I've been trying to come up with some tasty crockpot meals for Hubby. I am getting seriously "over" crockpot meals. They're great and the crockpot is so handy but since I'm big on cooking the old-fashioned way, I find them extremely limiting. Today I tried something a little different. First I made up a meatloaf. It wasn't a big one. I took 1 pound of ground beef and made it like I normally would with a little bacon and ketchup on top and got it baking in the oven. I then went downstairs and got a pint of purple-hulled peas (we planted a whole row of these yummy peas in our garden this year), a quart of baby red potatoes (we planted 2 rows of white, red and blue) and brought them back upstairs to my kitchen. I cooked the peas just the way Hubby likes them, onion and little bit of bacon grease, with some of my homemade cheese herbs, salt, and then put them in the crockpot on low. I then drained the potatoes (the drained water is excellent for soup by the way-don't throw it out). I put them into a skillet in which I had melted a couple tablespoons of butter, some garlic salt and pepper, and fried them until lightly brown and heated through. I then laid those on top of the purple-hulled peas. I timed everything so the meatloaf was ready about 10 minutes after the potatoes were put in the crockpot. I turned the crockpot on warm, turned the lid upside down(since it has a rounded top) and put the foil-covered pan of luscious, yummy meatloaf on top. When Hubby came home it was there waiting on him and he said it was perfect. He left it all sitting there on warm until I got home 5 hours later and I can attest to the fact that it was pretty tasty. We had a side dish of applesauce (which I had canned as well), so no one was complaining about dinner last night!!
Truth is - it doesn't sound like I did very much yesterday but with feeding the animals and straightening the house by the time I got home from work I was pooped and the crockpot meal was looking a whole lot better!