Corned Beef and Cabbage

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I currently have corned beef cooking in the crock pot and the house smells amazing, but I first tried a Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe back on November 9 because we received a cabbage in our organic delivery. I tried the one from the Gourmet Slow Cooker cookbook, but the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook also has a version that is a bit different and I'll have to try that one at some point Right now, I'm trying Corned Beef with Molasses-Bourbon Glaze, which I plan to serve with roasted potatoes and cabbage and a banana rum cake--the dessert isn't very Irish, but I have bananas that I need to use up--all with black and tans, of course.  And, it's all a surprise for my husband who has been off rock climbing in Kentucky for the last few days and has no idea what I'm planning for dinner tonight.

But anyway, back to the Corned Beef and Cabbage. I picked the recipe in this cookbook originally because it was simpler in the sense that it had fewer ingredients (and hence fewer things that I needed to buy).  Each recipe is simple in the sense that you just put everything in the crock pot and then cook it until it's done.  As you can see from the pictures above and to the right, this recipe calls for corned beef, carrots, potatoes, onions, and cabbage.

As you can also see from these pictures, even my 6-quart crock pot is a bit small for this recipe!  If I were to make it again, I'd probably put in one less potato and maybe only one and a half onions or just one onion instead of two and not just because of the fit -- I'll explain more later.

The only spices that you put in are a sprig of fresh thyme and a bay leaf.  And, of course, some water and a cup of Irish beer.  I chose to use Harp because I (shock!) don't really like Guinness (at least by itself, hence the black and tans) and whatever I purchased we'd have to drink eventually.

Now, this was the first chance that I had to try out the cook by temperature option on the new slow cooker so was for sure going to try it out.  Of course, the cookbook does not have a temperature that this should be cooked to, just a time (8 to 10 hours), but almost all the cookbooks have a temperature guide somewhere in the beginning that tells you what the safe cooking temperature for each type of meat is.  (The Gourmet Slow Cooker actually doesn't, so I used the one in the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook.)  From that, I set the temperature to 145°F (the temperature listed for beef cooked to "medium"). Apparently, the USDA guidelines say that corned beef should be cooked to a minimum if 145°F, so I'm glad I did that.

This is what the corned beef looked like right after I poured in the water and beer and right before I turned it on.

And this is what it looked like when it was done cooking.

Now the interesting thing about cooking by temperature is that it takes a lot less time than the book says it should take!  I think the meat was cooked in something like four hours... which of course freaked me out and so I left it on for another hour or so anyway. (I'm doing the corned beef I'm making today by time, not temperature, so we'll see if the texture is any different.)  After it has finished cooking, you remove the thyme and bay leaf, take the beef out and cut it into slices and put it into bowls with the vegetables and some of the cooking liquid.  This was pretty good, but the recipe comes out a little bland with only the bay leaf and sprig of thyme as spices.  The one in the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook has you put in the seasoning packet that comes with the corned beef, cloves, pepper, brown sugar, and beer so I'm interested to try that one at some point to see what the taste difference is.

Now, the picture of my dish in comparison to the picture from the cookbook isn't half bad.  The only thing that is different is the cabbage loses most of its color in the crock pot -- something that I've seen in several dishes that I've made... which is why I'm convinced that none of the pictures in these cookbooks were actually cooked in a crock pot.

I'm not really sure that I can accurately calculate the calories per serving of this recipe.  When I plug in the amounts, it shows 786 calories per serving, but there are several reasons why that's not accurate.  First, the calories listed for meat are usually by weight as cooked, but I only know the weight before cooking.  And I'm not about to go invest in a food scale just to figure this out.  Also, the cookbook says that you get six servings out of this -- and that's pretty accurate.  However, there is only one to one and a half slices of the meat in each serving--the dish is mostly the vegetables.  Also, we ended up with two servings at the end that had no meat in them (which is why I think it's better to cut down on the number of potatoes and onions you put in).  So, let's just say that this isn't the most healthy meal that you could make.

This is also not the cheapest dish to make in comparison to some of the others I've made.  Beef brisket is expensive and that really adds to the total.  I estimate that this dish comes out to about $5.45 per serving -- still not that bad (not counting the 2 veggie-only servings, of course).  I already had the cabbage and carrots, but those are relatively cheap items so as I made it, it was $4.90 per serving for me.  Still: corned beef and cabbage for about $5.00 per serving?  I dare you to find that at an Irish pub anywhere.

Salsa Meat Loaf

Most people think first of soups and stews when they think of slow cooking, but your crock pot is also a good way to make meat loaf!  As you may recall, I posted a recipe previously about meat loaf (Meat Loaf on a Bed of Potatoes) and said that one of the major difficulties was in trying to get the meat loaf out of the crock pot.  Well, I tried meat loaf again not long after I moved into my new apartment, back on June 28 of last year, and did much better.  The key is making a foil cradle (like in the picture to the left), which you will use later to take the meat loaf out.

I got this recipe, for Salsa Meat Loaf from the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook, the same one I got the previous meat loaf recipe from.  Interestingly, when looking for where I had found this recipe originally, I looked in several of my cookbooks and not a single other cookbook that I own has a meat loaf recipe in it, while this one has five in the "Beef, Veal, and Venison" chapter and another one, made with ground turkey, in the "Poultry, Game Birds, and Rabbit" chapter.

To make the meatloaf, you mix together ground beef, an egg, oats, salsa, red onion, marjoram or oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper.  I'm pretty sure that I used oregano because that's what I had already.  And as most people know who are regular readers of this blog, I left out the salt.  Then you place it into the crock pot in one big lump, before shaping it out into a loaf shape that fills the entire bottom of the crock pot, as you can see in the image to the left.  Then it cooks on low for about 6 hours.  The cookbook says to cook it until "an instant-read thermometer inserted in the center of the meat loaf registers at least 160° to 165°F" so this would be a great recipe to do with my new crock pot which has the cook by temperature option, but as you can see, I made this recipe before I had that one so I don't know how well that would work.

Now, toward the end of the cooking time, about 30 minutes according to the cookbook, you mix some more salsa with some olive oil and then spread it over the meat loaf.  Now, this probably wouldn't work if you went the temperature route so you could also just wait until it was done cooking and then spread the salsa mixture on the meat loaf.  Regardless, you should cook it for another 30 minutes on low after adding the salsa mixture.

Now, the taking the meat loaf out of the crock pot process is really a two-person job, but with the foil cradle it is much easier than it was to take the meat loaf out in the first meat loaf recipe that I tried.  In this case, you use the foil strips and handles to get the meat loaf out of the crock pot in one piece.  Now, the cookbook says that you should slide out the foil strips and throw them away, but I find when you first take it out of the crock pot, the meat loaf is too soft to do that.  I just ended up serving it as it was and then taking away the strips when I was packing up the leftovers.

The good thing about my previous attempt at meat loaf was that it cooked over potatoes so you just needed to add a vegetable and/or a salad to have a complete balanced meal.  In this case, I didn't have that option, so I made baked sweet potatoes in the second crock pot I have (the dual one, but I only used one side in this case).  It seems a little ridiculous, of course, to make baked potatoes in the crock pot because they take 6 to 9 hours on low to cook and in the oven they'd only take about an hour.  However, I often think that I'd like to have a baked potato with dinner, but I tend to work up until dinner and by the time I get around to cooking at all, I'm really hungry and so I just go with something that is quicker.  So the crock pot baked potatoes are really good to start in the morning and then by the time you're ready to eat, they're already done!

It's also really quick and easy (as are normal baked potatoes too, I guess).  You just wash the potatoes, stab them a few times, wrap them in foil, and throw them in the crock pot.  In this case, I actually prepared and started the potatoes first because they take longer and then started making the meat loaf. When it was time to eat, I made some broccoli to go on the side (I suspect this was cooked from frozen because I don't have fresh broccoli listed on my receipt for the shopping trip prior to making this) and dinner was served!  The meat loaf was good too!  Not like the meat loaf like my mom used to make, but the salsa is a nice touch!

Now, in terms of all my calculations, here's the thing: I have no idea how many servings we got out of this.  The cookbook says 6 to 8 but this is another case where it all depends on how thick you slice it.  So, for sake of calculations, I'm going to assume that we got 8 servings out of it because I know that I tend to serve thinner slices.  In that case, the meatloaf alone only comes out to about 243 calories per serving.  The broccoli and the sweet potato are only about 115 calories total, so the whole meal is only about 358 calories.  So if you're like my husband, you may want to have more than one slice of the meatloaf, making it up to 601 calories.  In terms of cost, this is a little bit pricey (well, in comparison to other crock pot meals I've made, not in comparison to eating out) if you needed to purchase all the ingredients.  I calculated it at about $5.15 per serving if you needed to purchase everything, including the sides (it's $4.63 for the meatloaf alone).  Of course, I had almost everything (includin g the sides) so it was only $1.83 per serving -- really good on my grad student budget.

Easy Swiss Steak

I took some time off from this blog over the holidays.  I didn't necessarily plan to do so, but I got really busy both because of the holidays in general and because I was trying to get the reading of the primary sources for my dissertation done before I left for the ASCH conference this past week.  I'm committing myself to this blog for the next year more than I have in the past, but I think in general I need to cut back on my posting.  I'm currently at a crucial point in my academic career: my funding for next year is contingent on my finishing my dissertation proposal by March or April of this year.  In a way, I may end up relying even more on the crock pot to make dinners for myself and my husband during this time, especially with some of the quick and easy recipes, because my time is so valuable.  But I'm planning to try to update only every other week, aiming for a Friday or Saturday update each time.  So you can come back in two weeks for a new update.

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My sister came to visit us this weekend, so I decided to make a crock pot dish.  She also has a crock pot at home, but I'm not sure how much she uses it.  Because she often works for such long hours, I think she'd really benefit from the one I have with a timer, so she can make a dish in the morning and not worry about getting home at a specific time to switch it to warm.  I decided what to make this week based on what was on sale at my local grocery store.  I saw that boneless top round steaks were on sale, so I looked through my various crock pot cookbooks to find something to do with it.  The best thing I found was several versions of "Swiss steak" in different cookbooks.  There is one in the Gourmet Slow Cooker Cookbook and one in the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook, but the one I decided to use is in 101 Things to Do with a Slow Cooker because it was the easiest and simplest recipe and thus the best one for a grad student with limited time.

The only drawback with this is that it takes a long time to cook, so even though I went to bed kind of late because I was doing work, I had to get up by 8:00 a.m. to prepare the crock pot so it would be ready at dinner time.  The good thing about this, though, is that it is really easy to prepare and there is no chopping of vegetables that you need to do ahead of time.  You simply grease the slow cooker (I use cooking spray because that's the quickest way to do it) then throw in baby carrots.  Sorry about none of the pictures lining up with the paragraphs that talk about them.  I ended up with more pictures I wanted to include than I had paragraphs.

Then, you put the steak in.  I cut off the fat that was on the edge because, as I'm sure I've said before, the fat on meats doesn't really cook off in the slow cooker like it does on the stove or in the oven so you really want to trim as much of it off as possible.  I cut the steak into six pieces to make the dish six servings.

Then, you mix the sauce to pour over the steak.  Again, this is very easy.  You throw in one envelope of dry onion soup mix, one can of tomato sauce, and some water.  Because my husband likes things spicy (in fact, he says that he finds most of my crock pot dishes too bland, though just wait until you hear about the Indian dish I made that was too spicy for him!), I added some crushed red pepper to the sauce.  I would highly recommend the addition of the crushed red pepper.  It doesn't make it spicy, but it definitely keeps it from being too bland.  After mixing it all together, you just pour it over everything, then turn the crock pot on to cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

This is what the dish looked like before I turned it on.

And this is what it looked like when it was finished cooking.

As you can see from the above picture, the steak cooks down a little bit in the crock pot so depending on how much you want to eat, you may want to go with the four servings instead of the three.  The cool thing about the 101 Things to Do with a Slow Cooker cookbook is that each recipe gives serving suggestions.  The "Easy Swiss Steak" says that you should serve it "over plain or garlic mashed potatoes" and "with a side of cucumber and onion marinated in vinegar."  So, to go with this dish, I made garlic mashed potatoes via the Joy of Cooking, and adapted the marinated cucumber salad recipe from the same recipe.  My marinated cucumber-onion side dish recipe is at the end of this post.  This was really tasty.  Both my sister and husband thought so.  We served it with a salad as well and my sister and I felt full with the serving in the picture plus a salad.  My husband, of course, went back for seconds on the meat and potatoes.

Overall, I'd recommend this dish for the grad student based on the number of calories and the cost per serving.  The Swiss steak alone is 311 calories per serving if you cut it into six pieces like I did, or 466 calories per serving if you cut it into four pieces.  The caveat with this calculation, however, is that the websites I use to count calories only have the steak listed by weight as cooked, but I only know what the weight is before cooking, so the actual calorie counts might be a bit lower.  For six servings, if you have to buy all the ingredients, it would be $1.92 per serving as I made it.  If you don't add the crushed red pepper, it'd be $1.55 per serving, but the crushed red pepper is a spice that we normally have on hand so I didn't need to purchase that and I actually already had the dry onion soup mix because I had used it in a prior crock pot recipe so I only paid $1.38 per serving!

However, the overall calories and cost go up if you make the marinated cucumber-onion side dish and garlic mashed potatoes to go with it.  For four servings you'd end up with 720 calories and for six servings you'd end up with 565 if you use the standard 2/3 cup serving of mashed potatoes.  If you serve yourself a smaller serving of mashed potatoes, say 1/2 cup, you'd end up with a more manageable 665 calories for four servings and 510 calories for six servings.  If you want more calories, you could be healthy and add a salad to it like we did (with balsamic vinaigrette dressing, a mixed green salad is between 100-150 calories, depending, of course, on what you put in the salad).

The total cost for this meal is a bit high if you don't already have the spices, butter, garlic, milk, etc. on hand as staples.  It would be $6.70 per serving for four servings or $5.74 per serving for six servings.  I have most of those staples on hand, however, so I only paid about $2.85 per serving for the six servings I made so it is a totally reasonable for the grad student, both in terms of calories and cost.  If you're on your own, you could basically feed your dinners for the whole week for less than $20.00!  Of course, since my husband always has seconds and I also fed my sister, the $20.00 will really only last 2 days for us.  Still: it's an easy, yummy, inexpensive dish that is perfect for the grad student lifestyle and budget.

Marinated Cucumber-Onion Side Dish
1 large cucumber, peeled and cut into thin half-slices
1 large white onion, sliced into strips
1 cup white wine vinegar
8 tsp sugar
1 tsp dried dill, or to taste
1 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste

Place the cucumber and onion in a large bowl with a cover.  In a separate small bowl, mix together the vinegar, sugar, dill and black pepper until the sugar is dissolved.  Pour the mixture over the cucumber and onion and mix everything around.  Place the cover on the bowl and refrigerate for at least one hour.  I suggest shaking the covered bowl around every once in a while before you serve it to make sure that the vinegar mix is coating the cucumber and onion evenly. Makes about 8 servings.

Beef Daube

As you may recall from the note at the bottom of my Crock-Baked Beets and Pollo Colorado post, I got married on August 20.  (In fact, you can read about Gourmet PhD's adventures in New England food due to being in the Boston-area for my wedding and having delayed flights on the way back on her food blog.)  Obviously, I not only didn't get any reading for exams done during the two weeks surrounding the wedding, I also didn't have a chance to update my blog.  Now I'm back and I have a backlog of posts to make.

Speaking of food blogs and websites, I was very excited to recently discover the Crock Pot Girls who have a Facebook page and a web page (that is a bit under construction).  They facilitate recipe sharing for slow cooking, so I'm very excited to start exploring their site.

Anyway, one of the great things about crock pot cooking is that almost any regular soup recipe can be adapted for the crock pot.  You may remember that I did this back when I made the chicken tagine.  So, back in the beginning of May (May 3, to be exact) I did just it again.  Basically, my roommate and I had some white wine that had been in the fridge for too long and could really only be cooked with at that point.  So, I pulled out my Joy of Cooking and checked the index for things that could be made with white wine.  What I found, and decided to adapt for the crock pot, was a "Beef Stew with Mustard, Herbs, and White Wine (Beef Daube)."  The Joy of Cooking explains that "the word daube comes from daubiere, the French word for a covered casserole.  This is a refreshing change from the heavier flavors that we associate with beef stew."

Although I generally followed the recipe, I was kind of free adapting it for my own tastes.  The recipe as listed in the Joy of Cooking only has beef, tomatoes, and onions in the stew (not counting spices, of course).  I added celery and carrots to make it a little more stew-like for my taste.  I'll include my recipe at the end of this post.

You can follow the pictures from the top of my post to see how I made this stew.  I covered the beef with seasoned flour and then browned it on all sides before adding it to the crock pot.  With the beef, I added the veggies and spices: onion, celery, carrots, garlic, dried parsley, dried thyme, dried marjoram, a bay leaf, and dried celery flakes.  I added the wine and Dijon mustard to the frying pan I had cooked the beef in and mixed that together before adding it to the crock pot.  Then I turned it on to LOW and cooked it for the whole day.  I'd recommend 6-8 hours, or at least until the beef is cooked.

This is what the stew looked like when it was finished cooking.

Unfortunately, because it's been so long since I made this recipe, I don't remember how many servings I got!  My guess would be 6-8 servings, since most of the soups that I've made in that crock pot have turned out to have that many, so I'll estimate the cost and the calories based on that estimate. Depending on how big of a serving you serve, this could be 510 to 382 calories (510 for six servings, 382 for eight).  With a salad, this could be a full meal.  Even adding a piece of bread or a small roll to it wouldn't really kill you calorie-wise (and force you to actually get out of your window-less graduate student office to go to the gym).

In terms of cost, the good thing about this recipe is that a lot of the ingredients, especially the spices, mustard, and olive oil, are things that you'll normally have on hand in your kitchen.  I actually only purchased the beef, onions, and celery flakes for this recipe, making it only cost me only from about $1.15-$1.50 per serving.  Obviously, if you had to buy everything, it would cost a lot more, especially in the cost of purchasing the spices. I'd estimate in that case the cost would be about $5.75-7.60 per serving (of course, assuming, that you're buying a cheap bottle of wine to cook with).  So, ultimately, I'd say that this is a good, cheap and pretty healthy recipe if you have some white wine that needs to be used up.

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Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
approx. 1 tsp. salt
approx. 1/4 tsp. black pepper
approx. 1/2 tsp. paprika
2 lbs. beef stew meet
olive oil
16-oz can diced tomatoes with juice
2 medium onions, sliced
2-3 carrots, chopped
2-3 stalks of celery, chopped
1 tsp. dried parsley
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried marjoram
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. dried celery flakes
3 cups dry white wine
2 tbsp. Dijon mustard

Directions:
Mix the flour, salt, pepper, and paprika together in a bowl.  Coat the pieces of beef stew meat with the flour mixture.
Heat 2-3 tbsp. of olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add the beef to the olive oil in batches and brown on all sides.  Remove the beef from the frying pan and place in crock pot.  Add the tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, and the remaining spices to the crock pot.
Pour off most, but not all, of the fat from the frying pan.  Add the white wine and bring it to a boil, scraping the leftover bits of meat from the bottom of the pan.  Reduce the heat to simmer.  Add the Dijon mustard and whisk to blend.  Pour this mixture into the crock pot and stir everything to combine.
Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours, until the beef is cooked through.

Beef & Beer Stew

Over this holiday break, I made another crock pot meal, this time using my fiance's roommate's crock pot.  We wanted to have a special something to do on New Years, but unfortunately my fiance, an EMT, had to work until 10 p.m. (or rather, that is when he was scheduled until, he ended up actually having to work overtime!).  So, we decided that a fun thing to do for just us would be for me to make a crock pot meal and we'd have a late dinner with sparkling wine when he got home.  For this, since I still don't have my cookbooks with me, I decided to make a "manly" dish: the Beer & Beef Stew from cdkitchen.com (the site actually has a "bachelor's" beer and beef stew as well, but since there were no vegetables in that, I refused to make it for our dinner).  The cool thing about cdkitchen.com is that you can adjust the servings that you want to make and it will tell you automatically how much of the ingredients you need for that size of a recipe.  Because it was just the two of us and we were using a smaller crock pot, I only made a half a recipe.

What I love about this dish is it is one of those ones where you just throw everything into the crock pot and turn it on.  It is also good that it is one where you could chop all the vegetables in advance so in the morning you'd really only have to throw everything in together.  As you can see in the picture above, first I added all the vegetables: onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and potatoes.  Then I added the stew beef, tomato paste, and the spices: pepper and oregano.  You will not be surprised to know that I did not add the salt.

Next, I added the only liquid that this stew is cooked in: beer.  The recipe doesn't specify what kind of beer, though I imagine that it might taste different depending on what kind of beer you're using.  Because we had just purchased Tecate for our camping trip, that is what I used for the stew.

After stirring it all together, to the right is what it looked like when I turned it on.  The stew is supposed to cook for 8 to 10 hours on low and then you're supposed to mix together butter and flour and add it to the stew, allowing the broth to thicken.  I did not do this last step partly because I didn't really care in this case about thickening it and partly because, with my fiance being called to stay overtime at work, I forgot about finishing the recipe before he got home.

This is what it looked like when it was done cooking.

Now, I made a half a recipe, according to which I should get three servings out of it.  Of course, that all depends on how big of a serving you make.  My fiance and I each ate out of small bowls and ended up having two servings each.  Then my fiance took all the leftovers to work the next day (yes, he had to work on BOTH New Year's Eve and New Year's Day) and finished it for lunch.  So, one could argue that we got five servings out of it, or just that we got three servings as the recipe said.  Anyway, my fiance loved the stew and I thought it was decent, but not my best stew ever.  I think it might be interesting to try it with a darker beer.

In terms of cost, I spent $14.05 on the ingredients for this recipe, but of course I got more onions and more celery than the recipe called for.  We already had the spices and garlic, but we had purchased an 18-pack of the Tecate beer, which came to $14.69.  So, assuming that we could this as having made three servings, we actually spent $9.58 per serving.  If we had needed to buy the spices and garlic as well, it would have come to a whopping $11.58 per serving.  However, the big expense was obviously the beer and since we were purchasing an 18-pack and then only using one can, it seems unfair to add the whole pack on, so I'll say that this stew would cost approximately $20.87 to make if you needed to buy everything (about $6.96 per serving) or $14.87 as I cooked it (about $4.96 per serving).  So, although this is definitely not a super expensive meal, it is not as cheap as some of the ones I've made in the past.  Also, because it's a traditional stew that includes beef and potato (both higher calorie items) and the beer, this is not as low-calories as some of the other dishes that I've made: it comes out to about 584 calories per serving.  Now, of course, all of this was calculated assuming that we got three servings out of this dish.  If you were to serve yourself smaller bowls (like we did originally) and eat it with something on the side (say, a large salad), you could probably get five or six servings out of this dish.  That would make it out to be only about 292 calories per serving and a cost of $2.48 per serving.  That would be much healthier and much nicer on the graduate student budget.

Slow-Cooked Beef Brisket Dinner

There are quite a few recipes in the Crock-Pot Incredibly Easy Recipes cookbook that call for beef brisket.  Now, some of these recipes that I've made in the past I've just substituted some other cut of beef, because brisket is just so expensive.  However, the place to get beef brisket, I discovered, is Costco, where I found a piece for only $11.45, half of what I've ever seen in a grocery store.  I purchased this before I decided what to make with it and ultimately decided to go with the "Slow-Cooked Beef Brisket Dinner" because, even though the picture didn't look all that interesting, I thought that it would be a good "complete meal in one pot" deal.

Apologies in advance, however.  I made this on October 20 and I completely forgot to take pictures as I was doing prep.  I was smart, however, and chopped all of the vegetables in advance: potatoes, carrots, onion, and celery.  This recipe is super easy.  You just throw everything in the crock pot, that is, the brisket cut in half, the vegetables mentioned above, sliced mushrooms, crushed garlic, and seasonings.  In terms of seasonings, this recipe calls for beef bouillon, black peppercorns, and bay leaves.  We didn't have any whole peppercorns, so instead I substituted an equal amount of ground pepper.  Finally, you cover the entire thing in water and cook it on low for 6-8 hours.

This is what it looks like when done cooking.

The issue I had in this case was that the brisket, which was about 4 lbs (which is what the recipe calls for!), plus all the vegetables, did not fit in the crock pot.  Honestly, I have no idea what size crock pot they were using when they made this recipe, because it would need to be at least twice the size of mine!  I ended up making it in two batches.

The last step is to season the brisket with salt and pepper, and cut it.  The image on the left is of what the food actually looked like when I served it.

The image on the right is what it's supposed to look like according to the cookbook.  As you can see, the vegetables end up looking more bland than they are in the image.

So, unfortunately, I cannot evaluate this meal in terms of calories or cost.  It was an okay meal, but really it was just that: okay.  The meat was kind of bland.  The vegetables absorbed much more of the seasoning so I liked them more, but when it came down to leftovers, I wasn't as thrilled by them.  Ultimately, I had it a few more times, but then kept making something else for dinner because I didn't want to eat the leftovers... until the food ultimately went bad and I threw it out.

I wrote in my cookbook that it was "bland and boring when first served, but horrible as leftovers" and noted "don't make again."

Senator Barry Goldwater's Arizona Chili

I apologize for skipping last week.  I meant to update, but had a presentation in my Italian class on Dante's Divine Comedy which took up my time.  It's coming to the end of the semester so my updates may end up being more sporadic, but I'll do my best (besides, the crock pot is awesome for the end of the semester when you don't want to have to cook a full meal every night).

On October 12, after my chili craving not being satisfied by the Lentil Chili, I decided to make the most basic chili recipe I could find in the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook, Senator Barry Goldwater's Arizona Chili.  This is one that you need to start the night before, because the pinto beans need to soak overnight in cold water.  So I sat and sorted beans while watching Law & Order: SVU, my favorite distraction.  The only veggie prep is to chop two onions, but because of the way the recipe tells you to cook everything, you don't necessarily have to do it the night before.

So the thing about this recipe is that, like the Boston Baked Beans, you have to pre-cook the beans, with three whole garlic cloves, on high for two to two and a half hours (the cookbooks says, "until tender but not mushy").  The cookbook says that you could do this the night before and refrigerate the beans overnight, but I chose to get up early and do it in the morning.

After starting the beans cooking, you can chop the onion if you didn't do it the night before.  Then you brown the onion and ground beef on the stove.  This doesn't take much time, so you can do something in the meantime, like take a nap.  Or, like me, you could do a workout video, shower and get dressed for the day.  :)

After the beans cook, you drain them and take out the garlic cloves, as these are not part of the chili.  Then the mean, onions, and beans go into the crock pot.

The only other ingredients are to add some flavor and sauce: tomato paste, chili powder, and ground cumin.  Then you add enough water to cover the beans and stir everything to mix it up really well.

This is what the chili looked like before I turned it on.

And this is what it looked like after cooking on low for eight to nine hours.

The recipe calls for adding 2 tsp salt in the last hour of cooking.  Adding things mid-way through cooking is difficult for the grad student; you really have to time it so that you can get back home in order to do those things.  Of course, if you've been reading this blog, you know that I don't add salt to most recipes anyway, so that doesn't matter for me.

The recipe recommends serving it with shredded sharp cheddar cheese, chopped fresh tomatoes, and chopped green onions.  It also recommends cornbread or saltine crackers on the side, so I made corn muffins to go along with this recipe.  I picked up a simple Jiffy corn muffin mix when I went shopping so I'd have it just for this recipe.

My roommate and I had the chili the first night after I made it.  We ultimately decided that it was a solid, basic chili recipe, but I cannot emphasize enough how really basic it is.

Of course, it's not too bad for a week of dinners--I got six servings total out of the recipe, which is pretty much what was expected (the recipe says that it serves four to six).  Chilis can often have a lot of calories.  I was looking at cans of chili in the store earlier today and each can said that there were 250 calories per serving... but a serving is half a can... and who ever eats only half a can of anything (except maybe my mother).  My chili comes out about the same: just over 260 calories per serving.  But that's still for the actual serving you eat (as opposed to the "fake" serving in the can of chili).

In terms of cost, I only spent $13.14 on all the ingredients for this dish, and that includes splurging on extra lean ground beef so it'd be healthier.  That comes out to $2.19 per serving, not bad at all if you're trying to stretch your stipend!