Slow Cooker Apple Chai for a Crowd (or Yourself)

Warm apple chai tea, easy to serve from a slow cooker and plenty for a crowd. This DIY Apple Chai recipe keeps in the fridge for single servings too.

In an online food blogger group we've been discussing recipe testing. From cookbook author/bloggers to 'here's what I ate today' bloggers, everyone has an opinion and we're not afraid to share it! It's been an interesting discussion.

With a recipe posting schedule of Monday, Wednesday and Friday (12 to 13 posts/month) I've got flexibility in what I choose to post. Let's take the past 24 hours as an example. I hosted a book group in my house yesterday and served Asian Pear Cardamom Cream Muffins, Asian Pear & Pear Butter Soaked Oat Muffins, Sweet Potato, Turkey Sausage & Gouda Breakfast Casserole, Sweet Potato, Hatch Chile, Cornbread & Queso Breakfast Casserole, sliced apples with Apple Cream Cheese Toffee Dip, and Slow Cooker Apple Chai.  Are the recipes on the blog yet? Um, no! I just got the dishes done! The rest will appear when it's seasonal [Hatch chiles in August, and when do Asian pears appear in the stores?].

That's 6 recipes, or 2 weeks worth of blog posts [and about 6-7 hours of food preparation, 81 photos that need to be edited, 3 sinks full of dishes to be hand washed, an additional dishwasher load, 2 extra trips to the grocery store, and plenty of writing and typing as that's part of my process. Though if we're talking hours, I started thinking about what vegetables from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share I'd have to use up--and what would go over best with my guests--about a week ago and mentally walked though the muffins and casseroles a few times before picking up a knife. I've been hacking at just this post all afternoon/evening, too, in between band fruit fundraiser captain meetings and AFO fittings, and in lieu of reading a book or watching TV. We all make choices on how to spend our 24 hours, and this is how I choose to spend mine]. 

The recipes that I share on this blog are what my family [and my book group, and my coworkers, and the high school marching band] eats each week. If it works and I have good notes on ingredient amounts and cook time, I won't make it again. [I mean, while we enjoyed Beef Tongue Nachos and Caramel Toffee Apple Parfaits I'm not going to serve them 4 times just to make sure the first 3 weren't flukes.] If a recipe doesn't work--it doesn't appear on this blog. Period. Failure photos do make it to my FB page, however. We're all human--except the spambots. Sometimes I'll need to tweak things a bit, like I did with the Double Chocolate Raspberry Muffins. Sometimes the recipe testing can go too far and I just need to stop the madness and put it on the blog already.

Too hot for warm chai?  Can I interest you in my DIY Iced Chai Tea Latte Instead?

Potato, Beet, and Leek Soup (And How To Make Vegetable Stock)

A thick vegan or vegetarian or omnivorous soup of potatoes, beets and leeks

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My spouse is a vegetarian, at least while he's away on his all-expense paid work trip to an exotic foreign locale.  If you think it's ironic, considering I just shared a post on 106 Recipe Ideas Using Ground Beef because I have 110 pounds of ground beef in the freezer, you're in good company.

Since the rest of the household is omnivorous, I've been experimenting with ways to create meals we can all enjoy.

I've heard homeschoolers will use the Bus Stop Method of teaching--introducing a subject, then dropping off students to work at different levels while continuing to teach that subject.  I consider recipes like this, and my Vegan/Vegetarian/Omnivorous Valentine's Pizza and my Acorn Squash, Beet, and Sweet Potato Chili, to be similar to the Bus Stop Teaching.  Call it Bus Stop Cooking (though bear in mind I am cooking in my kitchen, not at a bus stop, and I have access to running water, an oven, stove, and all that).

 The base of this recipe is a vegetable stock, slowly cooked in the slow cooker (is that redundant?) all day (and in fact I kicked this batch over to Keep Warm and let it go overnight since I didn't feel like dealing with it in the evening).  I like mushrooms in my vegetable stock, so when I realize that I'm not going to finish a package I'll toss them in with the rest of the cast of vegetables into a Vegetarian Soup Pack in the freezer.

The inspiration for this soup came from Alanna's Greens 'n All Beet Soup.  I love the flavor of that soup, but my kids aren't crazy about chunks of vegetables, and lately with my obsession with sautéed beet greens there just wasn't any left for soup.  So I figured I'd adapt Alanna's recipe with the veggies I had.  Once I simmered and pureed the soup, I had a rick, thick, vegan bowl of yumminess (shown above).  That's Bus Stop #1.  Adding a dollop (love that word) of sour cream makes a nice vegetarian bowl (shown below left).  Bus Stop #2.  Adding a pound of browned and drained ground beef to the pot means that we've arrived at the final destination--a soup for omnivores [aka another way to get my kids to eat beets.  With beef.]

I don't know if my spouse will continue as a vegetarian when he returns.  He says he'll eat "happy meat", so I've sourced a "locally-raised on locally-grown and -ground GMO free feed" turkey for Thanksgiving.  I do know that I will continue this Bus Stop Cooking method, because it tastes good!

Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos

If you've been enjoying some early summer salads and are looking for a change of pace, try this dish.  It's a great as salad, and as an appetizer, and works year round as an easy supper.  Since this is a year round dish, it's been in the queue for a while waiting to be published.
Last week I was participating in a G+ Food Bloggers Community Education event with +Chef Dennis Littley  and +Larry Deane, and Larry said "give your readers what they want".  That struck home with me, so since I've gotten requests for this recipe, it's bumped some fresh-from-the-CSA recipes to come out today.  How did folks know to request this?  They saw the photo on my FB page, that's how.

I intended to title this post Greek Artichoke Lemon Olive Chicken in a Slow Cooker, in the interests of being as descriptive as possible.  Then I thought about how we actually ate the resulting chicken, asked folks on FB for suggestions, and decided that Slow Cooker Greek Chicken "Taco" Meat is really a more apt title.  This dish is cooked in my crock pot, and does contain the artichoke, lemon, and olives I originally mentioned, but we use it like we use taco meat:  stretched on tortillas, over grains, or in a salad.  And the leftovers?  They make the best Greek Five Layer Dip I've ever had.  Possibly the only Greek Five Layer Dip I've ever had, too.  Try this in the summer when it's too hot to cook, or during football season for a delicious dinner/appetizer that's just familiar enough not to be weird and a delicious twist on a classic.

I may have alluded to my cold kitchen over the winter months.  Either the reference to the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in the cold (down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit!) corner of my breakfast nook, or the photos of the frost on the inside of my kitchen window, seen in my Gardening Photos album on my FB page, would get the point across.
As cold as my kitchen is in the winter, it is correspondingly hot in the summer.  I do what I can, covering the East-facing windows with heat-blocking drapes in the morning and using the oven less.  I intend to get my grill on this summer, but there is another way to cook your food without heating the kitchen--a slow cooker.
This dish started with my desire to use my slow cooker to do the cooking while I was at work, and turned into a game to see how many complimentary layers of flavor I could add to the dish.  I was inspired by these other Greek Chicken Slow Cooker dishes, seen here and here, but since I had tortillas but no pitas, I went in a taco direction.  Then I read about Avocado Feta dip, and it was a great accompaniment to the chicken.

Crock Pot Chicken Adobo with Sauteed Farm Fresh Veggies

An easy overnight marinade and then a day in the slow cooker for this flavorful chicken. The farm share Daikon and Bok Choy side dish comes together quickly.

If you've ever bought a family size pack of chicken breasts marked down at the grocery store,
if you've ever gotten bok choy and daikon radishes in the farm share and wanted recipe ideas,
if you've ever wanted to cook the meat once and repurpose the leftovers into a new meal,
if you've ever wanted to have an entree ready-to-go in the freezer,
if you've ever wanted a new crock pot recipe,
read on

Update:  Somehow I deleted all the original text between the intro and the recipe.  Here's some new thoughts:

During my time on active duty I was fortunate to work with nurses from all over the world.  In addition to learning about different points of view and different cultural aspects of nursing care, I also got to eat the most amazing foods at work functions.  I've never been to the Philippines, but I first tasted Chicken Adobo thanks to a Filipina nurse.  

It's crazy easy to make in the slow cooker using pantry ingredients (start the night before) and results in a bunch of moist, tender, flavorful meat, along with juices suitable for flavoring CSA farm share veggies in a way that entices your kids to eat them.

For other recipes using Bok Choy, please see my Bok Choy Recipes Collection. For other recipes using Daikon, please see my Daikon Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. If you'd like to know how to Use This Blog, click here.