Crock Pot #2

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So after my first attempt at using the crock pot (which wasn’t an exact failure…the dish was just really salty) I have made three more meals in my crock pot. The second one was a squash medley stew that had three types of squash, tomatoes, and some other vegetables in it. That turned out pretty good but was essentially a side so I had to make chicken or rice with it every time I wanted to eat the leftovers.

The third thing I made was chicken curry stew. I was a little skeptical about making this because I’m not the biggest fan of curry powder and it had a lot of it in the recipe (2 tbs.). So I decided to only put half in and replace the other half with garlic powder. Other than curry powder and garlic powder, the stew had chicken, chick peas, and tomatoes. When I walked in after classes and work my entire apartment smelled like garlic, which is good because I love garlic! The stew turned out to be really really good (with my garlic substitution of course!), especially after I drained some of the excess liquid off. I think next time, to make it have a little more depth I will add some frozen peas or green beans!

The fourth thing I made was Chicken Chili (see picture)…not the white creamy kind that a lot of people associated with chicken chili but a southwestern type of chili. It had chicken, tomatoes, chicken stock, garlic, onions, pinto and hominy in it. I had no idea what hominy was so I Googled it and found that it is a form of processed corn…interesting. When I went to the grocery store I thought about just getting corn but the hominy was the same price so I decided to give it a try. After putting everything in the crock pot I decided, once again, that it needed more vegetables so I added a bunch of chopped up kale. The dish actually had a lot of flavor and a decent amount of spice after I added a squeeze of srachai! It was really good with some chunks of avocado or sour cream. When I made this again I will definitely replace the hominy with corn (it wasn’t bad just had a weird texture…almost like a bean), I will also replace the pinto beans with black beans, and continue to add something green (whether it be kale, peas, or green beans) and the srachai.