The Experiment: Day 23 ~ Crockpot Days…

Noni’s and my first dinner in the crockpot, beef stew!

I am SO excited! Well you see it all started because of a conversation my daughter Rachel and I had about my diet. It was pretty shabby. I mean Noni and I usually eat pretty good on the weekends but the rest of the week I am at a loss! I will open up a can of chili or make a grilled cheese sandwich but I don’t — or I haven’t — really cooked, nor have I eaten almost any vegetables or fruit. Rachel was worried about me. I also wasn’t exercising but have started using my stationary bicycle again this week. And I thought, well, gee, before the fire I had a wonderful big crockpot that I loved and that was so easy because you could just throw a bunch of stuff in and let it go, and have enough for a number of dinners, leftovers for a few meals and maybe some to put in the freezer. This, I thought, I could do! I bought this great 7 quart crockpot for $23 on amazon. I like this kind because it has the ceramic crock you can lift out and put in the refrigerator. Easy to use and clean.

Then, in the last week after talking to 2 of my health care providers and doing a lot of research I decided to go on the ketogenic diet. I will be easing into it with guidance but I’ve already stopped eating sugar, processed foods, and prepackaged carbs. We are having bread tonight with our dinner but after this weekend I won’t be eating any regular bread. (I am going to learn how to bake with coconut or almond flour.) It’s a learning curve but it is really exciting. And yesterday I went grocery shopping for myself and for the things Noni and I needed this weekend for our first crockpot meal. (She and I split the cost of our shared food, it’s a wonderful thing to have a friend to eat with!) I got lots of vegetables, and fruit, and it’s looking a lot healthier around here!

I was really craving beef stew, some good meat and lots of vegetables. Noni suggested chuck roast but they had chuck steaks on sale so I got those and they look good. A 3 pound bag of small red potatoes, 2 small packages of mini carrots and we put in onions, celery, lots of seasonings, and we got the whole crock pot ready to go — Noni browned the chuck steaks she had cut into strips first — and we put it in the refrigerator last night all ready to go. Today I just had to start it with 2 containers of vegetable broth, and at 4:00 I’m going to add chard and mushrooms. Ooo la la, this is going to be wonderful. We are splurging and having a nice fresh crusty bread with it, but as I said, this is my last bread this weekend. So this is not a total keto diet but it’s a lot closer, and we will have it tonight, warm some up tomorrow night, and then split up what’s left so we’ll have leftovers in the week ahead. This is so exciting.

This crock pot is going to save me. I just can’t whip up meals every night but once or twice a week I can make a meal in the crockpot, save some for leftovers and freeze the rest. Then I’ll have meals in the freezer to pull out when I need them.

I also ordered a cheap used copy of a crockpot cookbook that looks fabulous! It isn’t keto so I won’t be able to use all the recipes but I can get good ideas here and this book is HUGE! Tons of recipes. Also I saw online — and rats I didn’t save it so I’ll have to hunt it down again — a recipe for Keto Brownies! that you make IN a crockpot! This is opening up a whole new world of possibilities for me. Onwards and upwards, I am on my way! Here’s the cookbook…

I would love to hear from all of you about your own crockpot cooking, favorite recipes or cookbooks or resources, and especially if you are doing the keto diet and using a crockpot, I’d love to know some good keto crockpot cooking or resources. Thanks so much to all of you who respond here on the blog!

Oh goodness gracious, it’s smelling really good in here…

 


The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: 
Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda

Comments

  1. Your crock pot cooking sounds like a great idea for you Maitri!
    I don’t use a crock pot but am on a ketogenic diet. One site that I have used which has really delicious recipes is http://www.ruled.me You could do a search there to see if they have any for crock pot.

  2. I can see why your’e exited! It sounds like you’ve started a new healthier life.

    I don’t have a crook pot, so I stick to the old fashioned cooking – on the stove or in the oven. I don’t like to cook, but I do cook (mainly from scratch) most day, unless I have leftovers, which I love, so I try to make more than I can eat at one meal, so I don’t have to cook every day.
    Margaretha

    • Margaretha, it’s wonderful that you cook. I really admire you. I used to cook when I was cooking for a family of 5 but once I was alone I didn’t know how to cook anymore. I’d always make way too much and it would go bad before I could eat it. I think the crockpot is going to help me a lot. And of course, old fashioned cooking from scratch is the BEST! 🙂

  3. Claudine Denert says

    Hi Maitri, I have absolutely no idea what a crockpot is… But I like to cook. I do it every day, even just for myself. It is a way of being creative with food… To me, preparing a meal is like a meditation, it always eases my mind… I don’t know much about the keto diet either. I just try to avoid sugar, caffeine… I try to eat 3 pieces of fruit everyday. And I do exercise a lot… On my bike, as I don’t have a car, and by walking… Starting each day with walking chanelleke… On bad weather days I use my stationary bike too… ❤️❤️❤️

    • Hey Claudine, a crockpot, which you see at the top of the blog post, is also referred to as a “slow cooker” and working people really love them because you put all the ingredients in in the morning before work and turn it on, it cooks all day, and when they get home from work dinner is already made! They are one pot meals, even desserts or I know people who make special oatmeal that they start before they go to bed on low and when they get up breakfast is ready! I think it’s wonderful that you are such a natural cook. I know you make wonderful things… 🙂

  4. Hi Maitri, I love my crockpot and I cook pot roasts in mine. I want to get a newer one because my husband won’t have us leaving the house when the crock pot is on. I did it a lot when he was working but now that he’s retired he just doesn’t “get it”. So maybe a newer crock pot will help. I’ve cooked spaghetti sauce in mine and pork chops.

    Great on your new lifestyle! I’m waiting to read how you are doing with it all.

    Jean

    • Hi Jean, oh and yes I was going to get a roast and will next time. It’s so lovely to have a crockpot full of meat and vegetables, a whole savory dinner, and yes I’ve heard of people making spaghetti sauce in their crock pots. So MANY things you can do with them. And I love this crockpot, it’s very nice, it was only $23, and has the porcelain crock that lifts out so you can put it in the fridge, I think it’s going to be fun to find things to cook! 🙂 And yes I will keep you posted here on how I’m getting along with it all!

  5. We haven’t got a crockpot but your dinner looks SO good, the aroma of your stew is wafting all the way over here, yum! Well done on your new healthy lifestyle! x

    • Thanks so much Jenny, I’m very excited about it, and yes, I love having the crockpot going, the whole house smells good! I used to love to use my old crockpot but I lost it in my house fire in 2014 and never got another one. I’m so glad I got this. I will put it to good use, and Noni and I can use it on the weekend! 🙂

  6. Victoria SkyDancer says

    My diet is definitely something that needs improving! These last few years have been horrid for me, and my clothes have been telling me all about it! A Ketogenic diet sounds like something that might fit me well; I’ll look into it.
    One thing I’m going to do is start with probiotics to help get my gut bacteria back into equilibrium. And Himself is starting to make noises about walking more, which I’m more than happy to help out with. So we’ll see what happens… 🙂

    • I hear ya girl! I definitely need to make some changes and I think a keto diet will be good for me, I’m very excited about it. And good for you and Himself to start walking together. You guys ROCK!!!! 😀

  7. I love crockpot cooking. The thing with recipes is I rarely use one, so I’m not a good resource, but I’ll be following this post to see what folks share. <3

    • Thanks Effy! Your food always looks SO good! I still wish I had a recipe for the potato soup you showed recently! Thanks for dropping in, it’s always good to see you! 🙂

  8. Hi Maitri! I am the program coordinator at a supervised living home and we would be lost without our crockpot! We take a couple of hours at the beginning of the month and we prepare crockpot freezer meals. We assemble everything into labeled gallon freezer bags and the night before we take the dinner out and the next morning into the crock it goes! It saves us so much work and my guys love it! I can share some recipes with you if you’d like.
    😘💕

    • Oh Eva, how wonderful! Noni is here now and we would LOVE to see some recipes and we think your way of preparing the meals is PURE GENIUS! How absolutely wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing this with me. And blessings to you for the good work that you do… 🙂

  9. Love my crock pot and have had that book for years. Today I made navy bean soup. Usually like to flavor it with a ham hock, but I couldn’t get one, so I put a smoked pork chop in. Two cans of navy beans (with liquic), two cans water, diced onions and carrots, salt, pepper, celery leaves, parsley, four cloves (yeah, the kind you use in baking), a bit of minced garlic, paprika (sorry, I don’t measure anything – I started cooking at five years old and learned to cook by taste). Needed a little something else so I pureed a small tomato and added that. Sometimes I put diced potato in, but not today.

    • Oh Judith! My friend Noni is here and I just read her what you wrote and we both kind of swooned because we both love navy bean soup and neither of us has had it in a very long time! Yum! I just love when people write in with their recipes. It’s so homey. Thank you so much for sharing this with me honey. It delighted me to read it! 🙂

  10. Maitri, my hubbie actually expressed interest in crock pot cooking after reading a piece in the NYT about a combo crock pot/pressure cooker. He doesn’t cook, in any real fashion.

    And I just heard an excellent piece about crock pot cooking on one of my food podcasts, interviewing Hugh Acheston (sp?), on a new cookbook he has out around innovative/ethnic crock pot cooking.

    Now, we’ve never had a crock pot, nor do we actually have much room for one (the blanket chest, next to my Kitchen Aid mixer, I’m thinking, is a possibility), but since my hubbie has never really expressed much interest in cooking (aside from learning about homemade pizza, which is a much more challenging task), I’m thinking, this might be a good thing!

    • Oh Lisa! Yes! You won’t regret getting one, they’re not expensive and you can cook everything under the sun in them. I know people who start special oatmeal with all kinds of yummy things in it and start it the night before they go to bed and a delicious breakfast is ready when they get up. And you can cook all manner of soups and stews and sauces and meats and even desserts in the crockpot! And it’s EASY! Your husband would become an instant expert! 😀 And I think I know what you are talking about re the “combo crock pot/pressure cook, I bet it’s the “Instapot.” They are all the rage now but you know what, I’m not in such a hurry for my food. I loved having our beef stew simmering away in the crock pot all day, the whole house smelled heavenly, we just had the stew again tonight and it was even much better the second day and we have leftovers for both us us, Noni and I. I am in love with my crockpot and so glad I got it. I even saw an amazing brownie recipe that you can have on the keto diet made in the crockpot. Pinterest has thousands of recipes, the internet is full of them and nice if you are looking for something in particular to make, and there are books galore. I can’t wait to hear if you get one! Keep me posted! 😀

Leave a Reply to Maitri Cancel reply

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.