What a great day! By ten o'clock this morning, Shaun and I had already gotten laundry in, gone to the grocery store, picked up some Starbucks, and I was starting dinner! Wowza!
Yes, I was starting dinner at 10 a.m. Last month, for Shaun's birthday, his mom gave him a giftcard for Sear's, and since there was still some money left on it, last weekend he was kind enough to use some of it to buy me a slow cooker! Yippee! (Thanks, Shaun, and Shaun's mom!) So this weekend we tried it out with: chilli!
I looked around for a few recipes, but in the end, I just used what I always use: extra lean ground beef, a diced onion, a can of corn, a can of kidney beans, and a can of stewed tomatoes. Plus random spices and tidbits, etc.
Verdict:
To be honest, it was a little ... meh. Actually it was good, but I couldn't tell much difference from when I make it on the stovetop, and I can whip that up in about 40 minutes. I think next time I will try something that really shines in a slow cooker, like something with meat, where it ends up totally tender from cooking so long. Yum.
I will say that I LOVED that it freed me up around dinner time to make other things. Normally I would be so occupied making the main dish, that I never gave much thought to sides, but this time I was able to. So we ended up with:
Cornbread!
I confess, though. this wasn't 'from scratch'. I used the Vitalicious Golden Corn mix. Really liked it though, and you gotta love 1 pt. cornbread. I haven't seen this in stores though, I had to order it from the Vitalicious website.
It all made for a very excellent Sunday dinner.
I also rounded out the meal with ... carrot cake cupcakes!
Jaime posted about making cupcakes the other day, and using that old school Weight Watcher method of mixing a cake mix with a can of diet pop. I'd often heard about that but never actually tried it, but then yesterday Crystal made some too and I just had to get on board. I made mine with a carrot cake mix and diet ginger ale, which I thought was pretty ingenious! :) Man, they are DELISH. Just 2pts for the cupcake, and 1 pt for a small smear of cream cheese icing.
Check out Jaime's post for full instructions!
