Yes, You Can “Bake” a Cake in the Slow Cooker! Since I began my 30 days of slow cooker recipes at the beginning of April, I have determined that there is one recipe, for sure, that I will experiment with. It’s my favorite cake, German Chocolate. My mother made the best German Chocolate cake, and I have her recipe. It’s the best I’ve ever had. What’s the Difference Between an Oven-Baked and Slow Cooker Cake? I’ve made a couple of cakes in the slow cooker, and it is a little different than baking them in the oven. The first one I made was a typeRead More →

A Garden Salsa Velveeta Dip When do your garden tomato plants first start bearing tomatoes? Late spring? Early summer? There’s nothing like making salsa from your own organic garden. If you have an abundance of tomatoes, make a salsa for your family and extra to give as gifts to your family and friends. You’ve probably mixed hot sauce with Velveeta. How about coming up with your own sauce by combining tomatoes, squash, zucchini, peppers, and/or any other vegetables from your organic garden? I mixed a little of my homemade garden salsa into the remainder of Velveeta cheese I had on hand. If you like cheeseRead More →

A Caramel Apple Recipe NOTE: This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on it and make a purchase, I make a commission. This doesn’t cost you anything additional. These commissions help to keep the rest of my content free, so thank you! Need a fun food idea for an event? Try caramel apples with your slow cooker. It’s easy to do, and event attendees will love the apples. The photo below is a caramel apple event of a CARES team. Get bakers’ caramel bits. If you can’t find them, use the individually wrapped caramels. It’s more time consuming, but it works. You canRead More →

Stewed Tomatoes for Salsa Recipes   Fresh garden tomatoes make the best salsa. This is a recipe for making your own fresh stewed tomatoes. When your summer garden produces tomatoes in abundance, prepare stewed tomatoes for recipes requiring tomatoes, like salsa. What Are Stewed Tomatoes? If you grew up on a farm or in a family who gardened, you are probably familiar somewhat with blanching vegetables. When I was young, I wondered what my mother meant at blanching the squash, tomatoes, and other vegetables. In my observance, she was cooking them. That was somewhat true. She cooked them long enough to soften. For instance, myRead More →

4-Hour and 10-Hour Slow Cooker Charro Beans There are some days just a pot of beans and cornbread sound good. Rainy days. Chilly days. Spring days. Penny-pinching days. Beans are inexpensive, and they are nutritious. Good for the whole family. Good for babies learning to eat table food. A family can cut grocery expenses and calories easily by eating beans often and growing a vegetable and herb garden. Beans and vegetables combined make a hearty and nutritious meal. The kind of beans my family ate a lot of was green beans. My dad could eat them for every meal. I’m surprised that I still likeRead More →

Slow Cooker Salsa Do you prefer to eat fresh salsa or cooked salsa? Vegetable and herb gardens make the best fresh salsa, and you can get as creative with it as you want. Make it hot or mild, bold and spicy, or sweet and spicy. Don’t have a garden of your own? Vegetables and herbs from the produce section at the supermarket you frequent or from your local farmer’s market will work just fine. When you favor a particular salsa recipe, cook it and store it in a jar. Make it last longer by cooking the ingredients and storing in a jar or plastic containerRead More →

Slow Cooker All-Day Baked Beans Meal Doesn’t hamburgers and baked beans sound like summer foods? I know it’s the spring season right now, but summer days are coming. If you ask me, I think spring and fall seasons don’t last long enough. I suppose that depends on what part of the USA or world you live in. But in East and Southeast Texas where it gets humid and the California desert where my cabin is, it gets hot too quick for me before summer arrives. I’d be happy for spring or fall days all year long. When the hottest part of summer comes around, cookingRead More →

Looking for an easy kind of meat to cook in the slow cooker? Try pork chops. Just thaw them out the night before, and put them in the slow cooker the next morning to cook on low all day. Pork chops occasionally go on sale for 99 cents per pound at this one grocery store I shop at. I’ll buy a few packages and freeze them. They are good pan fried, grilled, baked, broiled, and cooked in the slow cooker. One of the pork chop recipes I’ve tried in my Rival Crock-Pot is a quick way to cook in the slow cooker. I first brownRead More →

Slow Cooker Vegetables Healthy veggies are not the most popular menu item, but we need them. It’s tricky to come up with veggies that the whole family will eat. If you can come up with a veggie your family likes and it’s cooked in the slow cooker, then you’ve accomplished quite a feat. I was craving vegetables one day since I’ve been visiting my daughter and her family and picked up squash and eggplant. The challenge was to get the whole family to like it. When I was a young girl, my mother often cooked squash. I loved it. Yellow summer squash. She didn’t everRead More →