2015: So far, so good.

Remember back when I was doing 2 new recipes a month? And I did basically the most simple crock pot recipes ever? I have a small, 2 quart crock pot, and every single crock pot recipe is written with a 4-6 qt crock pot in mind. If there is a recipe written for a small crock pot, it's an appetizer or something lame like soup or pasta sauce. Sure, you can cut recipes in half to fit the small crock pot, but that doesn't always work with the ingredient list. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do with half a can of cream of chicken soup?

Then I stumbled across this blog post via pinterest, and it was like a light bulb went off. DUH. You can totally cut almost *any* crock pot recipe in half, by literally dividing the ingredients in half, between two freezer bags. Then you throw them in the freezer. On the day you want to make that meal, just toss the frozen chunk in the slow cooker and let it do its thing. I've already tried one recipe via this method and it turned out really good. I just mixed up a couple more recipes so I have a total of 5 crock pot meals in my freezer right now.

The recipe I've already tried was the ranch pork chops from the link above. Today I mixed up a variation on the smothered pork chops from the link (instead of cream of chicken, I used garlic cream of mushroom because tell me that doesn't sound awesome), and I also mixed up this Chicken "Pot Pie" recipe. I'll let you know how it works out. I like the ability to come home to a warm, home cooked meal without having to actually cook all day. Because I'm a single person, with a job, and it's winter, and I'm lazy. I spent less than an hour on prep work today and I now have 4 dinners ready to go.

Here's a shot of my ranch pork chops when I made them last week.

The snow day culinary adventure continues! Crock pot Ranch pork chops and cornbread. I was going to make some green beans as well, since this dish is overwhelmingly yellow, but I didn't have any in my pantry. And I was NOT going out in this cold just for green beans. #snowday #crockpot #porkchops #dinnerforone #cornbread

A photo posted by Miranda C (@mirandom03) on Jan 7, 2015 at 3:18pm PST

And I'm off to a roaring start on my reading goal for the year. 2.5 books out of 52! As Goodreads says, I'm one book ahead of schedule!