Website: A Year of Slow Cooking

So one thing about being lazy ass is that I have wonderful intentions of trying to do better and cook more and start a new website, but then I get lazy and slack. So I haven't been cooking anything more complicated than a frozen dinner lately, so instead, I'll feature a website that has a lot of great ideas for me.

I found this website, A Year of Slow Cooking while searching for easy slow cooker recipes. The author, Stephanie, has some great ideas for things to make and easy ways to do it. Not all of her recipes are quite lazy enough for me, but many of them are, or can be lazied up a bit to suit me.

She's well past the original year of her experiment to cook in the crock pot every day, but she still posts quite a bit and even came out with a book, Make It Fast, Cook It Slow, which I may have to take a look at.

I think the original recipe that took me to her site was this Lazy Chicken Crock Pot Recipe she posted. I'm a sucker for anything with Lazy in the title, and it truly is pretty dang lazy. Just tossing in some canned and frozen stuff and turning it on. That's the way I like to cook! This one might be the laziest one she's got, and they go up in complicatedness (a word? Not according to spellcheck. [Spellcheck isn't a word either? I guess it must be two words, but I flout convention!]) from there.

I also learned quite a few techniques from reading her site. For me, one of the best things about slow cooker cooking is putting everything in one pot and not having to dirty any other dishes. I learned from her that you can often throw in rice or some other grain with the rest of the stuff in the crock pot and it cooks right along with it. Purists might not like it and prefer making the rice separately and then mixing it in at the end, but my lazy self is much more interested in the easiest technique rather than 'the best' technique.

I'm going to be trying out a few more of her recipes once I go grocery shopping and get back up off my lazy ass. She has a daughter with celiac/gluten allergies so a lot of her recipes focus on that, but she offers alternatives for those of us who can eat that stuff and crock pot cooking often doesn't use a lot of wheaty type stuff anyway, so I don't find it lacking.

Lazy Ass Approved!

Lazy Ass Breakfast - 'Egg' & Cheese Toast

You know, I've realized that it may be hard for me to come up with lots of things to write about since I tend to eat a lot of the same things every day. That is a great way to be lazy ass, but not so great for coming up with new and exciting blog content.

This is what I eat for breakfast almost every day. Looks pretty appetizing, eh? It's good though, and gets me some nice filling protein in the morning, which helps with staying satisfied until lunch (or elevensies.)

Super simple. I usually have 2, but you could just have 1, depending on your appetite:

• 1/4 Cup egg substitute (like Egg Beaters, though I usually end up getting the off-brand version since it is cheaper. I think Kroger calls theirs "Better N' Egg." Or maybe that is just a different brand. You can use an actual egg, too, if you want. Anyway, I ramble.)
• 1 Kraft 2% Milk Single (or the store brand equivalent. If you aren't a fan of American cheese, you could get some other low-fat pre-sliced cheese, but being that I have the taste of a small child, I love that processed melty stuff. I like regular cheese, too, don't get me wrong. I think cheese is my favorite food group. But I don't discriminate against America's own contribution to the World of Cheese. And I need to stop with the long parentheticals.)
• 1 slice low cal wheat bread (like Oroweat Light 100% Whole Wheat. I think they really only make these lower calorie by just making the slice smaller, but that works perfectly for these little breakfast open face sandies.)

So you just throw the bread in the toaster, and then nuke the egg. I've got this perfectly sized little tupperwear that I use that makes it fit nicely on the bread. In my microwave it takes about 50 seconds to cook one serving. You should probably spray whatever you cook the egg in with a little cooking spray or something so it won't stick. Whenever I forget, it is much harder to get the egg out of the dish. I like to use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Spray and then I also spritz a little on the toast. (Though be careful with that stuff, because it claims it has 0 calories, but that is for 1.25 sprays. If you start going on a spraying rampage it's starts adding up. I think it is like 20 calories for 25 sprays.)

So just throw a slice of cheese (or 'cheese food') on the toast, plop the egg on top, and you're good to go.

Lazy Ass Hot Dog Roll Up

For a truly lazy ass dinner, if I don't have something pre-made in the fridge, I make this hot dog roll-up thing. I think I got the idea from a suggestion for a kid-friendly meal on a blog somewhere or in one of my cookbooks. I often check out cookbooks for kids or websites about meals kids can cook as they often times have really simple recipes that don't require a lot of effort.

This has three ingredients:

• 1 Oscar Mayer 98% Fat Free Wiener (these are good and only 40 calories each. I think they make totally fat free ones, but I haven't been able to find them at my local stores. Also, Hebrew National makes a Kosher, all beef, 97% fat free frank, but I didn't really like the taste. I think I'm too used to the lips and assholes flavor of a regular hot dog.)
• 1 Mission Carb Balance Tortilla, Fajita Size (these are the small six inch ones. I usually get the whole wheat, mainly because they don't have the non-whole wheat at my grocery store, but also, like, whole wheat is better for you and stuff.)
• A pinch of 2% milk shredded cheese (like this Sargento Low Fat Shredded or Kraft makes some, and Kroger has a store brand one, too. Buying pre-shredded is of course more expensive than just buying a block and shredding it yourself, but that wouldn't be very lazy ass, as it would require dirtying a cheese grater, which is really annoying to clean.)

And that's it. So I just toss a little bit of cheese in the tortilla, throw a wiener in there, roll it up, and nuke it. If you make it on a paper towel, you don't even have to dirty one single dish! Even if you use a plate, it doesn't get it very dirty.

I usually make 2 or sometimes 3 if I'm extra hungry. I usually attempt to eat some sort of veg with this as well, like one of my single serving frozen vegetable things.

*Picture from the New York Public Library's digital collections, as found through The Flickr Commons.
Abbott, Berenice (Photographer). (1936). Hot Dog Stand, West St. and North Moore, Manhattan [Online Image]. Retrieved June 2010 from NYPL Digital Gallery. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1219152

I [heart] U Crock Pot (Veggie Chili)

For the first post on Lazy Ass Cooking, it is apt that I write an homage to my once and current love, my Crock Pot slow cooker. This is the lazy ass cook's best friend. Throw some stuff in there in the morning, jaunt off to work, and come home to amazing food.

For some, slow cooker prep can be just as time consuming as cooking a regular meal. But not the lazy-ass way. I tend to use mostly frozen things or canned things that I can just rip open and throw in without even touching a food particle.

I started a new job 3 weeks ago, after a quite long bout of unemployment, and am trying to get back into the swing of bringing lunches to work. My boyfriend the slow cooker has been a universe-send. I throw something in there on Sunday, pack it up in 2-Cup size plastic containers, and I have lunches all week.

This week I made a sort of cobbled together Veggie Chili. I am a spice wimp, so it is quite mild, but you could add your favorite spice or hot sauce or salsa or something to put a little heat in there. I also used fake veggie ground 'crumbles' because that's what I had in the freezer, but you could use ground turkey or beef, too, of course. The nice thing about the veggie crumbles is you don't have to worry about them getting cooked all the way through, since they are pre-cooked and non-salmonelly.

• 1 bag Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles (or other vegetarian ground meat like substance)
• 1 can chili beans, with the sauce
• 1 can red beans, drained (should probably rinse, too, but I didn't because: see, lazy ass)
  
• 1 can black beans, drained (as above)
• 2 cans fire roasted diced tomatoes, with the liquid
• 1 bag frozen 3 pepper and onion blend (pre-chopped veggies! woo!)
  
• 1 cup ketchup (this was kind of a weird choice, but the recipe I was trying to follow called for a can of tomato sauce and I didn't have any, so, ketchup. I would probably use the tomato sauce if you have it)
• 1 packet Taco Seasoning (or whatever spicey spice you have. I like the taco seasoning packets because it is like, all the sort of mexicany spices in one. Also they are like 25 cents.)

So I just threw that into the crock pot for like 4 hours on high. Since it was Sunday, I didn't get it in the pot until the afternoon, so I did it on high. If it was a weekday, I'd throw it in on low for the day while I was at work.

After it was done I mixed in 2 cups of cooked brown rice. Safeway has this really convenient frozen pre-cooked brown rice that comes in 2 cup bags that you just nuke in the microwave for 3 minutes. They are awesome. If you can find a similar brand, get a bunch. Less pots to dirty!

This turned out pretty good. The first night it was a bit soupier than I had wanted, but, as happens, it thickened up when I took it for lunch today. I also took a single serving frozen vegetable thing with me (Green Giant Just For One Peas and Corn in Butter) since there wasn't a lot of non tomato vegetable in the chili. I try to be balanced. I also took a stick of light string cheese because I love string cheese.

This recipe was inspired by one in the Hungry Girl cookbook that I just bought (Hungry Girl 1-2-3). For some reason I thought I wouldn't like her, because I thought it would be like the chick lit of cookbooks, but she actually has some really nice tips for the lazy ass like me. Some very easy and uncomplicated recipes. So I'll be referring to her a lot in my odyssey. Like a true lazy ass, I rip off all my ideas.

Now get off your lazy ass and cook something!