Things I am loving or trying to love:
1) Loving the sleeping temperature at night. The house is perfect in the mid 60s. I've been sleeping great.
2) Trying to love my crock pot. I bought a larger one last year with auto timing features, thinking I'd cook with it more. I'm generally gone AT LEAST 10 hours per day, so sometimes that just overcooks things. So, I now don't add veggies to anything, only do meat, and use the autotimer features (it switches down to warm when the 8 or 10 hour cook time is done). I have also been looking for more ethnic and interesting dishes, as I tire VERY quickly of the can of soup/bottle of bbq sauce type slow cooker recipes. I'm warming up to it (no pun intended).
3) Loving the DVR. This is the first full season of tv where I'm really using it. I could use it even more if I took the time to search for more shows I like.
4) Trying to love a few new fall shows. I'm feeling stale in my tv options. Modern Family and Flashforward have the most potential for me. I've also been catching up on Dexter via free Showtime, but that will soon end and we'll never pay more to subscribe to the channel.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
23 comments:
I was cold last night and turned the thermostat up to 74. Mid 60s does make for good hot-tubbing weather.
Crock Pot: I too need to find new recipes. I have two. I made a roast on Sunday in the newer pot, which I realized is smaller than my original. It was a tight fit. I could never make my beef stew in there.
DVR: Best invention ever. We are slightly disappointed with DirecTV for the first time ever. We have HD now, and we have the NFL Sunday Ticket. But thye want to charge an additional $200 to have Sunday Ticket in HD. Absurd! Especially since you can get the local games and the ESPN games in HD. Absurd!
Fall Shows: Agree about Modern Family. Love it.
Boo - 74 freaking degrees!!! My thermostat has never been set that high, lol.
1. *Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*
*spoons Kim*
Yes on the Perfect Sleeping Temperature thing.
2. I have a crock pot. I use it once or twice a year. I am always disappointed. I tried to make a curry in it once because that seemed sort of reasonable - and it was for ick!
3. I love, love, love my DVR! I have more than 50 things set up to auto-record, lol. I should do a blog entry where I list them all.
4. Haven't seen Modern Family but I am very happy with Flash Forward so far. I too won't pay for Showtime & HBO. But I love Dexter! I own seasons 1 & 2. Just ordered season 3 from Amazon! I will give you a few new show suggestions after I look at my DVR queue.
Swami, I never knew you were such a DVR ho. Please share some you think I might like.
I think one of my crock pot issues is that seasonings tend to lose potency while cooking in there for 8-10 hours and everything kind of mushes up and tastes bland. I read that thing about seasonings in my crock pot cookbook and I'm trying to account for that in my experiements.
Boo-We got an NFL Sunday Ticket in HD for a song last year for being new subscribers. They thought they were sly and auto-renewed it this year for the $200 and some bucks. We promptly called and said "hell no."
I just put the list up in my blog, Kim. I didn't want to use all your comment space to list my shows. You'd probably like all of them but the SciFi.
For us, we have to do Sunday Ticket because we love football, and you always get the Skins. That doesn't bother me, but it does Michael.
I like to flip around on all of the games.
I don't need the HD. Michael thinks we do. I told him to pay the extra $100.
I'm enjoying the cooler temperatures. I ordered some new lightweight long-sleeved shirts from Old Navy. I love them. I also ordered a thin black sweater from there. I adore it too, and I'm trying really really hard not to go online and order one in every color. Mr. Fro complains that I get into clothing ruts and get one in every color which he says is why I get bored with my clothes faster. He's probably right. But I really dig the sweater.
Crock Pot. I love the idea of the crock pot but I've never been in love with anything that I've made in there. Liked, yes. Loved, no. I agree with you that things come out too mushy. I actually also find that while the flavors blend nicely they almost blend too much (where every bite tastes the same.) I've never been happy with crock pot chicken, which always seems to come out dry and mushy at the same time.
That said, I'm making braised beef short ribs in the pressure cooker tonight. (I forgot to take them out of the freezer in time to make them in the crock pot today, which was my original plan.) I'm a little scared of the pressure cooker but I've always been pretty pleased when I've used it. I found a pressure-cooker recipe for beef short ribs braised in stout beer so we'll see how that goes.
DVR: I almost never watch anything live (except sports, and sometimes we delay that, too.) It's just too hard to plan anything about TV so I love that the DVR lets me squeeze TV shows in when I can actually pay attention.
4. Haven't tried any new fall shows. One downside of not watching anything live is that I never get on board with new shows until after they've been established and people tell me to watch them.
Mmm, short ribs and beer. You really can't go wrong with that. I haven't used a pressure cooker before. I don't have one and decided I really don't need one to clutter up my shelves even more.
Good point about everything blending too much. I agree. We'll see how my Thai chicken turned out tonight. I have low expectations.
Pressure cookers scare me.
You're making Thai chicken in a crockpot? I think you will like it as much as I liked my curry.
The chicken was absolutely awful. Mushy/mealy and flavorless. No more poultry in a crockpot.
I'm sticking to soup, pork and beef. Although I do have a crock pot lasagne recipe I'd like to try.
You have to fill the crockpot up to the top when doing chicken.
What kind of exotic crockpot dish do you want? I'll send you the recipe. If you can buy an older one at a second hand store. The new ones cook too hot. If you can't, then buy a small 3-4 quart one. So much easier to fill it then the huge 6-8 quart ones.
I have three crockpots of varying sizes and age, so the crockpot itself isn't an issue.
I'm wondering if boneless skinless breasts would be better for crockpots, as the bone area gets so broken down and yucky for bone-in chicken. Any thoughts? Again, I'm gone for 10 hours per day, so a shorter cooking time isn't really an option.
What is wrong with you people? What is wrong with everything being the same? Uniform?? Huh? *giggle*
Dammit, I forgot to take my beef out of the freezer. Hopefully it will still thaw by Sunday.
Do you throw your chicken in frozen or thawed? 98% of the time, my chicken is frozen. Unless I'm doing a rotessierre chicken in there, that's fresh.
Do not NOT add water to the chicken with bones in. It makes enough juice on it's on.
I don't use crock pots. We're still leaving the windows open at night. I like the new Modern Family and the Middle on ABC.
I'm just here to report that the beef shortribs braised in beer in the pressure cooker turned out delicious.
I've put my chicken in thawed. I didn't add much liquid to the Thai Chicken recipe (it came from a Crock-Pot brand cookbook). The marinade/cooking sauce (it was more like a paste) was about 1/4 cup total and had peanut butter, lime juice and soy, so not much liquid for a whole cut up chicken.
I'll give chicken another whirl by putting it in frozen.
I'll be there for leftovers around 6:00, frodis. :-)
LMAO at Modern Family last night.
When the window lady showed up at Phil and Claire's house, it was the best!
The dichotomy of flamboyant Cameron and worry-wart Mitchell cracks me up.
Loving this time of year and it is the best sleeping weather!
Get the Buffalo Lasagne recipe - it's one of few crockpot recipes I LVOE.
I replied to Swami's thread - she is the queen of the dvr!
Yes Kim, and when Ed O'Neil's wife said, the men of my culture has a proud heritage of working hard . . ." And he said, "I know, that's why I pay men of your culture to work for me."
I love Cam and his aras-spanking dancing.
About halfway through Modern Family last night, I was thinking the Ed O'Neill character was starting to turn me off with him treating the kid like crap. So at the end, when he made nice (and made the comment of "90% of being a good dad is just showing up"), I was glad.
Oooh, buffalo chicken lasagne. I need that. I have a buffalo chicken dip recipe and it's probalby similar, with noodles.
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/10/crockpot-buffalo-chicken-lasagna-recipe.html
Hope this gets you there. It is sooo good.
Post a Comment