easier.  I literally threw this in 5 minutes before I had to walk out the door for work, and it turned out really tasty.

Crockpot Beef

2 (or more) pounds stew meat
1 can French onion soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup

Throw all three in the crockpot and cook on low for 8-10 hours.  Serve over noodles or mashed potatoes.  (My vote is mashed potatoes!)

Yummy, trust me.