Introducing...Smirk

Here goes nothing!  I am not much for blogging, or journaling, or really anything like that but my dear friend Nat has been texting/calling/emailing and is pretty persistent. So I told her that once I got my crock pot I would blog, but truly I had no real intention of getting my act together.  Nat started cooking away last Monday and still I had not purchased a slow cooker or as the box reads, "THE ORIGINAL SLOW COOKER."  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc goes by with still no plans for a slower cooker and a ton of frozen meals in my freezer.  Finally, on Saturday after a cold, rainy morning of service with my students I purchased the slow cooker.  Hallelujah!  Just that much closer to actually making a meal.

As the slower cooker sat on my counter I contemplated what meal I would make first, what should accompany it, should I invite someone over for this monumental moment... but instead I was running out the door this morning as per usual and just plopped the first thing I could grab into the slow cooker, ran out the door and prayed that my apartment would not catch on fire as I have yet to purchase renters insurance. (That's next on my list to purchase).  I had a crazy productive day...which means very little time to eat...which in turn makes me hungry like the wolf..which equals bad eating habits and my expanding waistline.  However, I am blogging today to tell you not today my friends, NOT TODAY!  Instead, I walked in the door to the most delicious smell of honey chicken and my apartment in perfect condition.  I ran over to the chicken hoping that it tasted as good as it smelled and it was DELICIOUS!  My life has been changed forever... dramatic!  But I am really hoping that this is a lifestyle I can keep up.  Thanks Nat for roping me into yet another potentially healthy way of eating.  And thank you to the ladies who have enough time to think of things like this!  I encourage those that read this blog to believe in the magic of the Crock Pot. I sure do!

~Snark & Smirk

Honey Chicken Y'all

This morning in the crockpot.

Day 2 of this slow cooking lifestyle. I pulled the Honey Chicken out of the freezer last night and placed it in the fridge last night. I was surprised to see it wasn't fully frozen. Thank goodness for Google! I learned honey doesn't freeze. How Bizarre.

I plopped the contents of the bag in the crockpot, added a half cup of water (remember Aslyne and I split this recipe), set the timer and heat to low.

Wouldn't this have been a nice lunch?

Rookie move of the morning? Leaving my lunch by the front door before heading to work! So much for the Rosemary Chicken leftovers!

Tonight, the house smelled especially good when I came home! I took a peek and the chicken looked caramelized; it was very dark on the outside. Once again, the appearance of the meal was not optimal. (Please tell me someone got that topical joke. Anyone watch the debates? No? Just me? Alright then...)

After cooking all day!

I rinsed some asparagus, threw it on some foil on the cookie sheet, seasoned with True Lemon, savory and Kosher salt - and placed it in the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees While the asparagus was cooking, I packed leftovers for tomorrow's lunch (cross your fingers that I remember it) and cleaned the slow cooker pot. By the time that was done, so was dinner! I have to say, I am loving this quick cleanup and ready-to-go meal...

Asparagus is my favie.

Warning: I'm about to use the word moist. Why do so many people hate that word?

The chicken was (wait for it) MOIST! So far, I'm liking this recipe better than yesterday's. It easily fell apart with the fork (no knife required).

Where's Aslyne in all of this? She's shopping for a slow cooker. I'm not being facetious. I'm sure we'll hear from her soon.

~Snark & Smirk

MOIST! MOIST! MOIST!

Honey Chicken (recipe from Texas Fit Chicks)
1 lb. or 4 small skinless chicken breasts
1/4 tsp. curry powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup diced onion
3 T. oil
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 tsp. powdered ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/2 cup water

In a large mixing bowl, combine all of the ingredients. Toss well to coat the chicken evenly. Place the mixture in a slow cooker. Cover & cook on low for 4 hours. If desired, serve over rice or orzo.

Roasted Rosemary Chicken

Looking for the recipe to yesterday's first slow cooker success? We found this on Texas Fit Chicks!

Proof that this is happening.

Easy Roasted Rosemary Chicken
6 skinless chicken breasts
1 can low sodium chicken broth
Fresh onion & garlic (if you have them)

1/2 cup fresh chopped rosemary
salt & pepper to taste

Optional- place sliced onions on bottom of cooker along with minced garlic.

Place chicken breasts in cooker. Pour can of broth then 1/2 cup fresh rosemary. Salt & Pepper to taste. Stir around to get the rosemary all over the chicken breasts. Cook about 6 hours on low.

Served with brown rice and steamed green beans.

This is what I ate. You're welcome.

You'll note that I did not serve this with brown rice or green beans (but instead zucchini, see previous post), and I really can't imagine not including the fresh onion and garlic that are listed as optional on this one...they really did a lot for this in the way of flavor!

We also froze this before cooking it, chicken broth and all. It turned out just fine - so no need to fret.


Oh, and hold up - I also found time to make pumpkin muffins yesterday for my staff. And, on that note: Why is pumpkin a seasonal food? It doesn't only taste good in fall, so why is it relegated to stay within that autumnal boundary? Be the change you wish to see in the world...eat pumpkin year round. Viva la revolution! 


We're not afraid to push the envelope with pumpkin. Over and out.


~Snark & Smirk

What's Cookin'

Yesterday the assembly of the freezer meals was overall a success! Were we tired? Yes. Were some mistakes made? Sure. Does anyone feel like chopping onions in the near future? Nope! But the beauty is, we have a number of meals ready and raring to go - and won't have to even so much as pick up a knife for a little while!

Be amazed! Freezer meals galore!

So what is cookin' in our casas? Here are the meals we prepared!

• Rosemary Chicken
• Salsa Chicken
• Honey Chicken
• Cranberry Chicken
• Polynesian Chicken
• Chicken Chili
• Cilantro Lime Chicken
• Healthy Mama BBQ
• Chicken Curry
• Steph's Goulash
• Seasoned Sweet Potatoes 

We also made some pre-seasoned zucchini (yummmm) and a whole heap of chicken scraps for dog food (just boiled it - made for easy clean-up!)

This looks gross! It's for a dog, so...

This morning I woke up, got ready for work, opened up the freezer and grabbed...Rosemary Chicken! I plopped the contents of the bag right in the slow cooker, set it - and let it do it's thing!

When I came home this evening, the house smelled yummy! I rushed right to the slow cooker, even before taking Hook out (he could hold it just 30 second longer!) because I couldn't wait to take a peek! It looked good and I could tell by poking it with a fork, was very moist!

Labeling with full instructions is key.

I threw some of the zucchini on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees and baked for 20 minutes while I got changed, took the dog on a quick walk and made a phone call. Zucchini, chicken and a little bit of bread and dinner was done. I was satisfied with the taste and especially the texture - not rubbery, not overcooked. I am wild about rosemary (just ask my sister about the now infamous stuffing from Thanksgiving 2010...I got a little overzealous), so this was a great first start! The sauce created by the ingredients was really yummy with the bread and I am a sucker for zucchini, so I am feeling a little bit like a champion this evening. Cleanup? A breeze. One plate and the silverware into the dishwasher. Zucchini was on foil that I tossed and I had to handwash the slow cooker quickly.

They stack up nicely when laid flat.

What I will say, is it wasn't very pretty. I'm not a girl who can stage photos to make it look professional and even if I was...it wasn't much to look at. In the grand scheme of things, I'd rather have the ease and taste over appearance on this one. I do know that looks contribute to whether something appears appetizing, so cross your fingers this won't get old quickly!

I have leftovers that I'm taking for lunch tomorrow from the chicken and zucchini, along with some carrots, veggie chips and grapes. Packing lunch was a snap. I am hopeful that this will taste good on the second day. It's always a gamble.

Aslyne was working out of town today, so she didn't get to try out her first meal. Tomorrow's menu will include Honey Chicken  and asparagus in the steamer for me.

Ta-ta for now!
~Snark & Smirk

Choppin' (not quite cookin') up a Storm

Ingredients galore!

The adventure has begun! Went to the grocery store, list in hand - prepared to make 8 different dishes (multiple servings per person). We had an amazing (and I really do mean amazing) Excel document that my mom created for us. She listed more than 20 recipes we had collected in columns, and then laid out the ingredients in rows. When we entered the quantity (whether we wanted a single listing or to double or triple the amounts), the math was magically done for us!

I headed to the grocery store without Aslyne, because she had to stop by work (like I said before - we could be major players in workaholics anonymous). By the time she found me in Giant Eagle, we were about a half dozen ingredients away from checkout. As we waited in line, we decided we were missing two very important things - orange juice and champagne. While not technically on the grocery list, mimosas seemed appropriate.

The cart was loaded up with chicken. Honestly, I was nauseated by all of the chicken we were looking at....yikes. but, Aslyne is not so much into the beef and we haven't found a lot of turkey or fish freezer crockpot meals just yet.

The bill was something like $330, but with my 12% food perks, we made it under $300. Not bad for the many meals we ended up with! Strangest item on the list? Ribo Amino Something or nother.

At home, we began chopping right away, well after a couple of YouTube videos and a glass of champagne. When we had made it through the unbelievable amount of onions, sweet potatoes, zucchini and the like - we double-checked our recipes with our purchases...we'd forgotten a few things. Some of the items didn't show up on our Excel shopping list, but I am attributing this to user error (i.e. me) and not Mom's Excel skills. We also discovered that those 16 bags of green beans (by the way, we only bought 8 because that many was making me ill to look at), also had no discernible place in our shopping. Hamburger meat? Also a mystery. Mom is going to go through the Excel soon and figure out where I went wrong...because I really did.

Why is this much meat hard to look at? Gross!

Aslyne headed back to the grocery for the few things we forgot: pineapple, mango and tapioca and I began to put together the bags. It was like an assembly line. I laid out all of our chopped up veggies, spices and other ingredients and set to work! The awesome recipes from Mama and Baby Love made it easy to split things into two bags without having to double any numbers! Bag assembly was kind of fun.

What was not fun, was all of the cleaning of the chicken. Aslyne was a trooper with onions and chicken breasts. And Hook, our ever present "helper" is now enjoying all of the chicken scraps atop his meals!

While we started out with nine unique meals in mind, we ended up making 11 in total because of extra ingredients we had and the simplicity of the last couple we stumbled upon at Texas Fit Chicks. Bonus! Still have to figure out what to do with this hamburger meat...and all of those green beans!

Listing of the meals we made to come next time!

PS: Don't tell anyone, but...I hate green beans.

Hook is always really, really, really helpful...and by that I mean super distracting and nosy.

Two A-Holes Try Slow Cooking

Growing up, when my family would vacation we would inevitably get into ridiculous situations. Dad would always say "just four idiots on vacation." Though he'd say idiots in front of my sister and I, to Mom he'd mutter under his breath "two a-holes." As Aslyne and I begin yet another bizarre adventure together, it seemed only appropriate that we adopt the phrase...just two a-holes trying to slow cook.

We always try to recommit to being healthy...we've tried the South Beach, Weight Watchers...you name it. But, ultimately, we always get off track because of our busy professional lives. There's no use denying it, we're workaholics...two a-holes addicted to work. We never make enough time for ourselves or we make excuses as to why we don't.

Recently, my insomnia-laden Pinterest spree led me to a blog post about once-a-month freezer cooking. It seemed really impressive. The woman spent an entire day preparing meals to freeze for her family so that she could throw them in the slow cooker and avoid the unbearable amount of preparation time, cleanup and shopping that comes with having to get creative in the kitchen every night. I was impressed and intrigued. And as usual, I volun-told Aslyne she was impressed and intrigued, too.

While I was in awe of this woman's prowess and innovation, I knew we'd want to find recipes that included lots of real food and skewed more healthy. More Pinterest. More Google searching. More blogs. We found an amazing blog (Mama and Baby Love) and purchased her awesome e-cookbook. Those recipes and some others we found piecemeal are the beginnings of this journey...the journey of Snark and Smirk...two a-holes cooking up a new lifestyle? We'll see...