Buddy's Friday - Cooking with a crockpot....

Every Friday over at Margaret's Ramblings there is a Buddy's Friday meme, where people can contribute frugal thoughts and articles.

My contribution this week is about cooking with a crockpot/slow cooker. There are many benefits of cooking with a slow cooker.

1. Convenience - pop the ingredients in the slow cooker first thing in the morning, by supper time you have a fully cooked meal, and only the one pot to wash up!!

2. Economical, in a couple of ways.

• It is cooked on a low wattage, it is a cheap way of cooking.
• As you are cooking over a long period of time you can use cheaper cuts of meats, as cooking them in a crockpot not only makes the meat tender, but also moist.

3. Great for using in Summer as it doesn't heat up the kitchen, the way using the stove/cooker would.

4. They are not an expensive appliance to buy and they come in many sizes to suit the size of your family. Here in Canada they can be quite cheap to quite expensive, here is the Wal-Mart site for Canada. I have a family size, 6 quart size, and even though there is generally only the two of us I find it great. You can also find them at yard sales, car boot's, garage sales, just make sure they are in good condition.

5. I am a morning person and I find that is when I am more motivated as well, so putting everything together in a crockpot in a morning, means I don't have to think about supper later on in the day when my energy levels are down.

Cooking with a crockpot, what to make? The choices are endless and the recipes out there are also endless. There are sites devoted to crockpot recipes, one of my favourite sites is A Year of Crockpotting where she uses her crockpot to cook everyday.

One of my favourite meals to cook in the crockpot is Crockpot Cola Beef it's a great way of using a cheap cut of beef and it makes the best gravy ever. I love to cook a chicken in the crockpot, I pop a whole chicken in the crockpot before I go to bed, add a cup of water, and whatever seasoning you like to use, next morning you have a fall off the bone chicken, that is so moist and tender. You also have great chicken stock to use whatever way you want to.

When our kids went to University, we bought them a crockpot each and I made up a recipe book which includes numerous recipes. If anyone would like a copy of the recipes, it's a word document, do an extra post with your email address in it, and I will email you them (I will not publish your email address).

Also I must apologise for not visiting your blogs, I am really busy at the moment, so my blog visiting it suffering, I'm sorry.....please forgive me!!