Adventures with My Crock-Pot

As of 6 months ago, I acquired a new best friend: the mighty crock-pot. This is truely is one of the most underused appliances of today! I myself was very skeptical of it! I always wondered how something could be so easy...just stick in some meat with some flavors and liquids and you have a delicious meal waiting for you when you come home??? Surely there must be a catch somewhere.

Then one day, I was shopping at a Linen's n Things that was going out of business and one fell off of a shelf on me. It literally dropped out of the sky! I figured this was a sign from above (or maybe a clumsy sales assistant) and therefore I must immediately purchase it. And why not, for $26.95 it was a sin not to!

My culinary adventures began immediately with the crockpot. I had a huge pork butt sitting in my freezer just waiting to have something done to it. So I figured, BBQ pulled pork! I was so impatient that I threw the whole frozen thing of meat in the crock pot, added some bbq sauce and some seasonings. I set the thing on low and kept an eye on it. Absolutely nothing happened for the first hour...I barely saw bubbles after the second hour....But then suddenly it was on a full roaring simmer...I let it go until the wee hours of the morning. When I woke up, the house smelled of BBQ, as if I was cooking all day! Then I took the pork out. It was absolutely perfect. Fell apartand shredded beautifully. All I did now was pour the cooking liquid into a smaller container and reduced it to a thicker consistancy. We had pulled pork sandwiches...pulled pork wraps...you name it I did it!!!!
After that I had no boundaries! Stews and roasts and soups went in there! To this day there is no chili quite as amazing as my crock-pot chilli!!!
I suggest that everyone who has a crock-pot attempts at least one dish in it. You will be changed for life! And if you don't have one, I hear many Linen's N Things are going out of business; and if you're lucky maybe one will just fall on your head.