slow cooking month

Carl

Mer­ry Christ­mas! I thought it was time for anoth­er post after such a very long radio silence. I want­ed to let y’all know about my month of slow cook­ing. I’m over halfway through and hav­ing a blast. I’ve used it every day except the first two Wednes­days (because we were rather over­loaded with left­overs). I’m work­ing from three sources — Michele Sci­colone’s The French Slow Cook­er, Cook’s Illus­trat­ed The Best Slow and Easy Recipes, and Stephanie O’Dea’s blog. So far, I’ve made:

  • gar­bu­re (cab­bage and bean soup)
  • roast chick­en with pota­toes, lemon, and thyme
  • chick­en in the pot with aioli
  • Poven­cal spinach meat­balls
  • Rousil­lon meat­balls
  • bouil­l­abaisse
  • salmon with toma­toes and mint (not awe­some)
  • bacon and Gruyere pain per­du
  • cau­li­flower and pota­toes Cata­lan
  • bit­ter­sweet choco­late creams
  • rice pud­ding
  • bar­be­cued brisket
  • sal­sa chick­en and black bean soup
  • stuffed pep­pers
  • 21-ingre­di­ent chili
  • chick­en broth (today’s task)
  • mulled wine

And then not in the slow cook­er but cooked slow­ly: baked bananas and slow-braised car­rots. The French book is won­der­ful and has turned out the best results, I think.

Near­ly every­thing has turned out deli­cious­ly. And I’m hav­ing a great time. So great a time that we decid­ed to get a 1970s-era one as well (they cook slow­er and have great rep­u­ta­tions) so that I can cook small­er amounts of food (effi­cient­ly) instead of the very large amounts I am cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing. Carl has also been enjoy­ing it for obvi­ous rea­sons. 🙂

I’m also work­ing on per­fect­ing a gluten-free French bread recipe. It had quite a bit of mil­let flour in the orig­i­nal recipe (from one of my GF cook­books), and I think it’s the mil­let that has just a lit­tle bit of a strange taste. The tex­ture of it is absolute­ly fan­tas­tic though. I’ve tried sub­sti­tut­ing buck­wheat flour for the mil­let, but that did­n’t work out. Today, I’m going to sub­sti­tute almond flour and per­haps coconut flour for the mil­let. We’ll see how it goes. I thought of sub­sti­tut­ing quinoa flour, but a friend of mine who cooks tons of GF stuff rec­om­mend­ed against it. She’s also work­ing on per­fect­ing the same recipe. I think between us, we’ll fig­ure it out. And then I’ll post the recipe because it will be AWESOME.

On anoth­er but relat­ed note, I do have the best hus­band ever. He is sup­port­ive of me and kind and smart and just absolute­ly won­der­ful. He came to two church ser­vices last night (out of three) at two dif­fer­ent church­es and said he would rather be there for/with me than be home alone.  I def­i­nite­ly got the best hus­band.

And now off to do laun­dry and oth­er domestic‑y things. Mer­ry Christ­mas!