Crockpot Successes and Failures

The other day I was reading a friend's blog about her "New Year's Hopes", which made me start thinking about the ones that I had for this year.

One of my hopes was to try lots of new recipes this year and to continue cooking. When we first got married, we were cooking new stuff all of the time (because everything is new when you rarely to never cooked previously). Then, we fell into a routine of making mostly our staple dishes, which are tasty (or else we wouldn't keep making them), but I am happy to say that we have tried lots of new recipes recently. A lot of the recipes we have been making have either been from recipes my Mom or Mitchell's Mom have given us (a guarantee that they will be good!) or from this "Bridal Cookbook" that I got. I have accumulated quite a few cookbooks but really only use one or two.

I love cooking. Last year my roommates always joked that I would serve "Michelina's frozen pasta" on a silver platter. I am happy to say I haven't bought a single Michelina's, although those WERE tasty. Mitchell and I occasionally cooked together, but really I ate all quick fix meals. Now, I consider it one of my biggest hobbies. I also probably spent more money on food for just me than I do on Mitchell and I combined this year. It is not that I ate out a lot, but getting Chick-fil-A or Cane's here and there can add up. Not to mention, I didn't know that Aldi existed until this time last year when I was applying for my internship.(See my previous raves of Aldi on this blog or visit my friend Mary Rachel's recent post about the advantages of shopping at Aldi)

Also, I am a HUGE fan of the crockpot. I love throwing things together in 10 minutes in the morning and having a delicious meal ready later in the evening! My two recent crock pot meals that were great successes are beef stew (so tasty!) and ham and potatoes casserole (what we had for dinner tonight and another one of my mother in law's great recipes). I must say that I have also had some crockpot/cooking disasters. I made broccoli cheese soup in there once, and let me tell you, it was nasty. The soup was so gross that Mitchell and I had to light tons of candles the next day because the smell wouldn't go away. Oops. Also, one time I decided I would make up my own recipe for country style ribs because I couldn't find one, and man was THAT a bad idea. If anyone has seen Julie and Julia, I absolutely love that movie! If you haven't seen it, you should. She cooks through a Julia Child's cookbook in a year and writes a blog about it. It looks really fun, but time consuming.

Well, I started this post out talking about my hopes for 2010. I know one of my others ones was to exercise. If you know me, I am sure you could have guessed that I haven't done that at all (unless you count dog walking).