February 11th, 2010

Sinful Cinnamon Crockpot Oatmeal with Cinnamon Toast

I have to apol­o­gize for not hav­ing a pic­ture of this. It’s been a while since I have made this for my fam­ily. I will make it soon and add a pictures.

For the Oat­meal

• Crock­pot (I rec­om­mend the Rival 5-Quart Smart-Pot Slow Cooker)
• 3 cups of Steel Cup Oats (DO NOT USE QUICK OATS OR REGULAR OATMEAL. YOU WILL HAVE MUSH IF YOU DO)
• 8 cups of water
• 2 cups of fat-free Evap­o­rated Milk
• 2 cups of Skim Milk
• 1/2 cup of Brown Sugar
• 1.5 tea­spoon of cinnamon
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 large apple and 1 large pear (optional)

(Makes 8 servings)

To ensure that the oat­meal does not stick to the crock­pot, spray it with cook­ing spray. Place all ingre­di­ents in the crock­pot start­ing with the liq­uids first. I find that it cooks bet­ter if the liq­uids although I can’t really explain why. Place the but­ter in last. Cook on low for at least 6 hours. I cook it overnight. When you awake in the morn­ing add slice the apples and pears and add it to the pot and cook for 30 minutes.

For the Toast

• Lightly toast 8 slices of bread in the toaster
• Place them on a cookie sheet
• Put 2 slabs of but­ter on each piece of bread
• Sprin­kle with cin­na­mon and brown sugar

Place cookie sheet with bread  in the oven at 375 degrees until toast is hard­ened Takes about 5–7 minutes.

Serve oat­meal with a slice of cin­na­mon toast.

February 3rd, 2010

Wednesday Dinner: Onion Mushroom Burgers with Mashed Potatoes

I love com­ing up with new recipes and new ways to try some old-time favorites with a new twist. If you have been fol­low­ing my weight loss jour­ney you know that I have a seri­ous prob­lem get­ting enough pro­tein in my diet.  So, I decided to add a lit­tle ground beef to my menu. The prob­lem is that I really don’t like the taste of meat. It makes me gag to think that I have to eat beef.

So tonight I tried to cre­ate a burger that was more like a Sal­is­bury steak and paired with some of my favorite veg­gies: mush­rooms, onions, and green peppers.

Burger Recipe

Mush­room Sauce:

• 1 pint Baby Bella Mushrooms
• 1 large onion
• 1 large bell pepper

Saute this mix­ture start­ing with the onions and then adding the green pep­pers and then the mush­rooms. Cook on medium until the green pep­pers and mush­rooms have released all of their liq­uids. ( I learned this tech­niques from the Iron Chef com­pe­ti­tions). Remove from pan.

Burger Sea­son­ings (I cook by smell so the mea­sure­ments are all palm –sized)

• Black pep­per
• Ground Thyme
• Paprika
• Gar­lic Powder
• Red Pep­per
• Cumin

In a bowl com­bine all of the dry ingre­di­ents and mix well. Mix half of the dry mix­ture into the ground beef. Form your burg­ers (4) and “flour” each burger patty with the remain­ing dry sea­son­ing  mix. Cook burg­ers in pan (8 min­utes on each side if you like yours well done).

For Sauce

• Mush­room, Onion, Pep­per mixture
• 1 cups of hot water with a beef bouil­lon cube dissolved
• .5 cup of Bal­samic Vinegar

Remove the burg­ers from the pan and add vine­gar and water/broth. With fire on medium scrap bot­tom of pan and mix well. Add MOP mix­ture and bring to a slight boil. Add burg­ers back to pan and cover. Turn fire to low and cook until the mid­dles of the burg­ers are as pink as you want (I like them well-done so it took about 13 min­utes to cook thor­oughly. This will dif­fer based on the thick­ness of your burger)

Serve with mashed pota­toes (I used instant mashed pota­toes and made them with Soy Milk) and a side salad (my salad had baby car­rots, 2 kinds of let­tuce, pep­pers, mush­rooms, and onions). Cover mashed pota­toes and burg­ers with sauce/MOP mixture.

The burger is about 215 calo­ries alone.

*The pic­ture fea­tures a very large burger that I cut in thirds.

May 10th, 2008

Product Review: Slow Cook Your Way to More Time

My hus­band and I eat fast food way more than I usu­ally like to admit (which pretty much explains why we are so over­weight). But despite our busy sched­ules, we have made a promise to cook more for our­selves in order to save money and how health. My sister-in-law has long been a fan of her crock pot, so when she found out that we did not have one, she bough us a Crock-Pot® 5.5 Quart Slow Cooker w/ Lit­tle Dip­per for Christ­mas this past December.

And we love it.

We use it for stews chili, gravy (what non-Italians call sauce), roast beef, pot roast, and so much more. And, because my hus­band works the second-shift, he puts meals on in the morn­ing and by the time I get home around 4:00 pm, din­ner is ready for both me and my daugh­ter. I love walk­ing into the house and smelling the great fra­grance of a one pot meal.