Crock Pot Applesauce!

Aaah...applesauce. A staple of life throughout pregnancy, post-pregnancy, and now the toddler years. I never get tired of it, thankfully, as my son adores the stuff. And remarkably, it's good for you! I've recently stumbled upon some crock pot applesauce recipes, and thought I would share. Here's one from The Humbled Homemaker; I've adapted it only slightly.  Enjoy!

Crockpot Applesauce

• 4-5 lbs. apples (about 12 cups sliced)
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon or nutmeg
•  2 cups water
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Peel, core and thinly slice apples and place in crock-pot.  Add cinnamon or nutmeg.  Pour in water and lemon juice. Cook the usual:  3-4 hours on HIGH or 6-8 hours on LOW.  Stir occasionally.

Applesauce may be a little chunky. Mash with a fork or hit it with the immersion blender if you like smoother applesauce.  Yum!

Slow Cooker BBQ Pork

Slow Cooker BBQ Pork is one of my favorite go-to's on a day that's too hot to cook.  It is hands-down the easiest recipe ever, and great for a budget.  You can use any boneless pork cut, really.  You could use bone-in, too, I suppose, but then you'd have to fish out all those little bits of pork bone, and that's just a pain.  The dish certainly doesn't need the bones for flavor.  It makes for a big bold BBQ pork sandwich everyone will love.

Slow Cooker BBQ Pork

4-6 pounds boneless pork (shoulder roasts and country style spare ribs are good)
1 onion (sweet, yellow, red - whatever you have on hand)
1 bottle any BBQ sauce or about 18 oz of homemade sauce
Any seasonings you'd like

THAT'S IT!

1.  Cut up your onion, and toss it in the slow cooker.

2.  Now put the pork in.  No searing required.  Heck, if I'm using country style spare ribs, I don't even bother defrosting them.  They go in frozen solid from the freezer.  I haven't tried it with the roast, but I imagine it would work too.

3.  Dump the whole bottle of BBQ sauce on top.  I used to make mine from scratch, but now I just use Open Pit.  It's so inexpensive (usually about 99 cents here) and no one notices the difference.  Plus, when I worked in one of the fancy restaurants that helped me pay my way through college, the chef there used Open Pit as the base to his famous BBQ sauce.  Who am I to argue with a chef?

4.  Add any seasonings you like to the sauce - I add some Montreal Steak Seasoning, soy sauce OR Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Also, sometimes I add bacon.

5.  Add about 1/2 cup water.

6.  Cook the usual:  On HIGH cook 4-5 hours, or on LOW cook 6-8.  I always cook on low, so I can't vouch for the speed method.  NOTE STEP 8 BELOW.

7.  During the cooking process, break up the meat with a fork.  You can add water or more sauce if needed, but I've never had too.

8.  When the cooking time has about an hour to go, take the meat out of the slow cooker (just the meat, not the sauce), and "pull" it apart with two forks.  If you've never done this before, don't be afraid - it's very easy!  Just take a fork in each hand and use them to separate the meat.

Go over here to Southern Living to watch a video on how to "pull" pork if you want a visual.

9.  Once the meat is pulled, and any large chunks of fat are removed, put the meat back into the slow cooker and cook on LOW for the last hour.

10.  Use a slotted spoon to take the pork-y deliciousness out of the slow cooker when done.  Serve on hearty rolls for sandwiches, or just by itself with rice or mashed potatoes.  YUM!

Your Own Iced Tea

Here in the Midwest where I live, it's finally summer, and that means ice cold drinks.  Iced tea has really taken off as a popular drink in the last few years, and every restaurant chain has their own take.  It can be tempting, on a really hot day like today, to hit up the drive-thru for a mega cup of the stuff.  After all, it's only $1.  Right?  Wrong.

The secret is, you can make your own iced tea, sweet or regular, for a fraction of the cost and calories.  My version of iced tea, which I consider pretty sweet, has 60 calories.  A small McDonald's Sweet Tea?  150.  And who gets a small, when you can get a large for the same price?  The calories in a large are 230.  That's a big price to pay, even if it is only a dollar.

I've gotten to the point where I prefer my homemade tea anyway.  It's great to have a pitcher of the stuff on hand.  Everyone seems to love it, and by making it yourself, you can play around with different tea flavors, sweetness levels, and add-ins.

Here's my version:

You need:
1 large pitcher (I use a 12-cup pitcher from the Dollar Tree)
10 tea bags, any flavor  - Lipton tea = $4 for 40 bags, so 10 bags for $1
1 cup sugar, adjust to your own liking - about $0.25

Fill up your pitcher with cold water.  Pour about 4 cups of the water from the pitcher into a saucepan. Put the pitcher with the remaining water in the freezer to chill.  Bring the saucepan of water to near boil.  Remove from heat and add all the tea bags (pull the strings off first).   Let the tea bags steep for about 10 minutes.  Scoop the tea bags out of the water and throw away or compost.

 Add your sugar, if any, to the hot water and stir till dissolved.  This step is important!  If you add granulated sugar of any kind to cold liquid it will take forever to dissolve, and make your tea a little crunchy.

Take the pitcher out of the freezer and add the sweetened tea water to the cold water left in the pitcher.  Since you poured the water from this pitcher in the beginning, it should be the perfect amount.  Easy!

For some variety, add sliced lemons or lemon juice, other fruits, peach puree, slices of cucumber, fresh mint or use flavored teas.  Two of my favorite flavored tea options are Celestial Seasonings SleepyTime tea (a good decaf alternative), and Tazo Zen.  Both are very refreshing alternatives to soda or juice, and the decaf variety you can drink all day long and not feel guilty, especially if you make it unsweetened.

Another option, if you have people in your family with different sweetness preferences, is to make your own simple syrup to keep on hand.  Simple syrup is most commonly used by bartenders or baristas to add sweetness to cold drinks.  It's basically just sugar dissolved in water and cooled.  It can be stored in a pour spout-type bottle in the fridge and then your family or guests can sweeten the tea to their own liking.  It also works great in iced coffee.

That's all you need!  And you have refreshing iced tea for about 10 cents a glass - a much better deal than the dollar menu, don't you think?

Take Two meal: Cheesy Chicken

Cheesy Chicken uses the leftovers from Crock Pot Parmesan Chicken, an amazingly simple meal created by chef-in-training, and found on her blog (just follow the link).  That's also her picture up there, because the one I took today looked terrible!  I'll replace it with my own the next time we have this dish

The leftovers from Crock Pot Parm can be used to make chicken spaghetti - especially if you have lots of leftover noodles - or to make Cheesy Chicken sandwiches, which are terrific served with sweet potato fries.

CHEESY CHICKEN

Take your leftovers from the Crock Pot Parmesan Chicken an put them in a sauce pan.  Turn the heat on medium to med-low.  Stir constantly, breaking up the chicken as it cooks.  When the chicken is warmed and thoroughly shredded, add a big handful of cheese (I use cheddar, usually, but it should work with whatever you have in your fridge).  Turn the heat to medium high and stir while the concoction comes up to temperature and the cheese melts.  Add another handful of cheese if you like it really cheesy.  Keep on stirring till all the cheese is melted through.  Add any extras you want.  We like sliced olives - sometimes black, sometimes green.  You may want to add something else to suit your own family.

Serve over noodles for Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti, or on rolls for Cheesy Chicken sandwiches.  Enjoy!